Tafseer Ki Kitab

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Arlyne Doepner

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Aug 5, 2024, 8:07:57 AM8/5/24

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This day, I have perfected your religion for you, completed My favor upon you...) `Umar replied, `By Allah! I know when and where this verse was revealed to Allah's Messenger . It was the evening on the Day of `Arafah on a Friday.''' Al-Bukhari recorded this Hadith through Al-Hasan bin As-Sabbah from Ja`far bin `Awn. Muslim, At-Tirmidhi and An-Nasa'i also recorded this Hadith. In the narration collected by Al-Bukhari in the book of Tafsir, through Tariq, he said, "The Jews said to `Umar, `By Allah! There is a verse that is read by all of you (Muslims), and had it been revealed to us, we would have taken that day (on which it was revealed) as a day of celebration.' `Umar said, `By Allah! I know when and where this verse was revealed and where the Messenger of Allah was at that time. It was the day of `Arafah, and I was at `Arafah, by Allah.'' Sufyan (one of the narrators) doubted if Friday was mentioned in this narration. Sufyan's confusion was either because he was unsure if his teacher included this statement in the Hadith or not. Otherwise, if it was because he doubted that the particular day during the Farewell Hajj was a Friday, it would be a mistake that could not and should not have come from someone like Sufyan Ath-Thawri. The fact that it was a Friday, is agreed on by the scholars of Sirah and Fiqh. There are numerous Hadiths that support this fact that are definitely authentic and of the Mutawatir type. This Hadith was also reported from `Umar through various chains of narration.

A good example is fakr Deen al Razi saying that ahlul kitab were included as mushrikeen because trinity was a later intervention yet Quran clearly dispelled him by mentioning that trinity existence and ahlul kitab were socially embraced among early Muslims and Quran although theologically debated.

This has various tafseer's including Burhan but its a small piece of tafseer Burhan, I would recommend u check out the tafseer Qummi section. Ofcourse there is also tafseer Mizan but on this website, it gets some heat.

Salams and ty for your reply. I did see the bit on Tashayyu =) its surprising there is no full english translation, i am in the process of trying to learn Arabic, but it will take some time(!), so it would be good to have a translation for non arabic speakers in the mean time.

قال الصدوق رحمه الله : سألت ابن الوليد عن معنى هذا الحديث فقال : هو أن تجيب الرجل في تفسير آية بتفسير آية اخرى ( 5 ) .

Insha`Allah some one who knows the study of rijal can better explain this. I believe it says (my Arabic is poor) that Shaykh as-Saduq took the hadith from Abu Abdilah (as) to mean that one cannot use one part of the Qur`an to explain another.

I agree. Perhaps, insha`Allah, someone might complete the translations of Tafisr al-Burhan and Tafsir Nur ath-Thaqalayn. I would also love to see Shaykh at-Tusi's Tafsir al-Tibyan but I'm not sure a translation project could be done on that though because of its length.

However could someone give a correct translation of the above arabic hadith? can it be interpreted as meaning someone who actually hits the qu'ran in disarray or is it interconnected? Google translate gives an alternate meaning to it (in Disarray)

The hadith is a little difficult to understand, we can see that by the fact that Saduq mentions that he asked his teacher Ibn al-Walid what it meant. But the response he gave is "It is that the man answers regarding the tafsir of an aya with the tafsir of another aya". Perhaps that might be interpreted as doing something akin to qiyas in fiqh but with Quranic tafsir instead, that is say you have the tafsir of one aya but not the tafsir of another, so you take the tafsir of the latter and apply to the first (say due to apparently being similar or what have you).

I'm not the greatest fan of Tafsir al-Mizan. I find it can be somewhat speculative, rationalist and overly philosophical. It's riwayat sections too (which where I'd often spend most of my time with it), much of the time he's quoting from Sunni material (e.g. Durr al-Manthur) without clarifying that it is so, and not often making a distinction between reliable and unreliable in there.

Personally, I do tend more to the older tafsirs. As to the more "middle period" I guess tafsirs, most of the time my first point of reference will be Tafsir as-Safi by Fayd Kashani, but that's because it's neatly organized and easy to find the riwaya in relation to verse with. Downside is that sometime he can get a bit mystical in it, and he doesn't give the isnads to the narrations he's quoting. Nur ath-Thaqalayn is better for that, but harder to use. al-Burhan is probably the best for that overall, but I've used it less. Tibyan can be useful but from a different angle, in that its appoach is very much within the framework of Buyid era Baghdad, so lots of references to the opinions of different non-Shi`i authorities in it. Lately I've been looking a lot more closely to Tafsir al-Qummi (with the translating) and getting really impressed by it. Great balance of commentary, riwayat and so on.

What really needs to be done though ultimately I feel, is for an orignal tafsir to be written in English, but one that is most heavily centered on the riwayat (though not uncritically just adding whatever you can find), and making mention of what such early scholars as `Ali b. Ibrahim and Shaykh Tusi said in their's (when not directly quoting riwayat).

The best tafsir is the one which balances hadith exposition with rational analysis. Someone who knows what the Ahlul Bayt say about a particular verse, and also can see how what they say is true by independently reflecting on the Qur'an has greater insight than one who only achieves the former. Rational analysis comes into the 'how' part of understanding. Personally, all of the tafasir that Ive read pre- Allamah Tabatabai's Mizan neglect the 'how'. The great virtue of AlMizan is that it shows the beauty of the tafsir of Ahlul Bayt through showing us that it's true even apart from hadith. Take a look at the tafsir for witnesses for example and how he shows the truth of the tafsir of Ahlul Bayt through reading the verses rationally. No mufassir has done this to the same extent. I think that any future tafasir should take lessons from AlMizan's style.

I have been going thru tafseer Al Mizan lately. I am one of those weirdos who like to read tafsir books from beginning to end sequentially. So I am almost the end of Surat Al Baqarat now. What slows me down is Ulema Tabatabi's long philosophical discourses, although I do learn alot from them. His discourse on Shifa3t is more than 30 pages. For linguistic clarification, I use the site corpus.quran.com, which is a site developed by University of Leeds in the UK. Very good for Linguistic depth and description. I am waiting or other tafsirs to be available on online with English translation. I have been waiting for the complete Al Mizan for about 15 years now, so I almost think it would be faster for me to do the translation myself, lol.

Who do you think could go about becoming a mufassir amongst the Shi`i who know English? It seems like a big task, especially when one has to go through some of our lengthier tafsirs AND our books of ahadith.