Tafseer Mujahid Pdf
Mauricette Atencio
The tafsir mujahid ibn jabr has about five people in between the writer and Mujahid ibn jabr which disappointed me a lot. I thought it would be a book written directly by Mujahid before I started reading it, as the online Islamic library
attributes the book directly to Mujahid although its clear the book on the site is essentially a collection of athar going back to mujahid, athar with quite long chains too. I could not figure out who actually put pen to paper in the book listed by Maktaba Shamela and emailing them got me no response as usual.
First of all none in the Muslim history attributed a book to an author in case that there are more than 1 or two intermediates between the person writing it and the attributed author. Since in general either the author himself wrote the book, or one of his students wrote it either by hearing it from the author or by being dictated it, it could happen that a close person to the student or another student completed the writing for whatever reason (see for example in your earlier question: Who wrote the book "al umm al Shafi'i") . For example in case of the book that is generally referenced to as al-Muwatta' or al-Muwatta narration of Yahya ibn Yahya al-Laithi you may find that almost each hadith or narration starts by either:
In this case it could be either Yahya narrating from a not named intermediate (which in one chapter should be Shabtoon also known as Ziyad ibn 'Abarrahmaan al-Llakhmi أبو عبد الله زياد بن عبد الرحمن اللخمي) or his son referring to his fathers narration from Malikor
Let's get back to our book in question and explain why it can't be a book of Mujahid himself! It rather seems that this book has gone lost or scattered somehow and being gathered again later as one of the first pages show (See here), else how could one explain the mentioning of reading one of the earliest reports in Rajab 538 a.H.?
Note that many sources of information here are theses and papers which are generally not accessible, so one often needs to rely on second hand information. So far I only know of two editions which were verified by reviewers and commented and referenced to a certain level, the second reviewer actually intended to accomplish the job of the first.
Further scholars who have checked the book found out that there are actually narrations that are not even attributed to Mujahid himself (I have picked some examples and shared them later).Rather the following part of the chain of narration seems the most common:
أنا عَبْدُ الرَّحْمَنِ قَالَ: نا إِبْرَاهِيمُ قَالَ: نا آدَمُ قَالَ: نا وَرْقَاءُ
We were informed by 'Abdurrahman from Ibraheem from Aadam from Warqaa'
As for 'Abdurrahman he was identified as: Abu al-Qassim 'Abdurrahman ibn Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Hamadani أبي القاسم عبدالرحمن بن الحسن بن أحمد بن محمد الهمداني who is regarded as weak and was among the teachers of al-Hakim (from Nishapur). His studies with Ibraheem ibn Disil are doubted by scholars as expressed in Siyar 'Alaam an-Nubalaa' (See here). The hadith database (see here) claims that he died 352 a.H. and he was accused of lying by some scholars. Since he was born around 270 a.H. and claimed having heard of narrations (books) of Ibraheem that the later stopped teaching around the year of 'Abdurrahman's birth and when confronted with this contradiction he stopped narrating them till his "opponents" died. So at least is rather clear that he hardly got the narrations from a face to face studying.
This would lead to the conclusion that one can hardly attribute the book to Mujahid as of sound chain nor can it authentically attributed to its potential author!
As for Ibraheem he was identified as: abu Ishaaq Ibraheem ibn al-Hussain ibn 'Ali Al-Hamadni al-Kisai أبو إسحاق إبراهيم بن الحسين بن علي الهمذاني الكسائي known as ibn Disil ابن ديزيل. A narrator which is regarded as trustful by hadith scholars (see also in Siyar 'Alaam an-Nubalaa'). And he indeed was a student of Adam ibn abi Iyas and he most likely died 281 a.H..
As for Warqaa' he is identified as: Warqaa' ibn 'Umar al-Yashkuri ورقاء بن عمر اليشكري also known as ibn Kulayb who is considered a trustfully narrator and his tafsir narrations from abu Najih are also trustful, but he didn't transmit all of ibn Najih's tafsir however. Waki' however didn't seem to trust him in matters of tafsir as stated in Siyar 'Alaam an-Nubalaa' (see here).
Among scholars it is therefore clear that the "title tafsir Mujahid" doesn't really imply that the book itself was written by Mujahid ibn Jabr, rather it is an effort of a later scholar to collect a tafsir in which only his narratives back to Mujahid are mentioned. Since I have not really read the book I must assume that this was the intention of the author.
And scholars actually named a potential auhtor the muhadith (among the students of al-Laith ibn Sa'ad and Sho'bah and the teachers of imam al-Bukhari, abu Zura'ah and ibn abi Hathim ar-Razi) and mufassir called Adam ibn abi Iyaas آدم بن أبي إياس also known as Adam ibn 'Abdurrahmen ibn Muhammad ibn Sho'ib al-Maruzi, al-'Asqalani, al-Khorasani آدم بن عبد الرحمن بن محمد بن شعيب المروزي العسقلاني الخراساني. (See also in Siyar 'Alaam an-Nubalaa').
One could also assume that it is rather Ibraheem due to the explanation I've given first and this narrative where Aadam is not even mentioned. But so far available information on this book are rather rare.
Why should it even be the work of one author maybe Aadam started it and Ibraheem added some of his own "narratives" as did the son of imam Ahmad in his fathers Musnad (in this case with the result of an increase of fabricated ahadith in the book).
Remark
Note that the mentioning of a "tafsir" or that a person was a "mufasir" doesn't necessarily imply that the person authored a book, rather he was known for his teaching in this topic!
In the following lines I would like to roughly name the most known students of Mujahid who transmitted his tafsir "narrations" and add a comment on the quality and authenticity of their narrations. Based on the takhrij made by a contemporary scholar (see here):
Aslamualakaum. This is regarding surah 55 verse 39, i have seen the tafseer on your site, so please dont send me that, it is another question relating to it. ibn Abbas has apparanlty done a tafseer on the verese, my question is to do with his tafseer. I dont know much about hadith as im a layman, but the hadith is reported by Ali ibn talha (that is what it said on another site), I read somwhere that any hadith through him is a broken chain. So my question is: Is this tafseer from ibn abbas sahih. Can we take broken chains. Why does ibn abbas tafseer differ from his student mujahid?
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