Page 13 - Tafsir of surat at tawba repentance

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tafseers, leaving only the names of the sahaabah or taabi‘oon and their
interpretations; for example, Bahr al-’Uloom by Aboo al-Layth as-Samarqandee
(d. 983 CE/372 AH). Great stress was placed on literary forms and grammatical
constructions in many of these tafseers. The various forms of recitation, without
their chains of narration, were also recorded and used as explanations of the text.
However, they also included in their tafseers a vast number of anonymous
statements and opinions without any mention of who made them. Consequently,
many of these tafseers are confusing. Accurate accounts and interpretations were
mixed with inaccurate ones without any distinction between them.

In addition, the door of tafseer according to personal opinion was opened.
Works of tafseer soon began to reflect various trends of thought in Muslim
society. By the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the major works of Greek
philosophy and science that had been translated in the previous centuries began to
have an effect on all of the various Islaamic fields of study. Philosophical schools
of thought like that of the Mu‘tazilees (Rationalists) had evolved which boldly
threatened pure Islaamic thought. Tafseers full of philosophical and scientific
terminology, like al-Kash-shaaf of az-Zamakhsharee (1075-1144 CE/467-538
AH) or Mafaateeh al-Ghayb of Fakhrud-Deen ar-Raazee (1149-1210 CE/544-606
AH), and tafseers expressing the thoughts of various heretical sects also appeared
during this period. For example, the Twelver Shee‘ah tafseer of Mullah Muhsin
al-Kaash made the verses of the Qur’aan speak of twelve infallible imaams, the
imaginary walaayah (governorship) of the Prophet’s son-in-law ‘Alee and the
claimed apostasy of all of the Prophet’s companions except a handful; and the
Soofee tafseer of Ibn al-‘Arabee (d. 1240 CE/638 AH) made Qur’aanic verses
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voice his pantheistic ideology of Allaah being all and all being Allaah.
There was also a trend towards specialization among the Islaamic scholars,
resulting from the evolution of Islaamic learning into a multiplicity of disciplines.
Consequently, tafseers like those of al-Jassaas (917-980 CE/304-369 AH) and al-
Qurtubee (d. 1273 CE/671 AH) concentrated on the deduction of fiqh (Islaamic
law) from the Qur’aanic passages according to their respective math-habs
(schools of fiqh). Likewise, ath-Tha‘labee, who specialized in tales of ancient

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Muhammad ibn ‘Alee ibn Muhammad ibn al-‘Arabee was from Andalus (Spain), but he
travelled extensively and died in ‘Iraaq. A prolific writer, he authored some 300 books, the most
famous being al-Futoohaat al-Makkeeyah and Fusoos al-Hikam. He wrote nine different tafseers
of the Qur’aan, among them Tarjumaan al-Ashwaaq, for which he wrote a number of
commentaries.

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