Tafsir al-Baydawi

The work enjoyed a solid reputation among Sunni theologians since its composition. More than 130 commentaries on Tafsir al-Baydawi have been written in Arabic. Brockelmann (1898) lists eighty-three of such works, with the most prominent being the multi-volume commentary by Shihab al-Din al-Khafaji (d. Egypt 1069/1659) and the gloss by Muhammad B. Muslim a-Din Mustafa al-Kuhi (d. 951/1544), which also includes lengthy quotations from the commentary by Fakhr al-Din al-Razi. Al-Baydawi's commentary has proven popular in regions of the non-Arab Muslim world, such as in the Indo-Pakistani region and Muslim Southeast Asia. It served as an important source for 'Abd al-Ra'uf al-Singkili's Malay commentary upon the whole Qur'an, Tarjuman Almustafid ("The interpreter of that which gives benefit"), written around 1085/1675. It has served as a core text in Muslim seminaries in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province, Malaysia, Indonesia and other places, providing an introduction to Qur'anic exegesis.[7][8]

Al-Baydawi was an expert on Qurʼanic exegesis, Islamic jurisprudence, and Islamic theology.[4] He was born in Bayda, near Shiraz, Persia. He was a Shafi'i-Ash'ari scholar, a judge, a Sufi (mystic) and a Qur'anic exegete (mufassir). Al-Baydawi grew up to be a staunch Shafi'i in jurisprudence and Ash'ari in theology and was opposed to Shiites and Mu'tazilites. He wrote a number of other scholarly works in tenets of faith, jurisprudence, and Arabic, as well as history in Persian. He was also the author of several theological treatises. His major work is the commentary on the Qur'an. After serving as a judge in Shiraz, he moved to Tabriz, where he died in 685 AH.

Al-Baydawi's father was the Chief Justice of the Fars province. His grandfather, Fakhr al-Din 'Ali al-Baydawi, also served as the chief judge. Al-Baydawi was chiefly educated by his father. He believed that his teachers were taught by scholars who were in turn taught by scholars who ultimately received their education from the Islamic prophet Muhammad. According to him, his paternal grandfather came from the line of students of Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (d. 505/1111).[9]

The AlKoran, an early English translation made use of the convenience afforded by Al-Baydawi's work as the continuous commentary reproduced the Quran in its entirety.[10]

Al-Baydawi has attracted some criticism for the brevity of his writings, and for some inaccuracy, with some scholars accusing him of allowing some Mu'tazilite views held by al-Zamakhshari to ftlter through into Anwar al-Tanzil.[11]

Major translation work to English was conducted by Gibril Fouad Haddad. Haddad is a Senior Assistant Professor at SOASCIS in Applied Comparative Tafsir. He was born in Beirut, Lebanon and studied in the UK, US, France, Lebanon and Syria. He holds a doctorate from Kolej Universiti Insaniah, Kedah Darul Aman, Malaysia and a Ph.D. from Columbia University, New York, US where he was the recipient of several fellowships including one at the prestigious École Normale Supérieure in Paris, France. He also graduated summa cum laude from the New York University Latin and Greek Institute. Haddad spent nine years of study in Damascus, Syria (1997-2006) and has received ijaza (scholarly licenses) from over 150 shaykhs and has authored dozens of books and hundreds of articles in Islamic hermeneutics, doctrine, hadith, biography and heresiology.

He has lectured on Qur'an, Hadith, Prophetic biography (seerah) and Sufism in many countries. He was described in the inaugural edition of The 500 Most Influential Muslims in the World as “one of the clearest voices of traditional Islam in the West.”[12][13]

• Dedication to HM The Sultan of Brunei Darussalam.
• Epigraphs and Prayer.
• Title page of oldest known manuscript of Anwar al-Tanzil.
• Illustrations and Tables.
• Foreword by Prof. Dr. Osman bin Bakr.
• Acknowledgements.
• Abbreviations.

Introduction

Quran
History Wahy First revelation Asbāb al-Nuzūl Historicity Manuscripts Samarkand Kufic Quran Sanaa manuscript Topkapi manuscript Birmingham manuscript
Divisions Surah List Meccan Medinan Āyah Juz' Muqatta'at
Content Prophets Women Animals Legends Miracles Parables Science Eschatology God
Reading Qāriʾ Hifz Tajwid Tarteel Ahruf
Translations List English Ahmadiyya
Exegesis List Hermeneutics Esotericism Abrogation Biblical parallels Related persons Mentioned by name
Characteristics I'jaz Inerrancy
Related Criticism Quran and Sunnah Quranism Shi’a view
Category Islam portal Wikipedia book

• Al-Baydawi and his Anwar al-Tanzil wa-Asrar al-Ta'wil in hermeneutical tradition.
• ---[I]. Biobibliography & Raison D'etre of the Present Work.
• Baydawi's Teachers and Chain of Transmission in shafi'i fiqh.
• Baydawi's Students.
• Baydawi's Tafsir and other works in law, legal theory, grammar and parsing, history, logic, Sufis, poetry and astronomy.
• Purpose of the present work, the first full length study in English and first bilingual edition of Baydawi's Tafsir.
• ---[II]. Background, Methodology, Sources, Salient Features.
• Transmission, analysis and polysemy in Qur'anic exegesis.
• Passive anonymizers qila / ruwiya / quri'a for weak transmission.
• The connection of ahruf (dialects / idioms) with polysemy.
• Semantics and stylistic invariables (kulliyyat al-Qur'an).
• Baydawi's synthesis of Perso-Khurasanian hermeutics.
• Comparison of the Basran and Kufan schools of grammar.
• Three examples of Baydawi's succinct treatment of complex linguistic and theological questions;

1. Is Allah an underived proper name or is it etymologically derived from ilah (deity)?
2. Does Allah task one beyond one's capacity, such as tasking Abu Lahab and Abu Jahl to believe?
3. Naskh: The pre-Islamic viability and post Islamic inviability of Judaism, Christianity and other superseded faiths.

• Expert scholarly exertion (ijtihad) and other qualifications.
• The 22 disciplines of exegesis, including scientific training.
• Scientific and philosophical discourse in the Anwar: physiology, meteorology, geophysics, mineralogy, embryology, psychology, psycholinguistics, empiricism versus materialism.
• More on the exegete's musts: piety, orthodoxy and parsing.
• Baydawi's Main Sources:

1. Purging Zamakhshari's Kashshaf: Rebuttal of Mu'tazila and other sects.
2. al-Raghib's Mufradat Alfaz al-Qur'an and his Tafsir.
3. al-Razi's Mafatih al-Ghayb.

• Sufism in Anwar al-Tanzil: the vision of Allah; self-extinction; the pleasures of paradise reflects levels of knowledge of Allah in dunya; slaughter the cow of your ego.
• ---[III]. Reception of the Tafsir in the Umma and the West.
• The Anwar as a textbook and its scholastic marginalia.
• Epigones and Epitomes.
• Gradual disuse of the Anwar in the last 75 years.
• Recourse to Anwar al-Tanzil in middle Orientalism (17th - 18th C.), France, Germany, England, Holland and Rome.
• Western confusion over al-Baydawi's Tafsir.
• ---[IV]. Translation Issues and Backdrop to the Present Work.
• Post-Kemal Azhari-Salafi fatwas against Qur'an translation.
• Our rendering of the Magnificent Qur'an.
• Anwar al-Tanzil in partial translation: Urdu, French, English.
• The present edition and translation of the Anwar.
• ---[V]. Sources Used and Our Isnad (Chain of Transmission).
• Manuscripts, editions and commentaries used in this work.
• Manuscripts.
• Editions.
• Commentaries.
• Illustrative samples from the sources used.
• Our chain of transmission to Baydawi's Anwar al-Tanzil.

• List of Sunni books

Arabic Wikisource has original text related to this article: Tafsir al-Baydawi

• Gibril Fouad Haddad - Universiti Brunei Darussalam
• Dr. Gibril Fouad Haddad's presentation on Tafsir al-Baydawi on YouTube