Tafsir Ibn Kathir

Ibn Kathir set out his hierarchy of interpretation in the commentary's introduction, drawing on the principles of his teacher Ibn Taymiyya. The soundest explanation of a verse is another verse, since the Quran, in this view, comments on itself, stating briefly in one place what it unfolds in another. Where Scripture is silent, the interpreter turns to the sunnah of the Prophet, which the commentary treats as the Quran's authorised exposition; where the sunnah too is silent, to the understanding of the companions, who witnessed the revelation's circumstances; and after them to the successors, with disagreements noted and weighed. What distinguishes the work in practice is the author's training as a hadith critic. Reports are not merely gathered, as the older archive commentaries had gathered them, but graded, and material judged weak is flagged or dropped.

Ibn Kathir is notably wary of the Israiliyyat, the narratives absorbed from Jewish and Christian tradition that earlier commentators had transmitted freely; he sorts them into the acceptable, the false and the unverifiable, and counsels silence over the last. The result is leaner than al-Tabari and more homiletically direct, a commentary built for readers who want the received meaning with its evidence, and its combination of rigour and accessibility explains its immense modern circulation, including in abridged and translated forms.

Ibn Kathir was born around 1300 CE near Bosra in Syria and moved as a child to Damascus, then one of the great scholarly capitals of the Mamluk world. He studied with the leading traditionists of the city, married into the family of the hadith master al-Mizzi, and attached himself to the circle of Ibn Taymiyya, whose influence marks his method though not always his conclusions. He held teaching posts in the city's madrasas, lost his sight near the end of his life, and died in Damascus in 1373 CE, buried, by his own wish, beside his teacher.

The tafsir is one wing of a larger scholarly edifice. His universal history, al-Bidaya wa-l-Nihaya, the Beginning and the End, runs from creation to his own days and remains a standard reference; he also wrote on hadith sciences, law and the signs of the end times. The commentary itself was respected but not pre-eminent for centuries, one strong work on a crowded shelf. Its modern career changed that: from the late nineteenth century onward, printed editions multiplied, reform movements drawn to its scripture-first method promoted it, and popular abridgements carried it into dozens of languages, until it became for many Muslims the default companion to the Quran, a position no medieval reader would have predicted for it.