Our method

The Quranic text on this site is the mushaf, the written Quran, exactly as it has come down to us by tawatur (transmission by so many people in every generation that error is ruled out). It is fully vowelled, and not a letter has been changed. Everything else here is a human understanding of that text: the translations, the tafsirs (commentaries on the Quran) and the meanings of words. Each appears under the name of its author.

A translation is an interpretation, not the Quran

No translation carries the Quran itself into another language. What it carries is one translator's understanding of it. Where a word allows several senses, the translator picks one and sets the others aside, then arranges the sentence as they read it. That is why every translation here bears its translator's name and year, for example Abdullah Yusuf Ali (1934). Where a language has more than one, we offer them side by side. You can then see for yourself that one phrase can be rendered in more than one way.

A tafsir is its author's reasoned reading

We show each tafsir as its author wrote it. Nothing is shortened in a way that changes the sense, and nothing is left out because we disagree with it. The site currently offers 12: al-Tahrir wa al-Tanwir by Ibn Ashur, Tafsir al-Manar by Rashid Rida, Ruh al-Ma'ani by al-Alusi, Lata'if al-Isharat by al-Qushayri, al-Mizan by al-Tabataba'i, Mafatih al-Ghayb by al-Razi, Ta'wilat Ahl al-Sunna by al-Maturidi, al-Kashshaf by al-Zamakhshari, al-Muharrar al-Wajiz by Ibn Atiyya, al-Jami' li-Ahkam al-Quran by al-Qurtubi, Nazm al-Durar by al-Biqa'i, and Adwa' al-Bayan by al-Shinqiti. We chose works that pay close attention to the Arabic language, to rhetoric, to reasoned argument and to the maqasid (the higher purposes of Islam). Others in the same spirit will follow.

An editor's footnote is not the author's words. When a printed edition carries its editor's notes, as al-Qurtubi's does, we label them as the editor's and keep them apart from the text.

Commentators sometimes disagree sharply about a verse. On the tafsir pages we don't settle the question, and we never present one of them as “the correct meaning”. When we do weigh their views, we do it in a separate section with its own clear title.

Certain and probable

Scholars of usul al-fiqh (the principles of Islamic jurisprudence) ask two separate questions of any text: how firmly is it established, and how clearly does it say what it says? We follow them.

The Quran is established with certainty (qat’i al-thubut). Its meaning is sometimes certain too, open to one reading only. More often it is probable (zanni), open to more than one. That is where the differences among commentators and jurists come from. They are legitimate differences, and none of them puts anyone outside the faith.

Most hadith (reports of the Prophet's words and deeds) are probable on both counts. Most are solitary reports (ahad): even when the chain of narrators is sound, their attribution to the Prophet is not certain, and their meaning is usually open to more than one reading. This takes nothing away from them. Probable evidence is acted on throughout the detailed rulings of the Sharia (the Islamic system of values), and the Sunna (the Prophet's example) explains the Quran.

But the early scholars never acted on a report cut off from the rest of the evidence. Abu Ishaq al-Shatibi (d. 790 AH), the Maliki legal theorist (the Malikis follow one of the four Sunni schools of law) whose al-Muwafaqat made the maqasid a discipline in its own right, weighed each piece of probable evidence by its tie to the certain principles: “if it goes back to a certain principle, it is valid too; if it does not, it must be verified, and it cannot be said without qualification that it is accepted.” On evidence of the first kind, he wrote, “rests most of the acting on solitary reports, for they explain the Book”. Probable evidence that contradicts a certain principle, with no certain principle on its side, “is rejected without difficulty”. Scholars also took care to record which reports were acted on and which were not. Al-Tirmidhi (d. 279 AH), compiler of the Jami’, one of the six canonical collections of hadith, notes after many hadith whether scholars acted on them or set them aside, and he was not alone in this.

As fewer people came to work with these tools, reports were at times read as rules to follow to the letter, cut off from their context and from the way scholars of every school handled them. We don't reject the reports. We put them where those scholars put them. That is why the next section explains what standing the reports in the books of tafsir have.

Hadith in the books of tafsir

The tafsirs quote many hadith and other reports. We don't grade them ourselves; when an editor grades one in a footnote, we give the grade as the editor's. Still, a reader needs to know what standing such a report has.

A mutawatir report is one passed on by so many people, at every stage from first to last, that they could not plausibly have agreed on a lie. When they all use the same words, it is mutawatir in wording (lafzi). When the words and occasions differ but the meaning is the same, it is mutawatir in meaning (ma’nawi). The first kind is very rare.

Ibn al-Salah (577–643 AH), whose book on the sciences of hadith became the foundation of the field, wrote that such a report “is hardly to be found in their transmissions”, and that “whoever is asked to produce an example of it among the hadith transmitted will tire of searching”. He gave a single example: “Whoever lies about me deliberately, let him take his seat in the Fire.” Ibn Hibban of Bust (d. 354 AH), the hadith master who compiled the Sahih and the Thiqat, went further. In the introduction to his Sahih he wrote: “As for the reports, all of them are solitary reports (ahad), for no report from the Prophet exists that two upright narrators transmitted, each from two upright narrators, and each of these from two, until it reaches the Messenger of God.”

Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani (773–852 AH), author of Fath al-Bari on al-Bukhari and the leading hadith scholar of his age, disagreed with both. He rejected the claim that such reports are rare and held them to be plentiful in the well-known collections, though he added that “there is no point, on the sound view, in fixing a number”. For most scholars of usul al-fiqh, a solitary report gives probability, not certainty.

Much hadith was also passed on by its meaning rather than word for word. Muhammad ibn Sirin (33–110 AH), the jurist of Basra and one of the senior Successors (the generation after the Companions of the Prophet), said: “I would hear a hadith from ten people, the wording different and the meaning one.” Al-Tirmidhi recorded that the scholars accepted a change of wording, so long as the chain and the meaning were kept. The words we have are often the narrator's, not the Prophet's.

What is reported from the Companions also includes their own opinions and reasoning. Ibn Hazm of al-Andalus (384–456 AH), the jurist and legal theorist who wrote al-Muhalla and al-Ihkam fi Usul al-Ahkam, gathered their statements on this. One is the Companion Abu Hurayra's answer about something he had added to a hadith. Asked whether it came from the Messenger of God, he said: “No, this is from Abu Hurayra's own pouch.” Ibn Hazm concluded that they “disowned that opinion and did not hold it to be religion binding on people”.

Not everything passed on in the books of tafsir stands where the Quranic text stands, or anywhere near it.

What was legislation, and what was not

Not everything the Prophet said or did is law for the whole community. Shihab al-Din al-Qarafi (d. 684 AH), the Maliki jurist and legal theorist who wrote al-Furuq and al-Dhakhira, classified the Prophet's actions by the role in which he performed them. What he did as head of the community, such as dividing the spoils of war or organising armies, no one may do without the permission of the ruler of the time. What he did as a judge is done only by a judge's ruling. But what he did “by fatwa, message and conveying, that is law established for all people until the Day of Judgement”.

Shah Wali Allah al-Dihlawi (d. 1176 AH), author of Hujjat Allah al-Baligha, counted part of the Prophet's knowledge as “not of the conveying of the message”. This includes medicine, “what the Prophet did by custom rather than worship”, and “what aimed at a particular interest of that day and is not binding on the whole community”. Muhammad al-Tahir Ibn Ashur (1296–1393 AH), author of al-Tahrir wa al-Tanwir and Maqasid al-Shari’a al-Islamiyya, listed, among the different states in which the Prophet acted, that of “being free of guidance”: what “belongs to acting by human nature and the needs of material life”. He held that “what was by nature among the Prophet's acts is not a ground for asking the community to do the same”.

Saad Eddine El Othmani (b. 1956 CE), a physician and scholar of usul al-fiqh, built on al-Qarafi's division in his study “The Prophet's acts as imam: their methodological and legislative significance”. He divided the Prophet's acts into legislative and non-legislative. The second kind are “acts not meant to be followed or imitated, neither by the community at large nor by those they were addressed to”, and he counted among them “acts of human nature, customary acts, worldly acts, acts of advice, and acts particular to him”.

We follow this distinction. The difficulty is that narrators usually pass on what was said or done, but not the role in which it was done or its setting. This is why Malik ibn Anas (93–179 AH), the imam of Medina, put the practice handed down among the people of Medina before a solitary report. His students Ibn al-Qasim and Ibn Wahb said: “I saw that practice weighed more with Malik than hadith.” Malik said: “Men of learning among the Successors would narrate hadith, and others would reach them, and they would say: we are not unaware of this, but the practice has gone otherwise.” Nor was a narrator's piety enough for him without understanding: “I met in this city elders of merit, righteousness and devotion who narrated hadith; I never heard a single hadith from any of them.” Asked why, he said: “They did not understand what they were narrating.”

Weighing a report against the Quran and reason

Scholars did not stop at checking the chain of narrators. The Hanafi school, another of the four, sets aside a solitary report that contradicts the Book. Shams al-A’imma al-Sarakhsi (d. 483 AH), author of al-Mabsut and the Usul, wrote that “the Book is certain, while the connection of a solitary report to the Messenger of God carries doubt”. The text of a hadith, he wrote, “is never free of doubt, since it may have been transmitted by meaning”, and when the two conflict “the certain must be taken and the doubtful left”. The Hanafis also cited a report: “If a hadith is narrated to you from me, set it against the Book of God: what agrees with it, accept… what contradicts it, reject.”

Ibn al-Jawzi (d. 597 AH), the hadith master who wrote al-Mawdu’at and Zad al-Masir, held that the reliability of its narrators cannot save an impossible report. He wrote: “Every hadith you see contradicting reason or opposing the foundations, know that it is fabricated, and do not trouble yourself with weighing it.”

Scholars also criticised those who narrated a great deal without understanding it. Sufyan said to Hammad ibn Zayd: “Abu Isma’il, if this hadith-narrating were a good thing, it would diminish as good things diminish.”

The meanings of words

For each word we give its root and its meaning in the verse, and point to four classical dictionaries: Lisan al-Arab by Ibn Manzur, Maqayis al-Lugha by Ibn Faris, al-Mufradat by al-Raghib al-Isfahani and Umdat al-Huffaz by al-Samin al-Halabi. A word's dictionary meaning is not always its meaning in the verse. The context decides.

Terms in their context

The books of tafsir and fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) use terms such as Muslim, kafir (usually translated “unbeliever”; see below), dar al-Islam (the abode of Islam), dar al-harb (the abode of war), the caliphate, the supreme imamate (the office of head of the Muslim state), and ahl al-hall wa al-’aqd (those who bind and loose, that is, who choose and depose a ruler). We read each in its context. We keep apart what the certain texts define and what jurists worked out for their own time.

As we read the Quran, a kafir is one who rejects faith after knowing it to be true, and makes war on Muslims for their faith; not everyone who holds a different religion.

In the Quran, islam is wider than the name of a historical community, and wider than a narrow understanding that ties it only to reciting the testimony of faith and to the time the Quran was revealed. It is the way the Creator chose for human beings, and it is older than the revelation of the Quran to the Prophet Muhammad. The Quran says of Abraham, in Abdullah Yusuf Ali's translation, that “he was true in Faith, And bowed his will to God's, (Which is Islam)” (3:67). Noah says, “I Have been commanded to be Of those who submit To God's Will (in Islam)” (10:72). Joseph prays, “Take Thou my soul (at death) As one submitting to Thy Will (As a Muslim)” (12:101). And the disciples of Jesus say, “do thou bear witness That we are Muslims” (3:52). The Prophet defined a Muslim by what others receive from him: “The Muslim is the one from whose tongue and hand people are safe, and the believer is the one whom people trust with their lives and their wealth.” Imam Ahmad narrated it in his Musnad, and the editors of its al-Risala edition call its chain strong. Other sources read “from whose tongue and hand Muslims are safe”.

Dar al-Islam and dar al-harb, the caliphate, the supreme imamate and ahl al-hall wa al-’aqd are terms of another kind. They arose in a particular region, period and system of government, and were set down in the books of al-ahkam al-sultaniyya (the ordinances of government) and others like them. They belong to their historical and social setting; they are not certain rulings. We read them in the tafsirs in that setting, and we hold that time has overtaken them and they should be left behind.

A maqasid reading (coming)

For some verses we will add a reading in the light of the maqasid. It will stand apart from the tafsirs, under its own title. It will set out the different views under the names of those who held them, then show which we find closer to the maqasid, and on what evidence. On sensitive questions, a specialist will review each reading before it is published.

By the Sharia we mean a purposive system of values whose end is human flourishing. Its rulings develop as reality changes, in keeping with the fixed aim of Islam. That aim is realised in seven great ends: the protection of religion (that is, every person's right to practise their religion freely, whatever it is), life, reason, lineage and property, together with justice and freedom, without which none of the first five can be achieved.

This method was written first in Arabic. Where the translation does not carry the meaning as intended, please read the Arabic original.

If you find a mistake

If you find an error in a text or a wrong attribution, or have an idea, send it to us from here or from the “Send feedback” link at the bottom of every page; we see the page you wrote from without your naming it.