Nouman Ali Khan – Modern Tafsir – Ep. 6 – Inside the Quran Library
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss various works of literature, including famous works like Ebon Ashur's tafsir and Insha'zek, as well as the importance of writing in modern writing. They also mention various works of literature, including a book on the modern tafsir and a book on the Sunil of India. The speakers emphasize the importance of finding originality in writing and finding comfort in one's intellectual legacy. They also mention a course on distilling insights from the Google website and a course on translation and commentary on the Quran.
AI: Summary ©
One of my teachers in Al Azhar,
conveyed from their teachers the following
piece of wisdom. He said, whoever wants to
gain mastery in tafsir
should study 3 works.
Number 1,
Shah Mohammad Ghazali says of this book that
nobody who's involved in, the field of dawah
should go without studying this book.
This is,
the Mufti of ah, there we are.
Oh, wow.
Yeah. Did I not tell you? Did you
not get a copy?
So No. I didn't get a copy. Well,
I was the one who's gonna read this,
so let's be honest here. I hate you.
It is time.
Ibn Ashur, you know,
this Should we just do a separate discussion
on him?
I gave a a halaqa. I was doing
something in Surah Anj's Amma, and Egyptian brother
came up to me and said, you reach
Arawi,
And I was like, oops. And he said
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You'll you'll reach Shahrawi? You
must surely if you talk like this.
Alali son. Oh, wow. Wow.
So,
now we're gonna talk about the contemporary Mufassirim.
Right. So you said pre contemporary. Yeah. Just
about just before the modern period, let's say,
where we reached to,
having gone through a good part of the
history.
I will next mention the tafsir of Abis
Surud even though he's actually still a few
centuries earlier, but I place him here
because of some continuity with the tafsirs that
I mentioned.
Yeah. So this is a new addition that
came out of,
Turkey.
I actually know
some of the brothers who worked on this.
Ahmed
had some dinner together a few years ago.
So it's really great to see the quality
of work that's being developed
in Turkey and other places
where they are really trying to serve the
the tradition. I look how lovely in leather
that is. Very nice. Somebody gifted me this
reward them.
So this,
tafsir,
one of my teachers in Al Azhar,
conveyed from their teachers the following
piece of wisdom. He said, whoever wants to
gain mastery in tafsir
should study 3 works.
Number 1,
the tafsirah I'm Surud,
where he was the the Mufti of the
Ottoman Empire. Yeah.
The second is the tafsir of al alusi,
which we're gonna come to in a moment.
Yeah. And the third is the tafsir of
Ebanashwur. Wow. He mentioned 3 Yeah. Later. So
this was Ibrahim Khalifa. Yeah. Ibrahim Khalifa, who
is,
I think he passed away
quite recently.
But he's the teacher of my teachers.
So
seeing this,
I was motivated to pay attention to these
3, except I'll be honest with you. I
didn't pay much attention to
Abhisaroud
for two reasons. 1, the addition I had
before wasn't very good and wasn't very appealing.
Mhmm. This one is. And secondly, because Al
Alusi,
really absorbs and incorporates episodes to a very
large extent.
So I find that when I read Alusi,
there's really nothing that I've missed
would have got from reading episode, except in
a sense for getting us, how the progression
is working between the 2. Yeah. But I'm
gonna give him a fresh, attention for that
reason.
In between the two, I've mentioned here or
I've got included here the tafsir of a
shokani
because chronologically,
he's there. Yeah.
Shokani's tafsidis is is nice. It's not one
that I tend
to use very much. I used to use
it quite a bit. It was very
concise and
straightforward, direct
on
Yeah. It seemed like a good mix of
insights along with the Athar.
Exactly. And and so he frames it in
that way as being a blend between the
Ma'akul and the Ma'akul. Yeah. Okay. Makes sense.
Or other rather, aljam'i
with Duraia
in Almit Tafsir.
So for sure, like, every tafsir has got
its own,
specialties and and special things that you can
find.
You know, in here, you could find very,
powerful critique of the idea of blind following
and the cleave
because that was something that was important to
Ashokani.
My beloved The giant. My beloved giant.
Rohel Ma'ani Walalusi, I could talk about all
day. I won't.
But this edition also
is just a fantastic
piece of work.
Like, they did such a nice job of,
of, you know, presenting the text out. It
looks spectacular.
Thirty volumes Oh, wow. Of just sheer brilliance.
And Alusi,
really gathers
just about everything that's been said in the
tafsir tradition.
You would hardly find that there's a tafsir
opinion out there that isn't represented on these
pages.
And when you consider that, you would think,
to be honest, its size should be, like,
treble what you're seeing here. Right.
But
he does it in a very concise way
and a very,
compacted way. Mhmm. But at the same time,
he also expands at length on some topics.
So it's it's really quite amazing. It's a
challenging read. It takes training, to be honest
with you. Right.
Because it's very easy to misunderstand,
especially if you're using an edition which doesn't
have good paragraphs like this one does.
At least with the paragraphs, you can get
a sense, when you're reading an opinion,
that sometimes,
you need to look
at the end of the paragraph to know
what he's about to tell you about this
opinion. As you could say at the end,
Yeah. So you've invested all the effort into
understanding
what's being said. Articulate an opinion,
and at the end, I'm gonna say, and
this
was pointless. Yeah.
You got played.
So,
he's got this splendid way of critiquing opinions.
He sometimes,
you know, is very caustic and acerbic in
his,
responses to things that he disagrees with, which
is great fun. I write lots of LOLs
in the in the margins,
maybe not in this volume.
But, also, he he gathers
what's in the Hatia tradition. Can you tell
me some things about him?
Well, Alusi was around in the,
you know, he was active in the early
part of 19th centuries, the 1800. He died
in 1854.
He he was a very prominent scholar from
Baghdad
or from this little
island called Alus
in the river.
So
he became,
very, you know, senior scholar,
and then he had a bit of political
difficulties with the sheikh of Islam of that
time and tried to solve those issues. It
caused him a lot of personal pain.
He's written a number of different works, but
this is undoubtedly
at the center of it.
His his training was, you know, very extensive
and varied.
You know, he had teachers from different types
of schools and and approaches.
And, you know, just the mastery shows up
in this work.
It's it's really it's incredible.
But like I said, you can't just jump
into this tafsir. It it requires,
you know, a fair amount of training.
You know? And bit by bit, I'm trying
to also develop my students to be able
to, you know, direct directly benefit from a
work like that.
But we do that through some guided readings
and, you know, readings within this. But once
you understand a bit more about how the
SEER generally works, then then you find
the value in a in a book like
this. Right. And like I say, he's he
he brings a lot from Hashiya over shihab
on al Baidawi,
for example.
Oh, I see. Okay. So the Hasia tradition
comes through in here as well. So then
what you get is the distillation
of these debates that have been taking place
over the centuries Right.
Rather than,
again, just everybody coming to the Quranic text
and just solely thinking about
the, you know, what I have to say
about the meaning. I want to see what
people have said and what
theories they've advanced, and I want to see
how people responded to that. So within a
single point, he might have
a back and forth, back and forth, back
and forth. Somebody said this, and then somebody
objected to that, and somebody answered that objection,
and somebody responded to that answer to the
objection. And then and and I say,
right, then he might he might tie it
up at the end. So fascinating work.
I mean, although it's very respected, it's also
I feel very underrated.
For sure.
And probably underrated because it requires a certain
caliber
of academic promise to be able to navigate
it.
And this kind of attention to detailed reading
in the genre of the seer isn't,
isn't as popular as we would like it
to be.
Yeah, people sometimes find it tiresome, oh, these
details and who cares, but
like
we care.
Right? So the next up, we've got Tafsir
al Manaar. Right. So it's called Tafsir al
Nah. It's it's a formal name is Tafsir
al Khakim.
It's written by Muhammad al Shadrada,
but it's, you know, especially in the beginning
part distilled from the teachings of Muhammad Abdul
right at the turn of the 20th century.
And this tafsir,
Sheikh Mohammed Ghazali said of it.
Let me pull up Mohammed Ghazali's face. I'm
sure he's on here. Hold on. There we
are. Well, Sheikh Mohammed Ghazali says of this
book that nobody who's involved in the field
of dawah should go without studying this book.
And it only gets to Surat Yousef
because, after that point, the author passed away.
But this is a very fresh,
venture into tafsir and really is the mark
is is it marks for most people
the the modern approach
to tafsir. Even if other scholars don't necessarily
agree with them,
it's just
a breath of fresh air into
what tafsir is about, what it's for.
So Mohammed Abdo and Rashidriddha,
one of the things that they were really
focused on is what is the guide what
is the guidance that is extracted from the
Quran?
Now it might seem surprising to say that
earlier tafsirs
weren't centered around that question.
Some of the tafsirs, you know, is really
are reading the book as if it is
a work of grammar or is there as
to be the subject of lots of grammar
discussions so that we can figure out
What exactly does it mean? We, the Baselans,
are saying this versus you, the Kufans, are
saying that. Right. Or we, the Ma'tazila, are
saying that versus you, the Asha'irah, are saying
that.
We, the Shafi'i, versus you, the Hanafi. It's
not trying to come back to the soul
of the text. Yeah. So it's it's a
kind of wake up call.
What is the Quran for? What is the
guidance of the Quran? We must understand,
how the Quran affected guidance upon
the Society of Revelation
time so that we can understand what it
can do for people today.
Now, of course, in this tafsir, I mean,
we're we're not going to full analysis of
every tafsir, but but this is a pivotal
one also in terms of the criticisms that
it receives,
you know, what are characterized as modernist
takes on things or sometimes
slightly materialist,
antimirical type approach.
If I recall correctly, Mohammed Abdul said something
about
maybe the jinn are actually microbes or something
like that. You know, so things which become
laughable and but then that also,
for many people, just discredits the whole work,
which is not right.
Okay? Because
you Smart people can have weird opinions. Yeah.
You can see here, like, okay, there was
some, they were grappling with the the ascendency
of science Right. Which has now
reached, you know We're way past extreme levels.
But but then also, we've had a bit
more time to figure out how does faith,
Interact with Yeah. Exist alongside science Yeah. And
deal with the scientific progress. But at this
time, it was a huge anxiety for people,
you know. So sometimes they would come up
with things that's a bit funny. I wonder
if
there was interaction between the subcontinent
world of Quran interpret like Sar Sayed.
Yes. There was.
So I don't know too much about the
connection between Sar Sayed and Rashid Radha.
But the next one I was going to
maybe mention,
I mean, I've got here Hassan al Banna's
commentary because he actually continued
where
left off.
Oh.
But then we've got tafsir al Quran.
What's it called again? Tafsir al Quran.
I think for a while I was giving
it the wrong title. Afshirul Qur'an Bi Kalamal.
Is it Afshirul Qur'an Bi Kalamal approach? Exactly.
Yeah. So this is Tanawullah Amritsari.
Okay.
Al Hindi Al Amritsari. Okay. Yeah.
So some some Arabs, when they're writing his
name, they don't understand that Amrits sar is
a place, so the right Al Amritsar, Tassari,
as a separate word. Is that Al Amritsar,
space? Tassari is a place in India. Tassari?
Maybe?
And he also debated people from other groups,
including the Ahlul Quran group,
which emerged at that time in in the
subcontinent.
And he debated, Mirzogul Ahmed who's, you know,
obviously considered the by the Ahmadiyya group to
be their messiah. Right. He debated these people.
Amazingly,
he he faced a huge amount of opposition
for some things that he wrote in there,
mostly from his own group, from the Ali
Hadith group.
They considered that he's gone against the position
of the Salaf and the people of Hadith
in certain things.
So someone wrote a treatise against him called
Al Arba'in,
and he wrote a counter treatise called Al
Kalamil Mubin
Inshallah, they're gonna find this from here in
Pakistan because we didn't find a full
copy of it yet. That's what you were
asking about. Okay. Yeah. So they went through
some
stages of this debate and dispute, and, eventually,
they went to the World Council
in Mecca. I think it's 1921, if I
remember correctly. Woah. And they got it kind
of settled in front of a council of
senior scholars.
You know, he agreed to change some things.
They agreed to burn the
the the the attack
on Amritsari.
And what's interesting is that Rashid Riddha was
there to defend Amritsari.
Interesting. There was confluence and connection between the
Arab world and the subcontinent,
which is hugely fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. For sure.
So speaking of tafir al Qur'an,
we have also Adwa Al Bayan.
This is the most famous one probably in
there. Normally, you don't get it in one
volume. This No. Yeah. I don't have it
in one volume. This is a Bismillah.
Oh. Yeah.
He needs a big Bismillah to open it
and it's not.
Well So, yeah, this is a very small
very small tech. Exam.
This is you know,
at some points, you know, you fluctuate in
your library
growth and you think, you know, I need
more space on my shelves. I don't have
much space. So you start to get 1
volumes.
And then later, you have I done? Well,
yeah, I mean but I have certainly used
this in my, studies on to Surah Quran.
What was Age does he what what's the
age?
What
was What age does he what
He's in the 20th century. Yeah.
Does it say I mean, it might say
in the Hijani.
I forget. It's in the thing of the
19 sixties he died roughly.
So
Ashankirti,
didn't complete this work. He got up until,
this is the Timma. So his student,
wrote
from maybe a tour onwards or something.
Al Hashir onwards.
I see.
But he doesn't cover every eye of the
Quran, so Yes. Yes. Yeah. I noticed that.
You know, and he takes,
a lot from Ibn Kathir, but, you know,
he's got his own insights. A Mauritanian scholar.
That's why it's Shirkriti.
Alright. So mostly, of course, these are Sunni
tafsirs. You know, you can include the Martazila
or not.
But,
I do have at least one
Shia tafsir.
This is by
Tabat Tabai.
I've read some Tabat Tabai. So, again, these
are in the 20th century.
His his tafsir is very based around tafsir
of Quran as well. Right.
Although it's not in the title.
And it's it's a very, very insightful work.
I find a lot of benefit in it.
You know, I was studying it from the
perspective of,
you know, I'm looking at the Surah Al
Quran, and I want to see different approaches.
Right. So that's why I
got it.
But in and of itself, it's it, you
know, it certainly has a lot to think
about.
And he
has basically 2 sections. 1 is called the
Bayan section, where he he's doing the tafsir,
and you don't really feel here necessarily that
it's
belonging to the Shia Ahmad hub. But then
in the Baathri Wai, now he's going through
narrations, and he'll focus on narrations from Ahlulbayt
for the most part. So that's the way
you feel more.
That's what he's doing.
But yeah. And people sometimes get upset.
I mentioned something about Tabat Tabayin and people
on Twitter were like, why are you reading
that? What can you get there that you
can't find in the Sunni Tafsir? I'm like,
you know, to say that to a researcher
is a bit weird.
I'm I'm not necessarily saying everyone should go
out and read Shia Tafsir, but if you
know what you're doing, you're not afraid of
reading things that are from a different point
of view and things things that you don't
We're reading western literature on the Quran. It
was written by orientalists that are agnostic,
atheist at best, and
were agreeing and disagreeing with depending on what
they're talking about. Yeah. Why can't I not
why can't I not have a a discussion
with fellow believers
who Actually, look at this from a spiritual
point of view. Quran
is for, you know,
We're supposed to be by definition an
investigative,
intellectual,
firmly
grounded
people. We're not we're not sheep.
And we're we're supposed to be able to
engage in study and contemplation of any idea,
based on our on our footing and not
be afraid of hearing something as, like, I
might
something's gonna happen to my if I read.
Yeah. If you don't know, but that's because
you're violating the first principle of Allah's book,
which is you didn't you didn't become person
of learning, a thought
of engagement.
The other crazy thing is, how do you
expect someone to come to Islam?
You come to Islam after an investigative thoughtful
process, and the moment they come into Islam,
you should say, hey, stop investigating, stop thinking.
It's counterintuitive.
You know? Yeah.
So speaking of, different groups, I was with
you when I got this. Can you identify
where
and when?
Like the where That's how we still speak
in Scotland. When?
I'm gonna make a bad guess on this.
There's a clue there
for the for the wise. Ricky?
No.
Then I I give up already. Does it
not see anywhere?
Brzoski.
This is,
the Mufti of ah, there we are.
Oh, wow.
Yeah. Did I not tell you? Did you
not get a copy?
So we can No. I didn't get a
copy. Well, I was the one who was
gonna read it, so let's be honest here.
I hate you. Jawahir tafsir.
It's not a full tafsir, actually. It's it's
some part Just Jawahir.
Yeah. He I mean, it looked like maybe
he intended to write a full tafsir, or
he certainly selected some different parts.
And this is the Mufti of Oman.
Mufti. He's just quoted.
Do this now? Save the page. Has it
got a
It's got a thing here. Yeah. Put that
in.
So check out what he said.
So, anyway, these these these people belong to
the Ibadi school.
As if the Shiatsu scene wasn't enough. Yeah.
They're like, oh.
You know what? Yeah. This other this other,
series that I'd like to get a hold
of really difficult. I was I was see
what I know. Alright. I don't wanna fold
your page. It can sometimes be difficult to,
under 82.
I'm not gonna remember that. I'll put a
tissue in.
Alrighty.
So,
it can be difficult sometimes to get hold
of things. You know, it took me a
while to get,
but someone sourced it for me from Lebanon.
So before we get too
exciting and
fanboying over here, there's a couple of others
in the earlier part of the 20th century.
We've got here. I don't actually have a
full copy of in
Arabic, but I've got this kind of distillation
of it or it's I have a full
copy.
Yeah. That's good. But, you know not the
best. But The thing is I never liked
the large format of the page and too
much text on the page. Yeah. I was
waiting for them to make another addition. So
in the end, I got this, which is
not the full work,
but it kind of just
it strips it of anything that is found
in other tafsirs, like because
Sa'ed Kotob himself took from tafsir bin kafir,
especially
he was doing a
a reworking of his,
commentary,
but he didn't manage to complete the reworking.
But in the reworking, he was putting in
more and more Ibn Kathir in me Ibn
Kathir izing tafsir.
So there is a resemblance.
But if you take that stuff out and
just look at his specific comments, then this
Oh, wow. This is very distilled. Just makes
it easy to access his thoughts. Yes. It
is it is, verbose. Yeah. And I have
the translations as well, which we'll we'll talk
about another time.
Passed away just recently.
Again, this, this was one of my first
books to read. I read this with my
Arabic teacher when I was in Cairo.
Let's say the first volume of it, roughly,
I read.
And, you know, it's very nice for an
Arabic student because,
you know, the structure of it is very
broken up into these sections. Yeah.
Some,
lugha and then the main part of the
in line tafsir.
And then after that The bullet points at
the end that You'll tend to put,
like,
Points. Yeah.
For what it's general benefits and stuff like
I'm seeing any now.
But that's that's There it is. Yeah. There
you
go. Yeah. That's a standard. So you see
a kind of applied balaza Yeah. In the
highest of your study, which is very nice,
13 points there of balava.
So this is a this is a very
nice one, and I and I recommend
it for, you know, for for people who
are more at the beginning of this. I
mentioned
Salbouni in one of my lectures and people
came at me and said,
you're misguiding people with this stuff. So you're
okay. I'll continue to do so.
You know, because he quotes them of a
sireen in general and not The moment you
quote someone that someone doesn't like Yeah. Exactly.
That's it. We avoid that.
You
know, we were just in Riyadh, and we
were having a look at the English translation
of it. Here's, you know, a couple of
the copies of the Arabic. This is, you
know, this is a tafsir that really
works well in Arabic,
again, for, you know, just for the The
start
starting point also for studying tafsir, I would
say I was I would rather say it's
for It's like a companion to translation, if
anything. Or is it But not even in
English, but in Arabic. Like Yeah. In Arabic,
I would say it is a companion to
read in the Quran. Yeah. You know, it
just it's elaborating a bit, not just on
the meaning of individual words, but in case
they give you a sentence or so, paraphrasing.
Yeah. And
bit of context here and there.
Yeah. And then, some some benefits.
So I think that really works in
you know, translating into different languages maybe is
another question, a difficult question,
but we're working with them as well to
to try to figure out the best way
forward on that. Yeah.
Alright.
It is time.
Ebon Ashur, you
know, this Should we just do a separate
discussion on him? No. Let's fit him in
here because Okay. Ebon Ashur,
comes
into the 20th century. But what's amazing about
his work is that
people, when reading him, often feel like he
is from some
outdated era.
Yes. Yes.
There are various editions of his tafsir. I
this is the third one that I've bought.
One of them I've packed away because I'm
so angry at it. This original is a
known edition.
Then there's this one, which is actually
a reprint of an older edition than that
called the Artunasiya edition.
So I had this, you know, there was
a group of us who did,
who ordered a kind of reprint and binding
of this in Egypt,
so that we can have less typos because
the Sarun edition that's been around for a
while is just full of typos.
This one
also has typos, but just not as frequent.
You know? They they added more typos into
the later edition.
So this, you know, was doing me well
for a while, and then we heard that
there's a new edition coming up from their
ibn Hazm
with Sahinun.
But in reality, they haven't done much.
But still, the fact that now,
the IR number is mentioned at the top
of the page, just something like that, for
me, it makes such a difference,
because I'm a heavy user of this tafsir.
Yeah. And there's another a number of other
features that they have improved. They didn't fix
the typos, though.
I I know because I checked a lot
of the typos, and I find that they're
still here, which is very
disappointing. You'd think if you're gonna launch a
new edition,
you would put in the effort to get
a reader. They could have hired me.
They could have hired somebody. Oh, so can
No.
Because,
like, they didn't send me a free copy
of this. If they send a free copy
and say, check this for typos,
and we'll give you baklava and kunafa as
well, I would have I would have done
that.
But now I've spent money on this,
grudgingly,
but
what's gonna happen is people readers will send
in the typos to them, and then they'll
make another edition. This one will become obsolete.
I have to buy another one,
and I'll be very annoyed. But I'll still
do it
because if you're committed enough to bin Ashraf
Shir,
you will do it.
So his tafsir,
you know, draws from the tradition, but he's
also very willing to give his own point
of view and to step aside
what the mfasirun have said. They sometimes tell
you,
oh, in this expression or this ayah, the
mfasirun have just gone all over the place.
And
the best of what they said is this,
but then he'll give you another point of
view. He doesn't do that all the time,
but he's quite willing to do that.
Ibn Ashoor was, the imam of Zaytunah.
He died in 1973. That means that we're
coming up to the 50th anniversary
of his passing.
So we're gonna do something special in 2023,
Insha'Allah, to mark that.
And,
you know, you cannot say, like some people
have said,
oh, that this tafsir, y'allneekaanit
tafasirulukhra.
This, you know, suffices you, and you have
no need then for any other tafsir. No
way.
To understand and appreciate him, you really have
to know about what else is going on
in tafsir, and then you appreciate what he's
done
and how it connects.
His tafsir has had quite a lot of
khidma, actually, even though it's a modern tafsir.
Look how many books,
the eyes so far have managed
to find which, which discuss different aspects.
So we have got
quite early on, there was a book which
was written to kind of critique aspects
of his.
He's got 10
introductions,
well, I could have used this one. He's
got 10,
introductions which are very insightful,
and actually I heard that there's a translation
maybe coming out of those.
If not, then Ten introductions?
Yeah. So, like, 10 small chapters
before he starts to see it itself,
and they they cover, you know, quite interesting
topics, you know, in not just in his
own tafsir, but in tafsir in general and
things.
So there was some discussion around that. There's
a paper in the journal of chronic studies,
which I happen to print it out,
which talks about these introductions as well.
What's tropology?
I don't know what that is. Every time
I look it up and then I forget
again.
The study of tropes. That one I see.
Oh,
why did you say so more? I just
had a couple of tropes this morning.
I I I I keep, I keep writing
it down what tropology means, and then I
forget again. Is that is that the that's
not it. Right?
But basically, the the study of topics or
something like that. Troops.
Anyway, yeah, I've I've been I've been interacting
with this paper as well. So,
yeah, I mean, we can just check this.
What's
Why is that there? That's a book about
that's based on a brochure.
So, like, this this is, like, some introductions.
I mean, just look at these titles. So
beautiful.
Wait. I'll look at the titles. Let me
just see something here.
So he's extracting
his principles of tafsir and how he's looking
at the balaka of of Quran?
I mean, no, this is this is somebody
writing about balaga, and he's using ibn Ashoor
as the basis of that.
Like, because he's looking at how Ebon Ashur
treats
Yeah. Balaza.
You can see.
I know what tafsir, what tahir, what can
we? So I don't know if I can
claim that this is the biggest Ibn Ashoor
library. I'm sure there's some in
Tunisia that are bigger.
But apart from that,
I've been collecting Ibn Ashoor books, as you
can see.
Yeah. So we've got things to do. This
is Tajdeed Manhaj Fahim Al Khattab al Qur'ani.
This actually talks about several modern tafsirs, but
one of them is. Right.
This is a very important book which,
which talks about the centrality of linguistic analysis
in the field of tafsir and uses it
in Ashur to
to show that and support that.
Wow.
So
And he does that brilliantly, actually. He's very,
you know, context based and Yeah. He's very
aware of the context. Yeah. It's it's amazing
that you see him dive into the linguistics
of a phrase
and the classical discourse on a phrase. Yeah.
And then as he pulls back and describes
his position,
he's very aware of The Surah. The textual
environment. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So another one on
siyat there.
And the sheikh of Nashor.
So I haven't had a chance to I
got this card recently in Saudi. I'm fascinated
by this one.
See, just the titles themselves are exciting. They're
so exciting. Yeah.
We could establish a Ibn Ashore University.
In the meantime, we have a Ibn Ashoor
Center here in Glasgow
where we can where we can explore these
works.
This, I think, is just
Really? Is this all all 114 Surahs? I
think what they've just done is extracted it.
So I don't think that a person should
write this if they're the author, if all
they've done is extract it. But it's handy
then to
see the sort of entry. Oh, you need
to either scan this or
Or tell you the bookshop in Maccay. You
can go get it. I'm just yeah. Or
tell yourself the bookshop so you get another
one.
We'll see. We'll be generous. Rosalski, this is
imagine.
Man. I haven't really had a chance to
read,
majority of these. I did still read this.
Yeah. Not have a life anymore. I should
just
Ain't it?
Seriously? That's how it is.
Seriously. Imagine, like, we we're still, like, we're
meeting around and having fun and laughing and
playing, and all these books haven't been read.
Yeah. That's what I'm saying.
In fact, Ibn Ashur has a a small
tafsir of Juzamah that says it recently came
out.
It's different from the one in
the the Hari rutanmir, but it's not quite
clear to me,
how it relates to it. It's like,
seems to be just a little bit simpler
than the one in the Maybe he wrote
this for children or something,
or the average Muslim just gets something Your
theory is as good as anybody's at the
moment.
There is and the the editor has some
kind of theory about, like, he he wrote
it alongside or, like, at the same time
just to to be more accessible to. Not
necessarily This looks much more accessible.
Yeah. But it's still you know, it's it's
not quite a child level, obviously.
I mean, depends on Depends on the child.
Yeah. Maybe his child, yeah. His child was
al Fadl ibn Ashur,
so
maybe Joseph. Maybe you're not if we're al
Fadl ibn Ashur.
Okay. So then,
only a few left now in the modern
section. Yeah. Now you know these guys over
here. So here Hamiduddin
Farahi. So we're talking about Farahi,
his nizamul Quran,
his
Taliqaat,
in 2 volumes, you must have these. Yep,
I do have these.
And then some of his other works on
Oz and Oh, Judge. Fidez. Yeah. Just and
then we've got
the translation of the double Quran. I've got
I brought it down,
The Urdu
of the double Quran as well Yep. Which
I got from my late father-in-law,
I got my my pages are almost tearing
off in that book.
I have that exact print.
You can have a fresh one if you
want. Ney.
Ney.
And then there's others sort of from within
that school as well, maybe less known is,
Muhammad Anaydullah Subhanie,
who's still
around and still active in the school of
the scene. So have you seen any of
his works? No.
This he's got this one on Surat Tafsir.
This is kind of his
practical
study of Quran?
Yeah.
These are from the Farahian school?
Yeah. I think he would characterize himself as
from the school, but he's like you know,
he's he talks about his own independence, but
I think he
clearly has,
you know, he's clearly inspired. I didn't know
there was an osmosis over to the Arab
world.
No. He's Indian. He's Indian?
Yeah.
Where's Darammar? He's in India? Jordan.
Yeah. But he's he's he maybe has done
it at an Arab university because
his supervisors were, like, Mustafa Muslim and,
Muhammad Ali Basile. And one of the Nadweez
has written an introduction or something here. Is
it?
It says in the front. Oh, okay.
Yes.
Abu Hassan Ali. Abu Hassan Ali. Okay. There
you go then.
So, yeah,
Subhanahu has written
in Arabic,
including along with other languages,
so
that, I think, makes it easier for people
to be able to interact.
And sometimes I've seen, histories have been posted
in the Multaqah al Tafsir,
and I've seen also some reactions and responses
from Arab scholars, which can sometimes be quite,
you know,
quite negative towards some of his,
his theories.
But I I think he's, you know, he's
a solid scholar. I definitely find myself disagreeing
with him
on a lot of things, but I appreciate
the,
you know, the the
the care that he puts into his arguments.
But I've I've certainly, you know, in my
paper fights and flights that I mentioned Yeah.
I talked about him in both,
case studies of the eye of Kasas and
also
of Ibrahim and the
birds. So I find that he tends to
go a bit too far in his reinterpretations
of things, and so I've talked about that.
It's a far hand thing to do sometimes?
Yeah. In a way. They they take a
license Yeah. And and and sometimes get carried
away. So these are other things that are
related to either that school or to the
general issue of Novum.
Yes.
And there's your friend,
professor Farnam. We just hung up. Well, my
friend as well because I may have known
Moshe. Yeah. Yeah. But before that, I hadn't.
But you didn't know how tall he was.
No.
He's super tall. Yeah. He's got
nice shirts as well.
So, Professor Farnham's book Structure and Quran Interpretation.
This is a book by a scholar that
I met in Malaysia.
Pakistani scholar, Iswar Ahmed Khan. I've heard of
him. Not related to you? No.
So he's also a big fan of, of
Hawaii.
Some things to do with. Quran is a
bit different. I don't know. I put them
here because I couldn't see where to put
it, objectives of the holy Quran. These are
some research articles in
there. These are normally very expensive Alfaqans books,
but sometimes you get good deals. Keep an
eye on their website.
Saeed Norsi.
Oh, yeah.
I haven't really read Saeed, but, you know,
people keep telling me Saeed Norsi's,
commentary is really important, and then I keep
buying books about it and not reading them.
So
and
the Sayyid Nursi,
And then this one by,
Hakan.
I know him, but I don't I've never
heard his name pronounced, so I'm gonna get
that wrong.
Bahakan?
Yeah. Modern interpretation of the Quran.
He's based in Australia.
And this one by Colin Turner, who's in
the UK. The Quran revealed a critical analysis
of Said Nurses' epistles of light. So one
way or another, I've the the little bits
that I've heard can be quite mind blowing
from Said Nurses, so that deserves more attention.
Muhammad Abdul Adraraz,
he's the author of Dastoor,
Dastoor Al Akhlaq al Quran, we talked about
before. He's also the author of Al Abul
Adhim, you know? Al Abul Adhim, and Mad
Khul Quran Kareem is another one,
several works.
So just recently I got this, which is,
taken from his, like,
radio interviews
where he did tafsir on the radio and
then people have collected that and put it.
Interesting. Is it?
Mohammed Ghazali.
That's him. Yeah. Mohammed Ghazali has got a
work called Nahu Tafsir Maldui, lisurul Qur'an came.
Again, that's translated into English. Yeah. Thematic study
of the Quran. Thematic study of the Quran.
Yeah.
Thematic commentary on the Quran, I think it's
called. Commentary. Okay. So this one I actually
studied closely because some time ago, I did
a
a series, which was called 10 minute tafsir,
or it was called 10 minute t ravie.
Mhmm. And in that, I was trying to
get the gist of, you know, what its
Surah is talking about. And so I used
book as Okay. For that.
Is that is that modern taseer done that
this is like that?
At least in Arabic. At least in Arabic.
Yeah. I mean, I suppose we should be
mentioning sha'a ra'i alhamdulillah.
Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. So sha'a Rabi. Let's end
with sha'a Rabi, inshallah. Yeah.
You tell me.
What does he mean to you?
This is not the one with this. So
What he means to me is a way
of connecting,
the discussions in the balaka of the Quran
and some of
the the spiritual
insights
that one can find in the Quran
distilled for anybody to be able to read.
Like, the way that,
because this is, I believe, a transcription of
his lectures or an edited version of his
lectures. Yeah.
And he was cognizant of the fact that
he's speaking to the average Muslim in his
day
and age. So he wasn't
you know, oftentimes, you find scholarly works
written in scholarly fashion,
therefore intended for scholarly audiences.
I believe his work to be scholarly,
but meant for
the common man,
which is what gave him wide appeal.
And it also takes a distinct kind of
genius to be able to take something
and present it in popular language.
His grasp of,
Balakha concepts that comes through in simple language
is, I think, absolutely fascinating.
He has his own insights in my view
in some cases
on why certain subtleties have taken place,
and you don't find them in other tafasir,
and he's got his ideas about them and
he is not shy to hold back from
presenting them.
His
whatever level of understanding of modern science or,
you know, recent phenomenon,
they kind of seem to make his way
into his commentary as he sees the world,
which is also interesting to see. So I
think that, like,
for someone who, like,
wishes to
benefit from someone that was, as a scholar,
just contemplate, not just studying the Quran, contemplating
the Quran,
this would be a tafsir,
more of a tadabur than a tafsir of
the Quran, I would feel. Yeah. I think
even sometimes it's been,
released as, you know,
He himself didn't want to call it a
tafsir. Right.
And
it represents
a shifting in format of tafsir in modern
times. So there have been in the past,
of course, lessons of tafsir and so, but
then typically it will be based upon reading
through a book. So Tabari would
dictate his book, and the students would write
down Right. The book. Right.
But this was you know, you get these
videos, and for to a large extent, he's
talking AMIA in the common Egyptian vernacular.
And so there is this tendency for people
to think, well, all he's doing is taking
some simple ideas and
or or ideas of other people and just
presenting it and packaging it in a way
that is accessible, which itself is a huge
achievement, which itself is I think he has
very original thoughts, actually. Well, exactly.
I'm and I'm I'm agreeing with what you
said before,
that actually he was he was a top
scholar in the field of tafsir.
He was,
you know, he he he was a star
that emerged from
the
in in Lazar.
He rose to the very top of his
scholarly
achievements
and at the same time
was able to make things
easy for people to, to, to engage with.
The biggest compliment or the biggest compliments I
ever received, because in the United States, sometimes
I went and traveled and give duros in
communities that are predominantly Arab.
And some of the, you know, congregants would
come to me and say that,
wallahi, we make du'a that you carry on
what Sheikh Asharabi was doing because we feel
that from you.
Yeah. Yeah.
And I was like, oh, you know, it's
easy, tiger, but, like Yeah. No. One of
our colleagues recently was was saying that as
well when we were meeting some scholars in
the Arab world,
you know,
that, you know, you could be, compared. Of
course, you know, Sheikh Jarawi,
you know, it's very difficult for anyone to
compare to. But in terms of trying to
achieve something of the same kind of mission
and and also for that to be coupled
with,
with the the study of the Quran. Because,
again, to be honest, I get people who
say to me, oh,
All he does is he he's just packages
thing very he's very good at simplifying things
for the masses.
That's fine.
Masha'Allah. You're good at that. That doesn't mean
that there isn't also originality
in the ideas. And that originality,
people also sometimes think
or they say to me or allege
that that's the stuff that just pops into
your head at the moment.
And maybe 10% of the time, that's what
happens. But 90% of the time,
those things actually we've studied carefully, and we've
we've had a chance to think through and
discuss and debate before you say them in
the talk. That's right.
And although you might not find them in
earlier books, it doesn't mean that they're not
actually good. And built off the backs of
what's in the earlier books. Indeed. So Sheikh
Jarawi then shows us
how things evolve, you know, presentation styles evolve.
It's funny how I got introduced to him.
I I gave a this is, like, 2,000
and 4.
I gave a a halakah. I was doing
something in Surah Anjuz Amma,
and a Egyptian brother came up to me
and said, you reached Arawi,
And I was like, whoops?
He said Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You'll you'll reach
Shoa'avi? You must surely if you talk like
this.
You you got this from ShoutOut. I was
like, no.
Brother, I have gift for you.
He gave me a shaharabi. Oh, wow. Wow.
So
How did it that? Yeah. So shaharabi is
is an emblem and an icon. Yeah.
Like, I always remember so many juice shops
you'd go into in Cairo. It's just got
his picture there.
It's like people just see him as a
source of of goodness and barakah,
and they must be listening to his talks.
But it just
Yeah. He took over buses and
shops and Yeah. You know, streets, and he
he proliferated Quran and, you know, rejuvenated a
love for it and contemplating it for the
people.
Allah reward him.
If we get to 1%,
then
we would be very fortunate. Hallelujah.
So there was one section. I don't know
if we're gonna talk about it in this
discussion. I know it's rather long now. Or
the next one, there was a collection of
books right here. You put them down here.
Yeah. These will these will take next time,
but in a way, it will follow from
what we said about the hashias.
Right. We're gonna look at
kind of comparative tafsir and tafsir debates.
I'm trying to think of, think of it
as a subset of works that I've got.
Very interesting ones, very unusual rare ones, inshallah,
will excite people. Oh, this has been remarkably
beneficial. And I think,
just to
cap this up with a story of of
the young man who
graduated from an Islamic seminary.
So people consider, you know, sheikh, young guy,
of course, sheikh.
And he came into my library, and he
saw a couple of the tafasir on my
desk. And he goes, so this is what
you read.
Mhmm. I was like, yeah. For sometimes thematic
issues, I read this one to get some
ideas. For linguistic issues, I read Mhmm. These
and these. Sometimes they're balaka complexities that would
be those and those. And, like, I started
kind of walking him through some of the
tafasir that I have in my and then
the dictionary issues and whatever. And he goes,
can you make a list of these?
And I was happy to hear that, but
I was really sad also that someone trained
in Islamic studies
hasn't been acclimated to the world of Quran
scholarship.
Right? So not not to shame anyone, but
I think
this is a service that should be provided
not just for the general public to be
aware of our incredible intellectual legacy,
but also for students of our religion, people
that have dedicated themselves to studying deen.
They should be, you know, become more aware.
There's no shame in it. There's plenty of
books you've introduced me to that I had
no idea existed.
And,
you know,
being
more knowledgeable than someone who knows nothing is
okay.
But
at least in this world, in the study
of the the the the Quran, the world
of the study of the Quran, you know,
I I think I'm just gonna die a
beginner, and that's just the reality of it.
You know? And that and there's
we should find comfort in that, actually. I'm
gonna die at the fruits of this mountain.
Yeah. And I'll be happy to be buried
here. You know?
So just may Allah just, you know, continue
to
keep the thirst that we have
for acquiring this and for benefiting from it
because at the core of it all, it's
not just I need to master all these
books. At the core of it all is
I just wanna get closer to
divine wisdom, divine guidance. Like, Allah is speaking
and all these souls
gave their lives to try to get some
droplets from that ocean. Right?
And so
we're just trying to get,
you know, instead of starting from scratch,
take advantage of their hard work, their lifetime
of work. Like, you know, when I see
books like this, I don't see volumes. I
see a person's life.
Like, this is the this is the this
is their soul right here.
They it's in their grave, but the what
they left behind for me as a gift,
their entire life legacy is right here. That's
Ruqalba'ani
right there, those beautiful volumes.
You know, it's it's somebody's,
you know, best moments of their life writing
these things. Like, imagine these people on judgment
day, like,
the most precious moments of their lives
might be the ones they were just,
you know, doing tadabur of Quran and writing
something and Yeah. Putting something down. And then,
of course, may Allah reward them for even
whatever benefit we can get and countless others
get from their work. So it's actually a
very,
overwhelming kind of,
realization
that should be rejuvenated.
It should be something we should we should
contemplate and and it should make I think
that's enough motivation to keep wanting to learn
and to keep giving books their due.
You know, one thing that I'm even as
our discussion was going on, the thing that
I was kind of
critiquing myself on
is that the next time I read Arusi
or I read Ibrahash Surah, I read anyone,
Razi, anybody else,
I wanna take a lot more time reading
it.
Like, I like, let me just not skim
through it and get to the point. I
just look.
Just shut up and just sit down. Spend
some time with these pages at least. Spend
some time just really grasp what this person's
saying.
And Listen to them talking to you. Exactly.
Yeah. I should even literally, I I I
read aloud sometimes just to have a conversation
because I don't have many people to speak.
Yeah. So I will talk with the books,
you know, and you hear the author's voice,
speaking to you. You know? Like, you get
used to their tone. Like, I'm saying, Alus,
he's hilarious.
I don't know if people find it, but
I just find him like,
I aspire to be that, you know,
cruel as it sometimes towards opinions that you
don't like. It's amazing.
It's incredible. You know, it's like he's as
as soudi said something which was kind of,
disrespectful to prophet Yusuf alaihi wasalam, he felt
that as soudi has has crossed the line
and saying Yusuf did this, sall did that,
or he undid his,
his waistband.
Right? He said, lightas, sodi, saddafahu.
If only had,
you know,
had had sealed over his mouth before saying
that about Yusuf. You know? So he likes
to play on words, and he, you know,
he strikes right at the heart. So I'm
like, you know, to be honest, I don't
know if I'd be on his good side
or his bad side,
but, you know, I try my best to
be on his good side. Yeah. And remember
when we were doing Suh'ath Youssef, and we
got
to the letters of
Imam Fakhruddin al Wazi on the loss of
his son Mhmm. And what he wrote about
grief.
Yeah. And how, like,
you really feel connected to these people, and
and Quran is connecting you to people across
continents, across centuries, across,
you know, cultural divides
and
may Allah reward them and reward us. How
amazing
to meet with these people in Jannah. Yeah.
Grants us that.
And, you know, to be able to say,
hey, remember, I translated.
Why?
Just hopefully, he
did a decent job.
So excited to see a couple of last
sessions on some of your outstanding books in
the other area inshallah
inshallah translations we've got some subgenres
yeah even copies of the Quran is part
of that inshallah yeah inshallah all right thanks
a lot
alaykum everyone.
Salam everyone. It's doctor Suhib here. You've had
the chance to look inside my library. Now
I'd love to take you inside some of
what I've learned from there, especially in the
flagship project of the Ibn Ashoor Centre, which
is distilling the insights of a great Mufassir,
Muhammad Al Taher ibn Ashur.
We have a special course for you on
Surat Yaseen. I'd love you to get involved.
I'd love you to benefit
from our new translation and commentary on the
Quran. Head over to I binashore.com/academy
to find out more.