Nouman Ali Khan – Traditional ‘Ulum al-Quran #01 Inside the Quran Library
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
Trigger warning.
This book triggers me. This this translation is
extremely awful.
And I don't say that lightly. I mean,
this is an extremely awful translation. It should
never
have been published.
Of course, when people come into the library,
there's a question that they always ask. Let
me ask it. So you've read all these
books?
Right. So so,
how is the Ulumu al Quran different from
Ulumu Tafsir? And are they is Ulumu Tafsir
a subset of Ulumu
We are here in the Quranic studies library
in my home.
This is my personal library which I have
built up over some years, still building.
And it's also a library which I make
available for researchers
as much as I can and step by
step,
getting more people to benefit from it
through Ibn Ashoor Center and broadly through all
those who benefit fit through Bayinah,
Quran Foundation, Quran dotcom, all sorts of places
where the benefits of these books
dissipate.
And this is this is where they are
stored and where that energy
is held in potential. Hallelujah.
So I wanted this opportunity
to talk through with my good friend, Ustad
Norman,
and,
explore
what is in these books and what value
they hold,
how they're useful, how they're relevant,
and lots of other practical things that people
wonder about when it comes to,
sourcing books and different editions and
what to look for and how to get
the most out of When did this
kind of happen without you realizing it or
did you intentionally
want to have a library?
Well, it started off as obviously,
when going to seek knowledge studying abroad,
especially
when I had time to be longer periods
abroad, like studying in Egypt.
Yes. More and more, I need the books
to to cover the topics that I'm studying.
So you get books that are given to
you by your teachers
or assigned to you specifically, and then you
see things that are
relevant to that and important to that. So
especially in Egypt,
I would wander out into the bookstores round
about Al Azhar.
And, actually,
I do a bit like what we're doing
here is I just look at things and
take my time and just
go through the shelves and thumb through the
individual
works and volumes.
I just allowed myself to be curious about
the titles. Mhmm. You know? And and there's
so many things that just when you read
the title, you think, oh,
a book a whole book just about that?
Right. Right. About that letter in the Quran,
there's a whole book, which is, like, 2
volumes, 3 volumes That's right.
Just on the ba or just on ma
or just on hatta.
Right? So you realize that actually
this Quran
has so many sciences
its oceans are so vast that there's so
many things to say about it and even
when you write the book about it it's
not the last word on that
subject. So yeah it happened gradually.
I think
plenty
of dream about
assembling a whole library as it were,
but that came step by step. I didn't
rush to get these multivolume ones. Yeah. And
in fact, I am, you know, I'm I'm
very proud of my books.
You know, like, people are proud of things
in this dunya. This is a bit of
the dunya, but at least it's connected to
the.
I I don't have a collection of fast
cars,
but I've got some of the best books
out there. But some of these things, you
know, you can be proud of this fancy
edition, the best edition.
Sometimes people know, oh, that's an expensive. You're
fancy. You know? You spent some money on
that 1. Yeah.
But a lot of the times, people rush
as well to fill up their shelves with
these massive multi volume things. Yeah. The things
that I'm often more proud of than that
is some of the small things that you
your eye won't even catch
because I know for every book in this
library the story of where I found it,
when I found it, why I picked it
up, why I bought it, my impressions of
it.
Of course, when people come into the library,
there's a question that they always ask. Let
me ask it. So you've read all these
books?
Right.
So
so,
I would love to be able to say
that I've read all the books. That's not
how it works.
You know, I guess sometimes people talk about
a library, and they talk about an antilibrary.
To me, an antilibrary is a library. But
what they mean by that is it's a
it's shelves full of things that you haven't
read so that you look at them and
you aspire to read them, and you get
around to them eventually.
Or in other words, it's a reference library.
Right? There are some things that I've read
cover to cover, I've thoroughly rinsed, and which,
thoroughly rinsed me or, you know, at least
let's say
affected my thinking.
And even some of those things I go
back to some years later and open it
up and I've forgotten that I've read it.
And then I see all the underlines and
the notes and the scribbles and the questions
and the frustrations that I've wrote in the
margins because I do write in my books,
by the way. I don't actually mind that.
I do it in pencil.
But if I find something funny, I'll write
law.
And if if I find something if I
have a question, I'll write the question in
the margin.
And then later on, if I find
the answer to that question, I'll I'll go
back and write it under the question. Right?
Because it might be within the same book.
I'm asking, but
what's he gonna say about this other thing?
And then when I find it some pages
later, I'll say, oh. I'll go back and
say, well, look on page 89. He talks
about it there.
So you cross reference the books, and you
develop a relationship with them. And I think
relationship is a nice way to think about
life with books.
So, yeah, it's something that's something that unappreciated
children sometimes are the ones that secretly love
the most.
Or I'm most proud of just finding something
random that I know like nobody's got. So
there's gonna be a lot of things here
which if you find them interesting, you'll be
able to
Google and find someone that's selling it. You
might find that somebody has scanned it and
there's a PDF available. I don't know. Please
don't ask me if if the PDFs exist.
I don't know because the fact that I've
got the physical book means I don't care
about the PDF of these books.
We care about PDFs of books that, you
know, III don't have space for, didn't have
a chance
to acquire in, in in physical form. But
there's a certain
love. There is. There's an enjoyment definitely is.
From the physical. But not just that. Even
in terms of just how my brain works
personally. Yeah. If I'm reading PDFs, I just
can't really retain.
I don't have that relationship.
So III just cannot benefit from PDFs. I
found myself engaging with books similar ways, like
the same books that are now many of
these accessible online is not the same kind
of read when you're sitting there and just
poring over the page.
Yeah. And even just the sense of, you
know, the right page and the left page.
Yeah. You can try to recreate it digitally,
but, you know, if this is at the
start of the book, this is at the
end of the book. If I'm looking for
something, just somehow it'll be buried in my
brain that it was over here somewhere, and
it was this. Yeah. Then I might be
able to find the little mark that I've
made to relocate something because I don't take
very good notes.
Well, we have that in common.
I do it in the books to some
extent and
and gain some experience in doing that, so
it began to work well for me. The
reason I couldn't take good notes is because
so many thoughts are crossing my mind,
and it's just too much to write all
that down.
Mhmm. So It slows you down. It slows
you down. So you just write a word
or 2 hoping that that will trigger
the memory of the entire thought process Yeah.
That it represents.
Yeah. I mean, 1 thing I would say
is that I I did sometimes see
would
get very excited about, like, lists of books,
you know, the must have books, and then
go and just splurge and and buy everything.
And then later on, either regret it or
just not know that they possibly should regret
it,
because they might buy something based on hearing
a rumor that such and such is the
best edition. Right. But they're not equipped to
read that book yet.
By the time they get around to it
in 10 years, a much better edition has
come out. Right. So these kind of things
I try to avoid. I waited while it
was when it was in Egypt at Azhar.
I waited till
you know, mostly, it was in the last
year that I did my big purchases of
the big heavy things that were gonna be
have to shipped.
I mean, this isn't the whole of my
library,
but this is the largest part of it.
InshaAllah, we'll see other parts.
But, also, my personal library is heavily weighted
towards quranic studies, and that's
unusual. So I would say 2 thirds of
my books are in Quran studies 1 way
or another, and 1 third is in everything
else, hadith,
all sorts of things.
But,
you know, alhamdulillah, that's plenty as well. But
it's not anything compared to how much I
have in Quranic studies. So
when that was shipped from Egypt, it was
around a ton,
a ton of books that was shipped. So
You're not saying that as a figure of
No. It was at the actual time. About
1, 000 kilograms. Yeah. So
I wouldn't have wanted to fill that with
stuff that I didn't really want because you
have to pay for for these things to
to make their way here.
So, yeah, I I'm fairly confident with what
I bought. There's some important tafsir, for example,
that that I wish I had, but I
wasn't satisfied with the addition that's available. So
I've held off and and then some We're
gonna talk about that when we get there.
It's like, what does it mean to have
Inshallah. Additions that are
satisfactory versus not. Right. Right. But our plan
is to kind of
scan through this library. You've kind of broken
it up into sections
and divvied it up. And I think it's
nice that, you know,
our intention for doing this was to expose
audiences,
students, but also just the general public
of the kinds of study
sections or study areas that are,
that Quran students and Quran scholars are engaged
in. Because
on the 1 hand, it can seem really
intimidating because it's too large of a world.
And on the other hand, some people just
say, you know what? Forget scholarship. I'll just
read the translation and figure it out myself.
Mhmm. And
those are both extremes,
as if there's no further intellectual exercise needed,
who cares about scholarship. And on the other
hand, you're equipped to do nothing, leave it
all to the scholars. So those are the
2 extremes. Mhmm. But I think it's important
for, you know,
let's start talking about the the the general
public. I think the average Muslim should know
that the Quran offers a remarkable amount of
depth.
And people spent their entire lives trying to
explore 1 area of its depth or another
or another.
And so that's 1 of the things that
hopefully will come out of this, a sense
of humility. And also, I think it gives
us
an appreciation that we belong to a heritage
of so many souls that dedicated their entire
lives contemplating Allah's book in 1 way or
the other. Right? And that's just how much
it has to offer. This is they're not
all saying the same thing. There's no they're
not redundancies. There's overlap, but these are actually
unique strands of thought and exploration. And some
go right back to the earliest phases of
of the. Yeah. And some are very recent.
Yeah. And then even the recent work sometimes
is doing or service of the earlier works
and representing them, packaging them, summarizing them, and
so on. So it's an ongoing activity. And
this shows the directions that further study can
take in all of these things and beyond.
So, I mean, this this book here, this
is a bit out of date now. This
is counting the,
works that have been published in Arabic
in the field of Koranic studies
up until 2009.
So the little.
So so from the earliest?
From the earliest. But but bear in mind
that this is referring to anything in the
the era of publishing
as opposed to things that are in manuscript
form and so on. So Right. Okay. That's
been happening since early. But only publishing means
once the printing press
exists.
Now we have published tafsirs,
and published
Quran books or whatever. So
I like this. You know, I I bought
this
just again sort of to be able to
appreciate
the breadth
of different subjects that are covered in the
study of the Quran. Yeah. And
then this other 1 is.
University papers. Yeah. Up until 2004, this is
specifically
university dissertations,
masters and PhD theses.
And, you know In Arabic only?
Yeah. This is This is in this would
be within Arab universities, I should think.
So so these are very nice, but they're
very out of outdated. That's up until 2,
000
2009 and 2004? Yeah. Yeah. So, obviously, there's
much, much more.
I would imagine. We were just
speaking with professor Abdul HaMani Sherry in,
and
we had this preview of
a new
electronic database that they're going to launch Yeah.
Which is going to encompass,
you know, all the things paper out there.
Any Yeah. Other languages. And so they were
talking to us about trying to help with
some of the languages, especially English.
But the more that that database gets populated,
the more also that people are able to
access resources.
So if anyone, you know, Muslim researcher, non
Muslim researcher, whoever is looking at a particular
topic,
they should be aware of everything
that exists that is relevant to it. Yeah.
Yeah. Because a lot of time it happens,
and I might point out a few books
that I've seen where it happens. In the
introduction, the author says, and nobody ever has
written anything.
And literally on the shelf, I have 2
or 3 other works that are exactly the
same. It's not just the authors that say
that, you know?
I get emails like that. Brother, I have
discovered something about this ayah that no 1
has ever
Yeah. Discovered or I know something about the
Quran or
about whatever else. So it yeah. But in
in a more academic sense, there are people
that,
make claims like this. It was interesting that
even at the ICVA convention that we were
just at at the end,
1 of the concluding comments by, you know,
the organizers were next time you submit your
papers, resources,
please,
submit a bibliography because many of you act
like nobody's ever talked about this subject before,
and you're the first 1 to deal with
it. Please cite your sources.
Yeah. Yeah. So And and just that's a
discipline that you're taught in academia, and, you
know, it it belongs to true as well,
right, that you
should,
that you should have a sense of the
the is not for what you're saying or
let's say all things that preceded you in
this that led to you being able to
see what you see. That way you have
a sense of adding to knowledge. Right. You're
coming at the end of it.
Right. So I think the first topic then,
in a way, relates to this broad introduction
that we're talking about, which is the subject
of uloom and Quran. So my uloom Let's
define that first. Uloom and Quran
is okay. I'm sure there's, like, a proper
definition.
But a basic definition
is all the the sciences and areas of
study that pertain to the Quran.
So when we define it in that way
then
you could say everything in my cell Then
everything here is in ululquran.
But there's a genre of works that are
titled as ulumuquran,
which in that we are attempting to be
encyclopedic.
So in terms of this is not in
chronological order, but in terms of encyclopedic works,
the first 1 that qualifies for that is
here. So this is chronologically the earliest?
In terms of those works that
attempted to gather all the subjects in a
So, like, when when you say it's an
encyclopedic, that can sound a little vague. Let's
just even though you're not gonna be comprehensive,
like a short list of some of the
topics that our ulnarul Quran text would cover,
what would they be?
So
before this period, before you have
and then we have.
Right. You had plenty of individual books which
talked about certain sciences. So
these are some works that precede them.
But this is also
called
a
of Abu Shama. Now the thing is this
1, you can see is much smaller.
And this is much older?
This is,
yeah, this is
3 centuries before,
2 centuries before Oh, wow. Russia, roughly speaking.
So Science is related to the So this
it's not very big.
We also have,
I think,
book, book
somewhere
in my in my collection here.
So these
also Yeah.
This is a sheikh of,
Assiote.
But, again, it's smaller. So it's telling you
there's less things being covered
and in in less depth. Right. So by
the time you get to Asiothi,
he
no. He took the burhan
and
numerous other works. There's a whole book here
about the sources of.
What is it?
Yeah. So So a Suyuti is Al Alqhan
is very common in Islamic universities
and Yeah. As a as a primer for
you know, Quran for Alit Khan is, you
know, is at the same time quite an
advanced book.
You've translated
a good chunk of it, haven't you? I
translated a quarter of this book. Yeah. So,
it has
the first volume,
which was translated. This is called the perfect
guide to the sciences of the Quran.
But
trigger warning.
This book triggers me. This this translation is
extremely awful.
And I don't say that lightly. I mean,
there's plenty of translations that I would have
some criticisms of, but this is an an
extremely awful translation. It should never
have been published. And in fact, the the
publishers know that. I've told them, but others
have told them as well.
So I do not recommend to buy this.
But if you see a volume 2, buy
that 1 because that 1 is my
my work.
But that's that's not
the the time we're speaking.
But volume 2 spans from chapters 36 to
42. So in terms of the subjects covered,
I mean, this could be useful just for
the Just for the page. Yeah.
No, it's not because it just says chapter
1, chapter 2. Oh my god.
But I mean, off the top of your
head. I mean, what Yeah. So so we're
we're talking about,
how the Quran was revealed.
Okay. We're talking about how it was collected
and preserved.
We're talking about the readings of the Quran
and the presentation of the Quran.
That is roughly the things that are covered
in,
in,
in volume 1 here.
Okay. And the 1 you translated, what kinds
of things did it deal with? So then
from chapters 36 to 42, which is what
I did,
is mostly to do with,
issues of language.
So Quran
is, like, uncommon
Vocabulary and phrase. Vocabulary. So so clarifying those.
And then
words that are from outside the Hejazi dialect
or outside or they come from outside the
Arabic language. So we call those loan words
and linguistics. Right. So things that were similar
into the Arabic language but came from other
languages,
such as Greek, such as Abyssinian,
such
as, Persian, and so on. Right.
So there are these things are covered and
then, lots of aspects of the intricacy of
how Quranic language works.
Chapter 40 in particular is called.
So it goes through every
bee,
the lamb had all these different things. Right.
You know, and it's it's the largest chapter
of the of the law in this section,
And and it goes into how they're used
in in multiple ways.
And that's all extracted from another book we'll
see called.
Sorry.
And the chapter that comes after is about
Arab, which is also from that book by
Ibn Hisham.
And then there's some more and rules pertaining
to plurals and relating to pronouns and related
to gender and also not not in these
modern subjects, but from a linguistics From a
linguistics point.
Linguistic point of view. Yeah. So So it's
kind of a primer.
Here are the important subject matters
that revolve around the study of the Quran.
Before you engage Quran itself,
here are some key things that an academic
student should know. In fact, it's not even
an introduction.
It is the source book that has gathered,
like, up until the time of, and he
he he died in 911.
I don't mean, on September 11th. I mean,
9:11 of the Hijra,
he died.
So that is is is a good 500
years
ago. So obviously things have happened since then,
but Suyuti's book Alitz Khan remains, and this
is a 1 volume edition,
remains the 1 that
is is is still most important. So there's
lots of Probably works that are coming out
after that are probably building upon. Built on
it. Yeah. So you told me something about
this book, right?
Yeah. So
I used to have a hardcover copy of
this book. It was the first Arabic book
I ever bought,
because it was on sale and it was
$7
and it was used. And I was like,
oh, an Arabic book. It says Quran on
it. I couldn't even read the calligraphy though
at the time. And then when my Arabic
got to a certain intermediate, not even beginner
upper beginner level,
I used to bother our imam at the
masjid in Long Island and Bay Shore
to,
help me read it because I you know,
this was the first book I tried to
read without harakat.
Wow. So we got through 4 pages, and
he gave up on me. But, yeah, we
did we get to 4 pages, though. And
I read those 4 pages, like, 50 times
over and over again Yeah. Just to get
the flow and what it says. Yeah, that's
good actually to do that.
It's important to actually go over things. That
was my ulubuquran book. I was like yeah
I read 4 pages of an Arabic book.
Well, so this is a 20th century work.
I mean, before him
so
this is the best people ask, what's the
best edition of that best edition of this?
There isn't always a clear answer to that
question. But in some cases, there is for
Alit Khan for the Quran this edition this
is not the original this is a kind
of booklet copy from Egypt
but it's the
edition
from,
Medina.
And, you know, the editors have done a
tremendous job of getting the text accurate and
adding useful footnotes
and some less useful footnotes as well.
Honestly, I don't need someone to tell me
that the author's aqida is suspect or something.
I know that there's points where the different
religious schools will differ. But sometimes they do
this as a way of kind of sanitizing
the work and making it acceptable
to the public. So that's,
Al Khan for the Quran. And then in
the 20th century, we have
in the early 20th century, Manahil Al Irfan.
Okay. This is by an Azeri scholar, Azirkani.
And,
it is also an important work. But so
this is the next work that probably
is seen as important
after.
How does it differ from?
It's just written in a different style. But,
again, it draws heavily upon
other works. So it's not it's not like
coming from nothing.
So there are various others,
modern works. And
sheikh qatan's work is is 1 of those
and in fact when we were studying uramukkana
al azhar yeah we were given a book
that was sort of mysterious
in terms of its sources. But I managed
to figure out that some of it was
lifted directly from
this 1, and some was lifted directly from
the zurqanis. I see. And also patched together.
So last question for you on this.
How is Ulumu al Quran different from Ulumu
Tafsir? And are they is Ulumu Tafsir a
subset of Ulumu Quran? Or is it a
separate science altogether?
So, I mean, in in what I've what
I've gathered here as ulamaquran
Yeah. I have a few things that are
that are subsets. I don't mind that. For
example, there's a section here about abrogation.
Okay. Which is 1 of the
Quran. Yeah. Yeah. And it's also part of
anyway. So Right. So, like, this
libraryzing is not an exact science for me.
You just need to be able to find
You have to catalog in a way that
makes sense to you Exactly. Yeah. At the
end of the day. Yeah. So, yeah, in
in the subject of Nasq, this book by
Mustafa
Moustafa Zaid
is fantastic. You know, a lot of people,
they just they they make very quick judgments
about issue like, oh, there is naskh in
the Quran. There is a naskh in the
Quran. Well, until you've read
Mustafa Zaid's book, I don't think you should
comment on is there nask in the Quran.
Right? Because
some of these people have gone into detail
and they've gathered the data,
which then allows you to make and I've
got various books that are denying, abrogation.
Several books denying abrogation
in English and Arabic. It's not uncommon for
people to say it. For example, there's no
abrogation in the Quran.
But, you know, you can come at that
from a purely theoretical angle or you can
wrestle with
The actual case studies. The data as such.
Yeah. And the case studies.
So
1 of the subsets of course and within
you know right at the end of
book we have got some chapters about tafsir
what is tafsir and then some of the
history of tafsir
fasir. Right. Categories of them. Yeah. And sort
of their their history and the progression of
them over time as well.
But I you know, and and I would
call usulatafsir,
the principles of interpretation,
as a subset of Quran.
Right?
And really a science on its own. And
a science on its own.
But, of course, all the Quranic sciences are
sciences on their own. Right. But the thing
is that,
I would say
not everything
in Ulaomer Quran is pertinent to tafsir Right.
In a direct way. A lot of it
is and some specifics. Like, for example,
the portion of
that you translated that mostly dealt with linguistic
issues
is heavily related to yeah. Hugely relevant to
the series studies. Yeah. And it's the kind
of thing that, you know, a lot of
these things as well, like, you might think,
well, why translate them? It doesn't make sense
to translate. I I agree with that critique.
But having translated that, what sort of emerged
is has become a kind of Quran translation
manual.
Right? Right? Because
because specifically by translating the parts of a
chronic linguistics and showing what has to happen
in English to correspond to the points being
made,
Now a Quran translator
can use that to understand, you know, how
to handle these types of materials.
When they see, min in the Quran,
what are the different possibilities?
They're not just you know, they should read
it in Arabic.
But in addition, they can see well,
there's a min that means from,
there's a min that means
made of, there's a min that means because
among,
min that means because of. Yeah. There's also
some means. Yeah. That means IE.
That means IE. Yeah. I mean, biennia. So,
yeah, so these are things which
typically doesn't come out in in translation. Right.
Right. And, actually, sometimes
translators butcher
things like me. Oh, yeah. Or they just
say from everywhere.
Yeah. And English
creaks under that pressure
Right. Of trying to use from in all
these meetings. Right. Yeah.
So, yeah, after that, I guess I do
come on to usulatafsir.
And from here, it becomes usulatafsir.
I see. There's a kind of
this transitional period here in the in the
shelf where,
I I have some things to do with
well, this section here is is what you
could call.
Actually, I wanna have a separate discussion with
you about them. Yeah. I think we should
wrap this 1 up here. I'll I'll pull
them out. Let's discuss them, Shadi. Yeah.
Salam, everyone. It's doctor Suheb 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
Mufasir,
Muhammad Altahir ibn Ashoor.
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 ibinashore.com/academy
to find out more.