A Precious Treatise': How Modern Arab Editors Helped Create Ibn Taymiyya's Muqaddima Fī Us ̣ūl Al-Tafsīr

‘A Precious Treatise’: How Modern Arab
Editors Helped Create Ibn Taymiyya’s

Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr
Younus Y. Mirza
GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY
At the dawn of the twentieth century, the Ḥ anbalī muftī of Damascus, Muḥammad
Jamīl al-Shaṭṭī (d. 1378/1959), discovered a unique ( farīda) treatise that he had never
encountered before by the great medieval scholar Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328).1 Ibn
Taymiyya’s scholarship had travelled far and wide and reached both the masses and the
elite, however this particular treatise had been overlooked and remained unpublished.
The treatise related to the principles of Qur’anic exegesis (usūl al-tafsīr) and the
approaches taken by exegetes until the author’s time. Specifically, it focused on which
methods accorded with those approved by the pious ancestors (salaf) and pointed out
which diverged and should be avoided. Al-Shaṭṭī declares that the treatise demonstrates
Ibn Taymiyya’s expertise (tabaḥḥur) in tafsīr and exclaims ‘it is not known until now if
something like it has been written on its subject!’2 Little did al-Shaṭṭī know that
publishing this work would help transform the modern landscape of tafsīr by
promoting a shift to a focus on tradition-based exegesis and interpreting the Qur’an
through itself and the Prophetic legacy (Sunna).
Modern scholars frequently consider Ibn Taymiyya’s writings on the Qur’an as nor-
mative and representative of the classical Islamic tradition, in particular his Muqaddima
fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr (‘Introduction to the Principles of Qur’anic Hermeneutics’). In fact,
this treatise has become one of the most widely cited medieval works on Qur’anic
hermeneutics and undergirds the current conceptual outlook of Qur’anic studies, even
though it did not historically play a prominent role. For instance, in the Norton
Anthology of World Religions volume on Islam, the editor and Qur’an scholar Jane
Dammen McAuliffe includes important texts from the Islamic tradition, everything
from theology to mysticism. In the section on ‘ʿUlūm al-Qurʾān: Scripture Scholarship
or “Qur’anic Sciences”’, McAuliffe incorporates two excerpts, one from the tafsīr of
Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī and the other from the Muqaddima.3 Her selection illustrates how
Journal of Qur’anic Studies 25.1 (2023): 79–107

Edinburgh University Press
DOI: 10.3366/jqs.2023.0530
© Centre of Islamic Studies, SOAS
www.euppublishing.com/jqs
80 Journal of Qur’anic Studies
important modern scholars consider Ibn Taymiyya’s work to be and how it has become
central in defining the Islamic hermeneutic tradition.4
A similar observation can be gleaned from Ibn Taymiyyan studies, which further
highlight the role played by his Muqaddima. In the influential edited volume Ibn
Taymiyya and his Times, the editors Yossef Rapoport and Shahab Ahmed include book
chapters on an array of subjects relating to the scholar’s biography and his legacy. One
chapter is devoted exclusively to the Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr: ‘Ibn Taymiyya and the
Rise of Radical Hermeneutics: An Analysis of An Introduction to the Foundations of
Qur’ānic Exegesis’ by Walid A. Saleh.5 In this, Saleh notes that ‘The small treatise
Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr (‘An Introduction to the Foundations of Qur’anic Exegesis’)
by Ibn Taymiyya has had a remarkable influence on the history of Qur’anic exegesis’.6
Later, Saleh qualifies this statement explaining that while the treatise had some influence
in the medieval era, its true impact has been in modern times, for instance in the ways it
has influenced new tafsīrs and provided a particular lens through which we view the
classical tradition.7 Many of Ibn Taymiyya’s insights have now become standard,
whereas they were historically ‘revolutionary and innovative’.8
The Arabic literature on the Qur’an and Ibn Taymiyya also presents his views as
normative and extensively references the Muqaddima. Arguably the most important
twentieth-century work on the field of tafsīr, Muḥammad Ḥ usayn al-Dhahabī’s
(d. 748/1347–1348) al-Tafsīr wa’l-mufassirūn (‘Qur’anic Exegesis and Exegetes’), is
deeply influenced by the treatise. In his ‘Preliminary Remarks on the Historiography of
tafsīr in Arabic: A History of the Book Approach’, Saleh explains that al-Dhahabī’s
‘conceptual outlook’ is influenced by ‘Ibn Taymiyya’s (d. 728/1328) theory of the
history of tafsīr, which supplied the philosophical underpinnings of [the] work’.9 Saleh
goes on to say that al-Dhahabī’s scholarship, ‘solidified the hold of the Ibn
Taymiyya-influenced discourse on the modern Arabic and Islamic historiography of
tafsīr. From now on the “Ibn Taymiyyan” paradigm was the prism through which
tafsīr’s history was perceived by most scholars working in the Arab world’.10 At times,
the ‘Ibn Taymiyyan paradigm’ silently undergirds the conception of the work while at
others al-Dhahabī directly refers to Ibn Taymiyya. For instance, al-Dhahabī entitles a
section ‘Ibn Taymiyya’s Evaluation of Muʿtazilī tafsīr’ and in this quotes from the
Muqaddima regarding how the exegete al-Zamakhsharī slips innovation into his work,
and how later scholars obliviously cite and transmit his problematic theology.11
Likewise, in his famous biography of Ibn Taymiyya, Muḥammad Abū Zahra draws
exclusively from the Muqaddima in his chapter on Ibn Taymiyya’s view of tafsīr.12 Abū
Zahra only briefly examines one of Ibn Taymiyya’s exegetical treatises in his analysis of
how his method of interpretation contrasts with that of al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111).13
In summary, whether it is anthologies on Islam, introductory works on tafsīr, or studies

on Ibn Taymiyya, the Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr is a major part of our modern
‘A Precious Treatise’ 81
understanding of the Qur’an and a defining feature of Ibn Taymiyya’s intellectual

legacy. Ibn Taymiyya’s treatise is constantly cited and presented as a normative way to
interpret the Qur’an and understand the tafsīr tradition. However, building off the work
of Walid Saleh and Ahmed El Shamsy, I contend that the treatise was not historically
used as a textbook and was only put together and popularised in the modern era.
Premodern sources do not list the Muqaddima as one of Ibn Taymiyya’s works and
there are few citations from or manuscripts of the treatise available. Nonetheless,
through the work of al-Shaṭṭī and other Arab editors, Ibn Taymiyya’s treatise was
‘discovered’, edited, published, and commented on. It is due to their work that
the Muqaddima has become one of the most influential treatises on Qur’anic
hermeneutics and helped shift the entire field of modern tafsīr to become more
tradition-based.
The Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr in the lists of Ibn Taymiyya’s works
One of the more fortunate aspects of Ibn Taymiyyian studies is that we have several lists
of his works which were compiled by his students and can be found in various
biographies and treatises. These lists are essential in that they give us a window into
which writings of Ibn Taymiyya were considered important and worthy of mention by
his contemporaries. It is important to note that these lists do not always correspond to
the way modern scholars view Ibn Taymiyya’s intellectual legacy; there are works by
Ibn Taymiyya that premodern scholars found vital which have largely been forgotten
while, on the other hand, there are others that are popular now but were not of interest to
classical scholars.
What is evident from examination of these various lists is that the majority of
Ibn Taymiyya’s writings are short and are responses to ideas that he had read or
things he saw in society. His titles frequently include terms such as ‘response’ ( jawāb),
‘issue’ (masʾala), ‘commentary’ (sharḥ), ‘treatise’ (risāla), and ‘principle’ (qāʿida).
The word ‘book’ (kitāb) is also used, but not as frequently.14 It is interesting to
highlight the fact that none of Ibn Taymiyya’s works are ‘introductions’ (muqaddimas)
in that they introduce a subject or science to a student. Contemporaries of Ibn
Taymiyya did write introductory works, such as Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ’s (d. 643/1245) famous
introduction to ḥadīth (Kitāb Maʿrifat anwāʿ ʿilm al-ḥadīth),15 but Ibn Taymiyya’s
mind and personality were not focused on such types of intellectual production.16
As Caterina Bori explains, ‘Ibn Taymiyya did not have a systematic mind. Rather,
he was unsystematically explosive both in the quantity and in the quality of his
works’.17
When it comes to the Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr, none of the lists include this
title as part of Ibn Taymiyya’s writings. However, the most important list we
have, by Ibn Taymiyya’s close disciple Ibn Rushayyiq (d. 749/1349),18
mentions two works which appear to be what we now know as the Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl
al-tafsīr:19
He [Ibn Taymiyya] has [written] principles (qawāʿid) regarding tafsīr in

summary, where he speaks about the [various] compositions, and
exegetes (mufassirīn), and what is connected (muttas ̣il) [to the Prophet
Muḥammad] and what is not connected (ghayr muttas ̣il), and what
should be relied on and what should not be relied on, and I saw it as a
large volume.
Immediately afterwards, Ibn Rushayyiq mentions that Ibn Taymiyya has ‘written
a large principle on this matter (maʿnā)’, which suggests that Ibn Taymiyya wrote a
separate treatise that covered similar themes.20 From Ibn Rushayyiq’s comments, we
see that Ibn Taymiyya’s work on tafsīr did not have a specific name, as many of his
other writings did. Rather Ibn Taymiyya had written ‘principles’ regarding tafsīr that
seem to be gathered into a single volume. Ibn Rushayyiq does mention that this volume
was ‘large’, suggesting that it contained various treatises on how to interpret the Qur’an,
which stands in contrast to the rather brief treatise of the Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr
that we know today. It could very well be that some of Ibn Taymiyya’s principles
regarding tafsīr could have been lost, or were not incorporated into what we now know
as the Muqaddima. It could further be that this second title, which Ibn Rushayyiq
describes as a ‘large principle on this matter’, is actually what we now understand to be
the Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr. In this light, the fact that these writings were on various
principles speaks to the point made by Walid Saleh, that the Muqaddima has ‘a slight
degree of disorganisation and some fluidity in its composition’ which ‘[makes] it
sometimes difficult to comprehend fully what Ibn Taymiyya was attempting to say’.21
The Muqaddima as we know it today does not always flow systematically and appears
to have been composed at different times.
The biographical sources also often highlight the fact that Ibn Taymiyya was an
expert in tafsīr but do not note any specific title by him on the subject. His good friend
and colleague al-Birzālī (d. 739/1339), for instance, notes that Ibn Taymiyya was a
leader in tafsīr (imām fī al-tafsīr)22 while one of the most important classical
biographical dictionaries on Qur’anic exegetes, al-Dāwūdī’s (d. 945/1538) Ṭabaqāt
al-mufassirīn, includes an entry on Ibn Taymiyya which states that he was ‘a prominent
exegete’ who focused on ‘principles’ (al-mufassir al-bāriʿ al-uṣūlī). Other entries
describe his tafsīr works in more detail, such as that by al-Dhahabī who explains that
Ibn Taymiyya:23
… made clear the mistakes of many of the statements of the exegetes

(mufassirūn), [demonstrated] the weakness of their various opinions,
and supported the [correct] one opinion, which corresponded with what
the Qur’an and sunna indicated.
In another instance, al-Dhahabī states that Ibn Taymiyya:24
… became prominent in the tafsīr of the Qur’an, immersing himself into

the details of its meanings with natural ease. He inclined towards
confusing and challenging (ishkāl) topics and was extremely intelligent
[in dealing with them]. He discovered from [the Qur’an] things that
were unprecedented.
However, while these entries do list some titles of Ibn Taymiyya’s writings, none
of them mention the names of any tafsīr works, specifically the Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl
al-tafsīr.
A notable exception to this can be found in a work by Ibn Bat ̣ṭūt ̣a (d. 770/1368–1369),
who has a small entry on Ibn Taymiyya in the Damascus section of his famous
Travels, demonstrating how important the scholar was to the city.25 In the entry, Ibn
Bat ̣ṭūt ̣a notes that Ibn Taymiyya wrote a tafsīr work called al-Baḥr al-muḥīt ̣, in
40 volumes, while in prison. Numerous scholars have questioned the reliability of
Ibn Bat ̣ṭūt ̣a’s accounts, especially the veracity of his information and whether or
not he personally witnessed the events that he relates.26 None of the other lists of
Ibn Taymiyya’s writings contain such a title, and modern scholars agree that Ibn
Taymiyya never wrote such a work.27 Moreover, Ibn Bat ̣ṭūt ̣a was not a resident
of Damascus and was just passing through the city; his entry records various
observations and personal interactions but does not demonstrate a strong knowledge of
the different scholars and personalities. However, Ibn Bat ̣ṭūt ̣a’s entry does seem to at
least confirm that Ibn Taymiyya had a strong interest in tafsīr and that he wrote a work
on this subject while he was in prison.28 In fact, al-Baḥr al-muḥīt ̣ is the only work by
Ibn Taymiyya that he mentions at all in the entry – he does not cite the Muqaddima
fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr.
Another exception can be found in a biographical entry written by al-Ṣafadī

(d. 764/1363), which is more valuable in that he personally interacted with
Ibn Taymiyya and was familiar with his scholarship. In his biographical sketch, he
provides a list of Ibn Taymiyya’s works that appears to have been compiled
independently of that provided by Ibn Rushayyiq and mentioned above. However,
like Ibn Rushayyiq, he divides Ibn Taymiyya’s works into various subcategories,
starting with his works on tafsīr. He lists various Qur’anic verses and suras on
which Ibn Taymiyya wrote commentaries, but lists no complete tafsīr work nor
the Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr. At the end of the section, al-Ṣafadī notes that
Ibn Taymiyya wrote ‘other [works] than this on different verses’, confirming that
Ibn Taymiyya did not write a complete tafsīr but rather commentaries on specific
verses or exegetical problems.29 Despite knowing Ibn Taymiyya personally and being
familiar with his works, he seems unaware of any work by him on the principles of
tafsīr.
Thus, from looking at the various lists of works by and biographical entries on Ibn
Taymiyya, we can confirm that he had a strong interest and skill in tafsīr. He was an
expert in the field and wrote commentaries on specific verses and suras of the Qur’an.
However, the entries do not mention any work entitled Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr and
Ibn Rushayyiq is the only author to list a work with similar contents to what we now
know as the treatise. Yet, even though Ibn Rushayyiq describes the text, it did not have
a specific title, but was simply described as a ‘large volume’ or ‘principles’ on how to
interpret the Qur’an. As we will see, the absence of any specific title is also a feature of
the various citations of the work.
References to and Citations of the Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr in

Medieval Writings
When we examine the various references made by other authors to the Muqaddima, we
further see that scholars mention different parts of the treatise and do not list any exact
title.30 Arguably the most famous citation is by Ibn Kathīr, who includes the last two
chapters of what we now know to as the Muqaddima in his introduction to his Tafsīr.
However, a close look at Ibn Kathīr’s citation demonstrates that he does not mention the
title of the work or who he is quoting from – nowhere does Ibn Kathīr state that he is
quoting from Ibn Taymiyya’s Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr. This omission has led some
modern scholars to contend that chapters of five and six of the Muqaddima are in fact
authored by Ibn Kathīr himself rather than Ibn Taymiyya.31 For instance, the most
recent editor of the Muqaddima, Sāmī b. Muḥammad b. Jād Allāh, notes that Ibn Kathīr
is diligent in citing his sources throughout his works, so it would be odd that he would
not cite Ibn Taymiyya here.32
Moreover, Ibn Kathīr only includes the last two chapters of the Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl
al-tafsīr, which suggests that this section often operated independently of the rest of the
treatise. In his analysis of the treatise, Saleh divides the six chapters of the Muqaddima
into ‘two major parts’, wherein the first four offer a ‘preliminary groundwork and
justification for the theory of interpretation that is elaborated in the final two
chapters’.33 As Saleh points out, there is a sharp break in style between the sections
with the first focused on Ibn Taymiyya presenting a new theory and the last quoting
traditions related to interpreting the Qur’an correctly. Additionally, this last section
reads similarly to a fatwa rather than a treatise, as it begins with the question ‘What are
the best ways to interpret the Qur’an?’ The author answers this question by listing
traditions regarding how to interpret the Qur’an and dangers of interpreting it through
one’s opinion. As Saleh notes, ‘Ibn Taymiyya has already given his theory, and these
traditions add little in the way of clarification’,34 which implies that this last section is
not as integral as the first part. Saleh himself does not spend too much time analysing
this last section, especially chapter six, as it primarily consists of quotations of
traditions. However, the last two sections are significant because many of the traditions
are citations from al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923) and his introduction to his tafsīr. The
traditionalist movement has now moved on to focusing on al-Ṭabarī, who Ibn
Taymiyya declares, earlier in the Muqaddima, to have written the ‘most important of
the tradition-based tafsīrs and the greatest in stature’.35 Here is a significant intellectual
turn from critiquing established tradition to building upon another strand of the Islamic
tafsīr heritage, one which the traditionalists found to be more theologically and
intellectually sound.
Another important reference to the Muqaddima was made by Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya
(d. 751/1351), who was a close disciple of Ibn Taymiyya and was familiar with his
various works. In his ‘Ranks of the Divine Seekers’ (Madārij al-sālikīn), Ibn Qayyim
states: ‘[Ibn Taymiyya] sent to me, at the end of his life, a ‘Principle on tafsīr’ (qāʿida fī
al-tafsīr) in his own handwriting’.36 Unfortunately, Ibn Qayyim does not elaborate on
the content of this treatise, but the title could be referring to what we understand to be
the Muqaddima today. The word ‘principle’ (qāʿida) used in the title is similar to how
previous scholars referred to the Muqaddima, most importantly Ibn Rushayyiq, cited
above. However, it is possible that Ibn Qayyim is referencing another treatise
altogether, or parts of what we know to be the Muqaddima. Ibn Qayyim’s note that Ibn
Taymiyya sent him the treatise ‘at the end of his life’ and ‘in his handwriting’ suggests
that the Muqaddima was written towards the end of his intellectual career. Sources do
allude to the fact that Ibn Taymiyya acquired a special interest in the Qur’an during his
final imprisonment,37 and a late composition in prison may explain why the treatise
does not have an exact title as his earlier works do.38 Nonetheless, what continues to be
evident is that the title Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr is absent and was not how
premodern authors referred to the work.
The next major citation is by al-Zarkashī (d. 794/1392), who wrote the famous
introductory text Burhān fī ʿulūm al-Qurʾān (‘Proof in the Sciences of the Qur’an’).39
Al-Zarkashī was a student of Ibn Kathīr and was familiar with the various exegetical
debates regarding tradition-based exegesis.40 His multivolume work has a specific
section on tafsīr and one in particular which quotes directly from chapter five of the
Muqaddima: ‘On: the Best Ways of Exegesis (tafsīr) is to Interpret the Qur’an by the
Qur’an’. Al-Zarkashī quotes this chapter in summary form, skipping over certain
sentences and words. He includes the sections where one is supposed to interpret the
Qur’an through the Qur’an, and then through interpretations that can be traced back to
the Companions, but then not the following one which outlines the foundations of the
Qur’anic sciences through recourse to the interpretations of the Successors. Rather,
al-Zarkashī refers his readers to earlier sections of his own work where he discusses
how to derive interpretations and examine the Qur’an. Similar to those before him,
al-Zarkashī does not state who he is citing from, neither mentioning Ibn Taymiyya’s
name nor the title Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr. Moreover, al-Zarkashī only references
chapter five of the treatise, once again leaving the door open for the possibility that
various sections of the treatise were operating independently and not as a unified whole
as we understand the Muqaddima today.
Al-Zarkashī’s citation is both similar to and different from the next most important
one which is found in arguably the most famous work on the Qur’anic sciences:
al-Itqān fī ʿulūm al-Qurʾān (‘The Perfect Guide to the Sciences of the Qur’an’) by Jalāl
al-Dīn al-Suyūt ̣ī (d. 911/1505).41 While much of the work is on the basics of Qur’anic
sciences, such as how the text was compiled and its unique style, al-Suyūt ̣ī has a section
at the end which focuses on tafsīr. In one of these chapters, entitled ‘Knowing the
Conditions and Rules (ādāb) for the Qur’anic exegete (mufassir)’, al-Suyūt ̣ī begins by
citing from chapter five of the Muqaddima, or the same chapter as is cited by
al-Zarkashī. Al-Suyūt ̣ī does not name who he is citing from but rather begins by saying
‘some scholars say’ (qāla al-ʿulamāʾ) and then proceeds to cite chapter five in
summary, skipping over certain examples and inserting his own comments and
citations.42
After quoting from al-Ṭabarī’s views on tafsīr, al-Suyūt ̣ī returns to the Muqaddima, but
this time he mentions Ibn Taymiyya. Before he begins the citation, al-Suyūt ̣ī states: ‘Ibn
Taymiyya said in a book (kitāb) that he wrote on the subject …’. As with previous
scholars, al-Suyūt ̣ī does not provide the title of the work that he is citing from.43 Rather,
he uses the word kitāb, which could be translated as ‘book’ or ‘treatise’. Al-Suyūt ̣ī’s use
of the word kitāb is different to Ibn Rushayyiq’s ‘principle’ (qāʾida), another indication
that the work did not have a fixed name. Al-Suyūt ̣ī then proceeds to quote chapters one
to four of the Muqaddima and ends the citation by stating, ‘here end the words of
Ibn Taymiyya in summary, and they are very precious (nafīs jiddan)’.44 Al-Suyūt ̣ī’s
comment implies that chapters one to four of the Muqaddima could have stood on their
own and survived independently of chapters five and six, a point made forcefully by
Jād Allāh.45 As discussed above, Ibn Kathīr includes chapters five and six, al-Zarkashī
only cites five, while al-Suyūt ̣ī here cites chapter five first, and then one to four. In three
of the most important premodern citations, none of the authors cite the entirety of the
Muqaddima as we know it today.
Likewise, al-Suyūt ̣ī’s comment that Ibn Taymiyya’s words ‘are very precious’
demonstrates that he respected Ibn Taymiyya’s views and that they had a significant
impact on his own scholarship. Saleh contends that al-Suyūt ̣ī implements Ibn
Taymiyya’s hermeneutic in his own tafsīr, which is the ‘only surviving articulation
of a newly assertive type of commentary, a commentary where only inherited
interpretations from the salaf are recorded, with no additions, no editorial
comments, and no philological explanations’.46 Al-Suyūt ̣ī would also attempt
to apply Ibn Taymiyya’s hermeneutic in his monumental al-Durr al-manthūr fī
al-tafsīr al-maʾthūr which is primarily a list of traditions related to the various Qur’anic
verses.
Furthermore, a close look at al-Suyūt ̣ī’s citation suggests that may have been using an
earlier version of Ibn Taymiyya’s Muqaddima, as it has several large omissions and
gives examples that are not found in the most authoritative text, edited by Adnān
Zarzūr.47 For instance, in the chapter regarding how the salaf did not necessarily
disagree but had ‘variations on the same theme’,48 Ibn Taymiyya gives a host of
examples, such as how a sword, God, and the Prophet could have different names but
they all refer to the same thing.49 However, in the version cited by al-Suyūt ̣ī, these
examples do not appear, rather he provides another example of ‘following the straight
path (s ̣irāt ̣)’ and discusses how s ̣irāt ḥ ere could mean obeying the Qur’an or Islam.50 Ibn
Taymiyya could have produced an initial version of the text that did not have all of the
various examples that al-Suyūt ̣ī cites here. Nonetheless, the fact that al-Suyūt ̣ī is quoting
Ibn Taymiyya is significant because it demonstrates that his work was known well over a
century after his death. Moreover, al-Suyūt ̣ī includes Ibn Taymiyya’s writings along
with those by other prominent Qur’anic scholars such as al-Zarkashī cited above.
A subsequent citation by the philologist Murtaḍā al-Zabīdī (d. 1791),51 almost 300
years later, demonstrates that Ibn Taymiyya’s works on Qur’anic hermeneutics were
now understood through al-Suyūt ̣ī.52 In his commentary on al-Ghazālī’s famous
‘Revival of the Islamic Sciences’ (or, to give it its full title, Itḥāf al-sadāh al-muttaqīn
bi-sharḥ Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn, ‘Gift of the God-fearing Nobility in the Commentary of
the Revival of Islamic Sciences’), al-Zabīdī copies almost half of al-Suyūt ̣ī’s chapter on
‘Knowing the Conditions and Rules of the Qur’anic Exegete’ discussed above.53
Al-Zabīdī simply reproduces al-Suyūt ̣ī’s citations of Ibn Taymiyya’s chapter, which
includes the remarks that ‘Ibn Taymiyya said in a book (kitāb) that he wrote on
the subject (nawiʿ) …’, and that Ibn Taymiyya’s comments are ‘very precious (nafīs
jiddan)’. It seems likely that al-Zabīdī did not have access to a manuscript of Ibn
Taymiyya’s treatise to reference, and al-Suyūt ̣ī’s manual on Qur’anic sciences had now
become widespread and popular. As we will see later, scribes recording Ibn Taymiyya’s
treatise would further reference it through al-Suyūt ̣ī’s manual as a way to identify the
work.54
In summary, the most significant medieval references and citations – with the
exception of Ibn Qayyim – do not list any specific title for Ibn Taymiyya’s work on
Qur’anic exegesis, with some not naming Ibn Taymiyya as the author at all and others
simply saying that he wrote a book on the subject. They cite different parts of the
treatise, suggesting that the various sections could have operated independently of one
another. In particular, Ibn Kathīr, al-Zarkashī, and al-Suyūt ̣ī all cite chapter five without
listing its author, signalling that the chapter – the best and simplest articulation of how
to do tafsīr – could have been read independently of the rest of the treatise. Similarly,
al-Suyūt ̣ī’s comment ‘here ends Ibn Taymiyya’s words’ after citing chapters one to four
indicates that this first section could have been understood as a standalone treatise.55
Nonetheless, Ibn Taymiyya’s writings on tafsīr clearly did influence two of the most
prominent medieval tradition-based exegetes, Ibn Kathīr and al-Suyūt ̣ī. Moreover, the
most important medieval introductory text on the Qur’an – al-Itqān fī ʿulūm
al-Qurʾān – cites Ibn Taymiyya’s work, demonstrating his impact on the genre.
Later citations would reference the work through al-Itqān which, as outlined above,
included a summary of the first four chapters of Ibn Taymiyya’s treatise. The lack of a
clear title and the obscure nature of the work once again appear in an analysis of the
various manuscripts.
Manuscript Analysis
While the Muqaddima is frequently cited and commented on, there has been no
exploration of its various manuscripts, a point that Saleh makes in his analysis of the
work.56 Saleh’s point here is critical because analysing the various manuscripts allows
us to appreciate how the premodern tradition understood the treatise, and how it
was copied and disseminated.57 When we begin to look at the manuscripts of the
Muqaddima, what is striking is how few are available, which implies that the treatise
was not widely studied nor was it part of madrasa curriculums.58 For instance, the most
authoritative manuscript index related to the Qur’an (al-Fihris al-shāmil li’l-turāth
al-ʿArabī al-Islāmī al-makhṭūt ̣, ʿulūm al-Qurʾān: makht ̣ūt ̣āt al-tafsīr) lists only two
possible manuscripts of the work, both with the words ‘principle’ (qāʿida) in the title:
Qāʿida fī al-tafsīr and Qāʿida fī al-Qurʾān.59 Once again, the word ‘introduction’
(muqaddima) is absent, and the index does not list any work entitled Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl
al-tafsīr under the name ‘Ibn Taymiyya’.
I was fortunate to locate and examine one of the manuscripts the index lists above:
Qāʿida fī al-tafsīr, or MS 299, in the Taymūriyya Library.60 The manuscript does not
seem to have been analysed for any of the modern critical editions, and contains some
unusual characteristics not found in published editions.61 First, the cover page reads ‘A
Principle on Tafsīr’, which once more corresponds to how Ibn Rushayyiq refers to the
title. After listing the title, the scribe goes on to describe the work in the next line: ‘It
appears to be that of Aḥmad b. Taymiyya and [this work] is what al-Suyūt ̣ī summarised
in his al-Itqān [ fī ʿulūm al-Qurʾān]’. It is remarkable that the scribe is not entirely sure
who the author is, and identifies him by citing what appears to be the more popular and
widely known manual by al-Suyūt ̣ī. As mentioned above, al-Suyūt ̣ī does name Ibn
Taymiyya before he begins to summarise his treatise, which may have allowed the
scribe to recognise the work. Moreover, similarly to al-Zabīdī above, the scribe only
references Ibn Taymiyya’s treatise in relation to al-Suyūt ̣ī’s manual. He then goes on to
say that this treatise ‘was copied from a manuscript from the Azharī library (Dār
al-Kutub al-Azhariyya) which was one of the parts of al-Kawākib’. Here we learn that
Ibn Taymiyya’s treatise was part of a larger collection of manuscripts and one that did
not exist as a work in its own right.62 As with Ibn Taymiyya’s other shorter treatises, the
text was not an individual one that was frequently copied and transmitted, but rather
was part of a group of other texts. Additionally, the text appears to have originated from
Egypt, a place where Ibn Taymiyya lived for seven years.
Second, the text has a different introduction to the standard Muqaddima, which has a
more personal one in which Ibn Taymiyya first praises God and Muḥammad and then
speaks about why he wrote the treatise.63 In MS 299, the introduction is copied from the
beginning of Ibn Kathīr’s tafsīr, which speaks to the universality of the Qur’an and
Muḥammad’s mission.64 Nonetheless, the rest of the manuscript follows the standard
edition very closely, with occasional mistakes or omissions. Most importantly, the
manuscript contains chapters one to six, demonstrating that the treatise was now
circulating as a whole, with the various sections now united.65 As discussed above,
medieval citations suggest that the different parts of the treatise were engaged with by
scholars independently from one another. Regrettably, the text does not have a scribal
name or a date, but it must have been copied sometime after al-Suyūt ̣ī (d. 911/1505)
wrote al-Itqān since it is mentioned on the title page.66
Another manuscript is described by Ṣalāḥ Muḥammad Khiyamī in his index of

manuscripts devoted to the Qur’anic sciences and tafsīr in the Ẓahariyya library in
Damascus, the city where Ibn Taymiyya lived most of his life, and where he passed
away. The manuscript comes from the thirteenth/nineteenth century, demonstrating that
the treatise was copied up until the modern era of print. This manuscript also goes by
the Qāʿida title,67 and Khiyamī’s descriptions of the beginning and end of the MS
reveal that it has the standard introduction found in the critical editions but only
contains chapters one, two, and the beginning of three.68 Once again, the Muqaddima
title is not used and the manuscript is similar to those described above, in it does not
contain the entire six chapters of the treatise.
Unfortunately, I was unable to locate the other manuscripts used in the various critical
editions, which indicates that they were most likely private copies,69 but the modern
editors were diligent enough to provide some helpful comments when they describe the
manuscripts that they worked with. The Muqaddima was first published in 1355/1936
by the Ḥ anbalī mufti of Damascus, Muḥammad Jamīl al-Shaṭṭī, who states that he
found a collection of manuscripts which included the Muqaddima.70 Al-Shaṭṭī’s
comments here once again indicate that the Muqaddima was not an independent text
that was circulated on its own, but rather one that circulated alongside other texts.
Nonetheless, al-Shaṭṭī explains that this manuscript had many mistakes as well as
omissions in two sections, and so he reached out to the bibliophile and reformer Shaykh
Ṭ āhir al-Jazāʾirī (d. 1338/1920) who provided him with another manuscript, which also
contained distortions.71 Al-Shaṭṭī used this additional manuscript to fill in any
omissions.72 Al-Shaṭṭī does not list the name or index number of the manuscript he
used, suggesting that it was a personally owned manuscript rather than one found in a
manuscript library. The later editor Muḥibb al-Dīn Khat ̣īb (d. 1389/1969) does mention
that al-Shaṭṭī found the manuscript in his private collection (khazāna baytihim
al-qadīm).73 However, he does not describe the title page of the manuscript which
would be vital to identifying the premodern name and how it was understood.
Nevertheless, al-Shaṭṭī’s comments correspond with the notes in al-Fihris al-shāmil
above according to which only a handful of manuscripts of the work are available.
The next editor to speak extensively about manuscripts of the Muqaddima74 was
Adnān Zarzūr, who republished the work in 1391/1971 after returning to the various
available manuscripts and published editions.75 In his introduction, Zarzūr explains that
he worked primarily with one manuscript and then supplemented unclear areas using
previous editions, most notably al-Shaṭṭī’s.76 Thus, at first glance, it appears that
Zarzūr’s edition was based on three manuscripts since Zarzūr used one and al-Shaṭṭī
used two. Saleh comes to this conclusion after analysing Zarzūr’s introduction, stating
that ‘Zarzūr’s edition utilised three manuscripts in all’.77 However, in their
introductions, al-Shaṭṭī and Zarzūr both include a copy of the first page of the
manuscript they worked with and they are exactly the same.78 Therefore, it seems likely
that Zarzūr did not look at a new manuscript as previously thought, but rather used the
same manuscript that al-Shaṭṭī did, making the total number of manuscripts examined
two instead of three. Zarzūr’s comments once more illustrate the lack of surviving
manuscripts of this work.79
In his introduction, Zarzūr astutely picks up on the discrepancy in the titles of the
published edition and the manuscript he obtained. Zarzūr makes an essential point that
the manuscript that he edited did not have the title Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr but
rather Qāʿida ʿaẓīmat al-qadr sharīfa fī tabyīn mā yuʿīnu ʿalā fahm al-Qurʾān
wa-tafsīrihi wa-maʿrifat maʿānīhi (‘A Principle of Great Value, Honourable in the
Explanation of What Would Aid in the Understanding of the Qur’an, its Exegesis, and
Knowledge of its Meaning’). The longer, drawn-out title is based on the first sentences
of the treatise and is more precise in that it describes the treatsie as being about how to
understand the Qur’an and evaluate its tafsīr tradition rather than simply being an
‘introduction’. The work is an argument on how to understand the Qur’an rather than an
introductory survey of tafsīr literature and principles of interpretation aimed at
beginners.
Zarzūr explains that there is nothing in the manuscript that suggests the title
Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr, suggesting rather that the first editor, Muḥammad Jamīl
al-Shaṭṭī, titled the treatise based on Ibn Taymiyya’s opening statement. Ibn Taymiyya
begins the treatise by noting that some of his colleagues asked him to write an
‘introduction’ (muqaddima) that would encompass general principles and help in
explaining the Qur’an, understanding its tafsīr, and its meanings. Thus, for Zarzūr,
there is no problem in naming the treatise Muqaddima fī qawāʿid al-tafsīr. Here Zarzūr
uses qawāʿid in the title, taking it from Ibn Taymiyya’s opening statement, rather than
us ̣ūl which is found in al-Shaṭṭī’s edition. Nonetheless, Zarzūr eventually went along
al-Shaṭṭī’s title in his own edition, even though he makes room in his introduction to
discuss the title and share his reservations regarding it.80
In the most recent edition of the Muqaddima, the editor Samī b. Muḥammad b. Jād
Allāh also notes the discrepancy in the titles, ascribing the use of muqaddima to
al-Shaṭṭī, and highlights the quote above from Zarzūr that there is nothing in the
manuscript history that suggests the ‘Introduction’ name.81 He devotes a section to the
name of the treatise and contends that the ‘Qāʾida’ title should be understood to come
from Ibn Taymiyya unless evidence is presented to the contrary. Key to Jād Allāh’s
argument is the fact that he compares the Qāʾida title to the names of Ibn Taymiyya’s
other works and observes that Ibn Taymiyya began the titles of his treatises with qāʾida
if they had several chapters on a single topic. Moreover, the title includes the word
ʿaẓīma (‘great’) which reflects his tendency to use ʿaẓīma in his titles, presumably to
attract readers. Ibn Taymiyya also had a habit of using descriptive titles for his works,
even if this meant that the title became long (and cumbersome).82 Thus, in Jād Allāh’s
view, the original name of the treatise should be put on the cover along with the name
that it eventually became known by, something that he implements with his own
edition. In contrast to other editions, Jād Allāh writes the title Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl
al-tafsīr prominently on the cover but then includes the title used by Zarzūr as the
subtitle ‘and it is “Qāʿida ʿaẓīmat al-qadr sharīfa fī tabyīn mā yuʿīnu ʿalā fahm
al-Qurʾān wa-tafsīrihi wa-maʿrifat maʿānīhi”’. Even though Jād Allāh believes
that the Qāʾida title originates with Ibn Taymiyya and is found in the various
manuscripts, he is unable to escape the Muqaddima name as that is how the treatise is
now referred to.
Jād Allāh was also unable to locate the exact manuscripts that al-Shaṭṭī and Zarzūr used,
but through a detailed cross referencing of manuscripts, he claims that al-Shaṭṭī relied
on a version of the text that was actually an abridgement (mukhtas ̣ar), not the
original.83 Jād Allāh argues that this abridgement contains chapters one to six, together,
and presents the entire manuscript as being authored by Ibn Taymiyya. He claims that
MS 299 discussed above is copied from this abridgement because it does not include
Ibn Taymiyya’s introduction on why he wrote the treatise, and presents chapters one to
four and five to six as being a complete text. Most importantly, Jād Allāh was able to
locate the original manuscript that the abridgement was based on and found that the
words ‘Ibn Kathīr says’ are found in chapter six. He therefore asserts that chapters five
and six were written by Ibn Kathīr, and that they were mistakenly ascribed by the
original editors as being part of Ibn Taymiyya’s treatise. Jād Allāh’s argument is
cogent, meticulous, and well-researched, and would solve the problem of why chapters
one to four do not fit well with chapters five and six. It would further solve the riddle of
why Ibn Kathīr never cites Ibn Taymiyya in his introduction to his tafsīr, even though
he references him several times within the commentary. It would make sense that later
scribes would group Ibn Taymiyya’s treatise and Ibn Kathīr’s introduction together,
since they both deal with how to interpret the Qur’an. Later abridgements could have
very well combined the texts without paying close attention to their authors.
Nevertheless, more manuscript research needs to be done to substantiate Jād Allāh’s
claims, especially in locating the manuscripts that al-Shaṭṭī and Zarzūr used in their
editions.
In summary, none of the manuscripts examined have the word muqaddima in the title
and the treatise often appears as part of a collection of texts. It appears that the treatise
was not copied and disseminated on its own, and only a handful of manuscripts survive,
which confirms Saleh’s observation that ‘the madrasa never endorsed’ the treatise and
it was not a didactic seminary text.84 However, we do see in some of the later
manuscripts that sections one to six are now copied together, which speaks to the idea
of a unified text. At some point, whether by Ibn Taymiyya or later scribes, the text was
put together in the form that we are now familiar with today. As we will explore in the
next section, the large-scale proliferation and popularisation of the text only occurs in
the modern period.
The Modern Publication of Ibn Taymiyya’s Muqaddima
In his book, Rediscovering the Islamic Classics: How Editors and Print Culture
Transformed an Intellectual Tradition, Ahmed El Shamsy concludes that, ‘we see the
classical past through the eyes of the editors of the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries – a fact whose recognition is essential to a truly informed and critical view
of these classics’.85 In modern times, Ibn Taymiyya’s Muqaddima has become a
‘classic’ and one of the ‘great books’ of Islam, but to understand how such a process
took place, we must pay attention to the vital role of its editors and how they shaped the
treatise within the modern world.
As discussed above, the Muqaddima was first published in 1355/1936 by the Ḥ anbalī
muftī of Damascus, Muḥammad Jamīl al-Shaṭṭī, who states that he found a collection of
treatises, the Muqaddima being part of it.86 However, what scholarship overlooks are
al-Shaṭṭī’s comments on why he decided to edit and publish the treatise. As mentioned
above, al-Shaṭṭī explains that he worked with one manuscript, which had many
mistakes and omissions in two places87 so he reached out to the bibliophile and
reformer Ṭ āhir al-Jazāʾirī88 who had a particular interest in the works of Ibn Taymiyya,
specifically his works on the Qur’an.89 The editors of Āthār shaykh al-Islām Ibn
Taymiyya, Muḥammad ʿAzīz al-Shams and ʿAlī b. Muḥammad al-ʿImrān, include the
list of Ibn Taymiyya’s works by Ibn Rushayyiq cited above and note that it was copied
by al-Jazāʾirī until the end of the section on the Qur’an. In their rendition of Ibn
Rushayyiq’s manuscript, the editors make reference to comments made by al-Jazāʾirī in
the footnotes, where he discusses whether particular works by Ibn Taymiyya were
published or not. These notes demonstrate that al-Jazāʾirī had a keen interest in Ibn
Taymiyya’s writings, but often let others publish and disseminate them for potential
fear of reprisal.90 As El Shamsy explains:91
In Damascus of al-Jazāʾirī’s time, Ibn Taymiyya’s name still carried
such a stigma that reasonable public discussion of his views was
impossible. So al-Jazāʾirī made handwritten copies of his works and
sold them cheaply to the local manuscript booksellers in order to bring
his actual ideas into wider circulation. However, he did not publish any
of Ibn Taymiyya’s works himself.
After copying Ibn Taymiyya’s tafsīr works al-Jazāʾirī states ‘this is what I wanted to
transmit as of now for a purpose – written the night of Ramadan 26 the year 1318
(17 January 1901) and to God be praise’.92 While the ‘purpose’ here is unclear,
al-Jazāʾirī may have copied this part of the treatise in order to help al-Shaṭṭī find a
second manuscript of the Muqaddima. Al-Jazāʾirī copied the tafsīr section of Ibn
Taymiyya’s list of works in 1318/1901, the same year that al-Shaṭṭī states that
al-Jazāʾirī provided him a manuscript of the Muqaddima (see below). Regardless of
al-Shaṭṭī, al-Jazāʾirī’s comments demonstrate that he was actively looking for Ibn
Taymiyya’s Qur’an works. The fact that he was able to attain a copy of Ibn Taymiyya’s
Muqaddima, when so few copies were available, reveals that he had a deep knowledge
of Ibn Taymiyya’s manuscripts and also their various whereabouts. Similarly, in his
notebook ‘Tadhkira’, under the section ‘Related to the Tafsīr of al-Ṭabarī’, al-Jazāʾirī
lists Ibn Taymiyya’s work as ‘A Treatise on the Principles of Tafsīr’ (Qāʿida fī us ̣ūl
al-tafsīr). He follows the title stating ‘al-Suyūt ̣ī summarised it from the words of Taqī
[al-Dīn Ibn Taymiyya] and mentioned it in al-Itqān [ fī ʿulūm al-Qurʾān]’.93 Once
again, the treatise was understood in reference to al-Suyūt ̣ī’s famous manual, and was
not known even to al-Jazāʾirī with the Muqaddima name.94
Al-Shaṭṭī narrates that he attained the manuscript from al-Jazāʾirī in 1318/1900–1901

but then finally published the work in 1355/1936.95 What is striking here is the large
gap between finding the manuscripts and then publishing his edition. The short treatise
would not have taken too long to edit but other considerations may have come into play,
such as the reality that Ibn Taymiyya’s works were still not mainstream and funding for
publication was not always forthcoming. To support this last point, al-Shaṭṭī profusely
thanks the publishers Dār al-Āthār at the end of his introduction for funding the
publication, and the title page includes the prominent statement at the top: ‘[from the]
publications of the Dār al-Āthār al-Waṭaniyya (‘the National Publication House of
Classics), Damascus’. It is significant here that it was a national publication house that
printed the treatise, as opposed to a ‘Salafī’ or Arabian Gulf press – this would come
later.96 Ibn Taymiyya is regularly associated with the Saudi state and ‘Wahhabism’ and
‘Salafism’, but the initial publishers of the Muqaddima were based in Syria and were
motivated by an interest in preserving the national literary heritage.97
The publication date of 1355/1936 is, furthermore, late in comparison to the publication
of many of the Islamic ‘classics’ and madrasa textbooks. Walid Saleh explains that ‘the
nineteenth-century history of publication was a continuation of the hegemony of the
madrasa seminary in the field of Qur’anic studies’.98 For instance, al-Bayḍāwī’s Anwār
al-tanzīl and its various glosses had already been published by the mid to late
nineteenth century since they were standard parts of the Ottoman madrasa
curriculum.99 The fact that Ibn Taymiyya’s Muqaddima was not published until the
early to mid twentieth century demonstrates that it was not widely circulated nor part of
seminary curriculums. Rather, it had to be ‘rediscovered’ by al-Shaṭṭī and al-Jazāʾirī
and reintroduced into the Muslim memory of tafsīr and its various sciences.
Moreover, al-Shaṭṭī praises Ibn Taymiyya in his introduction for his scholarship and
deep knowledge (tabaḥḥurihi) of the tafsīr literature and other subsequent Islamic
sciences. Reformers like al-Shaṭṭī and al-Jazāʾirī were attracted to Ibn Taymiyya’s
erudition and interest in a wide array of subjects, which they tried to model in their own
research and teaching. El-Shamsy elucidates that reformers ‘saw [in Ibn Taymiyya’s]
writings models of critical engagement and analysis, but they also harnessed the
content of his works in service of their reformist agendas’.100 As he goes on to say,
reformers used Ibn Taymiyya’s writings to challenge ‘the narrow and – in their
view – stultifying scholastic orthodoxy, which severely constrained the scope of
acceptable literature and admissible argumentation’.101 Through the publication of the
Muqaddima, reformers like al-Shaṭṭī and al-Jazāʾirī were broadening ways to interpret
the Qur’an that went beyond that found within the traditional madrasa systems. Instead
of being simply consumers and ‘subjects of the tradition’, al-Shaṭṭī and al-Jazāʾirī were
‘active participants’, believing that the tradition was something that could be shaped.102
After commending Ibn Taymiyya, al-Shaṭṭī moves on to admire the treatise itself as one
that is unique and distinguishes between the various tafsīrs, discerning between the
‘wheat and chaff or the right from the wrong’.103 For the student, and even the scholar,
the tafsīr literature is immense and can be overwhelming and daunting. Ibn Taymiyya’s
treatise was thus a helpful guide to those who sought to differentiate between the
various intellectual strands and to discern which was closest to that of the pious
ancestors (salaf).
The next publication of the Muqaddima was that edited by Muḥibb al-Dīn Khat ̣īb
(d. 1389/969) and printed by al-Maṭbaʿa al-Salafiyya (‘The Salafī Press’) in Egypt.104
In his introduction, Khat ̣īb exclaims in the first sentence that the treatise is ‘precious’
(nafīs) echoing the previous statement made by al-Suyūtī and emphasising how it is
unique in the history of tafsīr. He acknowledges the work of al-Shaṭṭī, who he
considered a friend, and the publisher Dār al-Āthār al-Waṭaniyya. Khat ̣īb further
became the ‘de facto foster son to al-Jazāʾirī’ after his father’s death and copied many
of Ibn Taymiyya’s texts archived within Damascus’ Ẓāhiriyya Library.105 Khat ̣īb
explains that he builds upon al-Shaṭṭī’s work by correcting any mistakes found in the
original edition, identifying names, and adding short biographies within the footnotes.
Khat ̣īb’s ‘Salafī’ bias emerges in that he published with a Salafī press and explains that
he wanted to shed light on figures from the Successors and their students ‘in order to
increase the connection to the beginning of Islam’.106 Towards the end of the edition,
Khat ̣īb’s interest in tradition-based tafsīr becomes visible as he cross-references Ibn
Taymiyya’s quotations from al-Ṭabarī with al-Ṭabarī’s tafsīr and makes relevant
modifications to the main text.107 Of all of Ibn Taymiyya’s quotations and references,
Khat ̣īb only looks up those of al-Ṭabarī, thereby demonstrating the growing importance
of tradition-based exegesis. The edition ends with a supplement of fatwas by Ibn
Taymiyya in which he is asked to evaluate various tafsīrs and explain the various
Qur’anic recitations. This addition echoes the way that editors and scribes often
grouped the Muqaddima with other related fatwas, something that we saw earlier with
Ibn Rushayyiq’s description of Ibn Taymiyya’s works. Moreover, the choice to publish
with an Egyptian press is important because at the time the country was a hub for
publication and printing, and it also demonstrates that much of the early publication of
Ibn Taymiyya’s works occurred outside the Arabian Gulf. Most importantly, Khat ̣īb
continues to use al-Shaṭṭī’s title of Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr even though, as
discussed, the various premodern citations and manuscripts do not attest to such a
name.
The next and most important publication was that undertaken by Adnān Zarzūr in
1391/1971, when he republished the work after revisiting the manuscripts, and
commented extensively on the treatise.108 Zarzūr’s edition would go on to become the
most authoritative, as it was nicely bound, printed on quality paper, and had a modern
typeface. Zarzūr built on Khat ̣īb’s work by adding substantially to the footnotes and
writing an extended introduction in which he writes about the manuscripts (see above),
Ibn Taymiyya’s expertise in tafsīr, the content of the treatise,109 and its legacy. In the
introduction to the second edition of the work, Zarzūr shares that the publisher Dār
al-Qurʾān al-Karīm wanted to republish the work with ‘editing and commentary
(sharḥ)’.110 The idea of commentary (sharḥ) is unique here as, it was absent in the
previous two editions in which al-Shaṭṭī and Khat ̣īb focused on producing an accurate
rendition of the text from the various manuscripts. However, while Zarzūr did look at
manuscripts, he also provided an extensive commentary which made the text easily
digestible and understandable to the modern reader. Much of Zarzūr’s commentary
appears in the footnotes where he defines words, cites relevant Qur’anic works, and
references ḥadīths and Qur’anic verses. Nonetheless, a thorough look at the footnotes
demonstrates that he was not simply an Ibn Taymiyya devotee, rather he, at times,
debates and disagrees with the medieval scholar. For instance, Zarzūr takes issue with
Ibn Taymiyya branding al-Thaʿlabī (d. 427/1035) a ‘nocturnal woodcutter’ (ḥāt ̣ib
al-layl) in that he included whatever ḥadīth he could find without critical evaluation.111
He states that Ibn Taymiyya’s view of al-Thaʿlabī is problematic (naẓr) and that the
exegete’s decision not to cite full chains of transmissions does not prevent the reader
from looking up the traditions themselves.112
Despite sharing reservations when it came to the title (as discussed above), Zarzūr
continues to use Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr, not least because by Zarzūr’s time, it had
already been 35 years since the initial publication and the work had been disseminated
and then republished with the Muqaddima name. The word muqaddima helped
popularise the work, as it indicated to instructors and students that the work acted as a
classical guide into the immense tafsīr tradition. Moreover, the use of the word us ̣ūl
instead of qawāʿid in the title is significant because the former is more frequently used
in Islamic law, for example in the phrase us ̣ūl al-fiqh (‘principles of jurisprudence’),
whereas the latter is also used in law but less frequently and then only in discussing
legal maxims (al-qawāʿid al-fiqhiyya).113 Putting the word us ̣ūl in the title helped
promote the work, making it more attractive to scholars and students who sought a
reference on tafsīr to complement the us ̣ūl al-fiqh works they were already studying. As
Saleh points out, the title Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr ‘draws an unavoidable parallel
with us ̣ūl treatises on jurisprudence’.114
Zarzūr’s choice to publish with this particular title shows the power of early editors
such as al-Shaṭṭī and weight of tradition and precedence. Even though he expresses
doubts, the title Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr had already gained traction and it would be
difficult to rebrand the treatise. It should also be pointed out that Zarzūr was Syrian and
an instructor at the faculty of Sharīʿa at the University of Damascus. In publishing his
own edition of this work, Zarzūr thus continued the Syrian interest in the treatise, which
began with al-Shaṭṭī, in to the second half of the twentieth century. His teaching
position no doubt influenced his desire to create a text which could be taught in the
burgeoning faculties of Islamic studies that were part of the modern Arab university
system. Nonetheless, the publisher that solicited the treatise, Dār al-Qurʾān al-Karīm,
was based in Kuwait, thereby transitioning the publication of Ibn Taymiyya’s work
to the Arabian Gulf, whereas it had been previously produced in Damascus and
Egypt.115
Zarzūr’s edition would go on to become the most authoritative,116 but it was highly
indebted to the previous two editions which brought the treatise to light and began
the commentary process. It was al-Shaṭṭī who discovered the treatise and named it,
while it was Khat ̣īb who republished the work and began providing commentary on it
in his footnotes. Although al-Shaṭṭī’s and Khat ̣īb’s editions have now largely been
forgotten, they paved the way for Zarzūr’s, and eventually for Ibn Taymiyya’s view
on the Qur’an and the tafsīr literature to become increasingly normative.117 As
Johanna Pink explains in her Muslim Qur’anic Interpretation Today, Ibn Taymiyya’s
Qur’anic paradigm ‘only gained a significant following in the second half of the 20th
century’.118
Conclusion
In conclusion, we cannot understand the Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr except through

the lens of the editors al-Shaṭṭī, Khat ̣īb, and Zarzūr. These three scholars brought an
obscure work to light and in the process created a lasting perception that the treatise
is relevant and important, something which cannot be said of the plethora of tafsīr
and other texts that remain only available in manuscript form. Biographical entries
on Ibn Taymiyya and lists of his works either omit the treatise altogether or
generally describe its content. The treatise did not have a stable title and citations of
it by medieval Qur’an scholars are incomplete, only referencing a part of the
treatise, and sometimes not even mentioning Ibn Taymiyya’s name. On the whole,
the citations suggest that the different parts of the treatise operated independently of
one another and that the various chapters, especially chapter 5 (the most succinct
articulation of tafsīr), were referenced individually. The manuscripts further attest
that the work was not copied as an independent work but rather as part of larger,
collected texts. Only a handful of manuscripts remain, and some scribes do not
even identify the author of the work. By looking at the various citations and
manuscripts, it preliminarily appears that the treatise had some influence in the
Mamlūk period (1250–1517) but then fell out of favour in the Ottoman era
(1517–1922).119
It was al-Shaṭṭī, with the help of al-Jazāʾirī, who rediscovered the manuscripts, edited
them, and found the appropriate publishing house to publish the work. Their decision to
name the treatise Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr and publish it as an independent treatise
gave it a prestige that it did not have in the premodern period. The Muqaddima could
have very well remained simply one section of a collection of writings by Ibn
Taymiyya, like the famous Majmūʿ al-fatāwa, and never been treated as an independent
work. However, al-Shaṭṭī noticed how the work was unique in its understanding of
tafsīr and the Qur’an.
The text was subsequently republished by Khat ̣īb, an associate of al-Shaṭṭī and
the ‘adopted son’ of al-Jazāʾirī. He added significantly to the footnotes, grouped the
treatise with other Qur’an related works by Ibn Taymiyya, and kept the Muqaddima
name. Zarzūr further commented on and edited the text, making it more user
friendly and adaptable to university and seminary curriculums. Eventually Western
scholars would draw upon the treatise, even translating parts of it, and making it a
large part of their understanding of the Qur’an, tafsīr, and of Ibn Taymiyya’s
intellectual legacy. It is clear that we cannot understand the reception of Ibn
Taymiyya’s Muqaddima and the modern Qur’an paradigm it produced without
appreciating the critical role of its various editors, from al-Shaṭṭī and Zarzūr. They
helped shape the treatise as we know it, and promoted the Qur’anic hermeneutic that it
espoused.
NOTES
1 As will be discussed later in the article, the word ‘precious’ (nafīs) used in the title of this piece
was previously used by both the premodern scholar al-Suyūt ̣ī (d. 911/1505) and the modern
editor Muḥibb al-Dīn Khat ̣īb (d. 1969) to describe the treatise, connecting the two periods and
authors.
2 Ibn Taymiyya, Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr, ed. al-Shaṭṭī, p. 1.
3 McAuliffe, The Norton Anthology, p. 294; McAuliffe further translated part of the Muqaddima
in her contribution to the anthology Windows on the House of Islam. Similarly, in his article on
‘Tafsīr’ in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World, Mustansir Mir has a section entitled
‘Principles’ and states that ‘A convenient way to cover this subject is by glancing at the medieval
scholar Ibn Taymīya’s Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr (Introduction to the Principles of Tafsīr)’. He
proceeds to discuss Ibn Taymiyya’s Qur’anic hermeneutics and uses the treatise’s framework of
tafsīr bi’l-maʿthūr and tafsīr bi’l-raʿy in the rest of his article. Similarly, in its entry on ‘tafsīr’, the
Oxford Dictionary of Islam does not mention Ibn Taymiyya but defines the term through his
framework: ‘Muhammad is considered the most authoritative interpreter of the Quran, but
Quranic interpretation through reports from acknowledged Companions of the Prophet or by their
Successors is also considered authoritative’. Oliver Leaman further draws heavily on the treatise
and the Zarzūr edition in his Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān entry on ‘Tafsīr-Salafi Views’.
4 McAuliffe does note that Ibn Taymiyya ‘might have been no more than a footnote in
Ḥ anbalī history books were it not for the considerable influence that his thought exercises in
the contemporary period’ (McAuliffe, The Norton Anthology, p. 294). Moreover, McAuliffe
does also say in her introduction to the volume that the two most influential ʿulūm al-Qurʾān
texts are that of al-Zarkashī (d. 794/1392) and al-Suyūtī (d. 911/1505) (McAuliffe, The Norton
Anthology, p. 58). The general editor of the series, Jack Miles, explains that the purpose of the
volume is ‘the desire that six major, living, international world religions should be allowed to
speak to you in their own words rather than only through the words of others about them’
(p, xvii).
5 Saleh, ‘Ibn Taymiyya and the Rise of Radical Hermeneutics’. For more on Ibn Taymiyya’s
Qur’anic hermeneutics see Hoover, ‘Ibn Taymiyya’ (forthcoming).
6 Saleh, ‘Ibn Taymiyya and the Rise of Radical Hermeneutics’, p. 124.
8 Saleh, ‘Ibn Taymiyya and the Rise of Radical Hermeneutics’, p. 153. Along with analysing the
treatise’s contents, Saleh was among the first to examine the publication history of the text and
noticed the role of the early editors in its proliferation. As will be discussed below, ʿAdnān Zarzūr
has also looked at the various manuscripts and editors of the work.
9 Saleh, ‘Preliminary Remarks’. See this article for more on how Ibn Taymiyya’s Qur’anic
hermeneutic influenced our modern understanding of tafsīr.
10 Saleh, ‘Preliminary Remarks,’ p. 10.
11 al-Dhahabī, al-Tafsīr wa’l-mufassirūn, vol. 2, p. 274.
12 Abū Zahra, Ibn Taymiyya, p. 220. For a more recent biography of Ibn Taymiyya and in a
European language, see Hoover, Ibn Taymiyya.
13 Abū Zahra, Ibn Taymiyya, p. 234.
14 Also see the later list by Ibn Rajab al-Ḥanbalī which does not mention the work (Āthār, vol, 8,
pp. 482–483). Ibn Rajab does mention that Ibn Taymiyya was an expert on tafsīr. See Ibn Rajab,
Āthār, vol. 8, p. 468.
15 al-Shahrazūrī, An Introduction. As the editor explains, the book is often simply referred to as
‘the Muqaddima’ or ‘the Introduction’.
16 Ibn Taymiyya did write the introductory theology work al-ʿAqīda al-wāsit ̣iyya which is still
frequently used in modern seminary circles.
17 Bori continues that ‘Anybody approaching his writings must cope with his digressive and
repetitive style, with the immense number of authorities and past scholars he had in mind or to
whom he directly refers, and with his polemical language and the targets it implicitly or explicitly
strikes’ (Bori, ‘The Collection and Edition of Ibn Taymiyah’s Works’, p. 55). In another instance,
Bori states, ‘It could be argued that Ibn Taymīya was a hectic, swift, chaotic, circumstantial writer
who wrote a lot from memory and whose writings, especially his answers and short rules (ajwāb
and qawāʿid) were not systematically copied and transmitted (Bori, ‘Istanbul, Süleymaniye
Kütüphanesi MS Sehid Ali Pasa 1553’, p. 26). Also, Leaman notes that ‘Nearly all of his works
are in the style of refutation or a critique, and the objects of his attacks are treated with
considerable hostility’ (Leaman, ‘Tafsīr-Salafi Views’).
18 Ibn Rushayyiq, Asmāʾ muʾallafāt Ibn Taymiyya. This work has been misattributed to Ibn
Qayyim al-Jawziyya: see Hoover, Ibn Taymiyya’s Theodicy, p. 6, n. 14; Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī,
al-ʿUqūd al-durrīya, p. 46; Ibn Rajab al-Ḥanbalī, Āthār, vol. 8, p. 56. The editors Muḥammad
ʿAzīz al-Shams and ʿAlī b. Muḥammad al-ʿImrān note that the various published editions of the
work are distorted, deficient, and not complete. In particular, they are critical of the ‘al-Munajjid’
work cited above and produced their own version of the text. For more on the important role of
Ibn Rushayyiq in compiling Ibn Taymiyya’s works, see Bori, ‘The Collection and Edition of Ibn
Taymiyah’s Works’.
19 Ibn Rajab al-Ḥanbalī, Āthār, vol. 8, p. 294. It is important to note here that this section of the
Ibn Rushayyiq’s list does not appear in other manuscript copies of the work (see, for example, Ibn
Rushayyiq, Asmāʾ muʾallafāt Ibn Taymiyya, p. 18). The editors of the Āthār, Muḥammad ʿAzīz
al-Shams and ʿAlī b. Muḥammad al-ʿImrān, explain that they published this list copied by Ṭ āhir
al-Jazāʾirī from a manuscript which now appears to be lost (Ibn Rajab al-Ḥanbalī, Āthār, vol. 8,
p. 56). However, Ṭ āhir al-Jazāʾirī was only able to copy the list until the end of the section on Ibn
Taymiyya’s works on the Qur’an. Muḥammad ʿAzīz al-Shams and ʿAlī b. Muḥammad al-ʿImrān
then had to transition to another manuscript which was also used by the editor al-Munajjid
cited above. I agree with Muḥammad ʿAzīz al-Shams and ʿAlī b. Muḥammad al-ʿImrān that
al-Jazāʾirī’s manuscript appears to more complete and reliable, and with their call to find the
original manuscript (Ibn Rajab al-Ḥanbalī, Āthār, vol. 8, p. 63).
20 He then follows this with another title which states, ‘He has a response [to the question] on
the tafsīr of al-Baghawī, al-Qurṭubī, and al-Zamakhsharī, which one is superior?’ From this
section, it appears that Ibn Rushayyiq grouped the works that directly engaged the existing tafsīr
literature. The first two are what we now know to be the Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr while the last
one appears to be an independent fatwa that Ibn Taymiyya gave to a questioner. This last fatwa
appears to be preserved in the famous Majmūʿ fatāwā and its contents are similar to the section of
the Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr, which also discusses the quality of various exegetes (see Ibn
Taymiyya, Majmūʿ fatāwā, vol. 13, pp. 385–388, and Ibn Taymiyya, Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl
al-tafsīr, ed. Zarzūr, p. 76).
22 Ibn Rajab al-Ḥanbalī, Āthār, vol. 8, p. 443.
23 This section is quoted by Ibn Rajab al-Ḥanbalī, Āthār, vol. 8, p. 468. Towards the end of
the entry, Ibn Rajab does list some titles of works by Ibn Taymiyya, but none of them are
the Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr. Bori translates this section as follows: ‘As for quranic
exegesis, he was an uncontested authority, being extraordinarily skillful in recalling quranic
verses when he needed to provide the legal proof for the matter at issue. If a Quran teacher saw
him he would become astounded by him. As a result of his exceptional pre-eminence in quranic
exegesis and his superior knowledge, he would throw light on the erroneous nature of many of
the opinions of commentators and would weaken many of them and supplant them with the
only interpretation that agreed with the content of the Quran and the Sunna’ (Bori, ‘A New
Source’, p. 341).
26 See the footnote in Ibn Rajab al-Ḥanbalī, Āthār, vol. 8, p. 462.
27 See n. 5 in Saleh, ‘Ibn Taymiyya and the Rise of Radical Hermeneutics’, p. 155. As
Saleh notes, ‘Ibrāhīm Baraka, the author of an extensive study of Ibn Taymiyya’s exegetical
activities, is clear about the matter: Ibn Taymiyya wrote no complete Qur’ān commentary’.
See Baraka’s Ibn Taymiyya, pp. 71–76. Also, see Ibn Taymiyya, Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr,
ed. Zarzūr, p. 15.
28 Saleh speculates that Ibn Taymiyya wrote the Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr while he was in
prison (Saleh, ‘Ibn Taymiyya and the Rise of Radical Hermeneutics’, p. 124).
29 Ibn Rajab al-Ḥanbalī, Āthār, vol. 8, p. 353, and vol. 8, p. 376.
30 For more on citations of Ibn Taymiyya’s work in the premodern era, see Dayeh, ‘Reading Ibn
Taymiyya in Granada’. As Dayeh states in his conclusion, ‘As a methodological contribution,
this study has demonstrated the importance of considering inexplicit quotation as a mode of
reception. There is much to be gained from broadening our gaze to include the examination of
inexplicit quotations of Ibn Taymiyya’s works’ (p. 171).
31 Dayeh shares that some scholars would avoid citing Ibn Taymiyya by name for fear of the
possible repercussions. However, Ibn Kathīr frequently cites Ibn Taymiyya’s name throughout
his works so the omission of his name here would not be for that reason.
32 Ibn Taymiyya, Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr, ed. Jād Allāh, p. 55. Building off Jād Allāh’s
argument is the fact that Ibn Kathīr cites Ibn Taymiyya six times by name in his tafsīr, so it would
be unusual that he would not cite him in his introduction (Mirza, ‘Ibn Kathīr [d. 774/1373]’,
p. 58). Future studies need to take Jād Allāh’s argument seriously, especially his manuscript
evidence that alludes to the fact that Ibn Kathīr was the author of chapters five and six. I hope to
locate these manuscripts and write further on the subject.
35 Ibn Taymiyya, Muqaddima, ed. Zarzūr, p. 90.
36 Suleiman, ‘Ibn Taymīyas Theorie’, p. 19; Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Madārij as-sālikīn,
vol. 2, p. 1330.
38 However, the first editor of the Muqaddima, Muḥammad Jamīl al-Shaṭṭī, states that he found a
copy of the treatise with a collection of other texts dated 712/1312–1313, or towards the middle of
Ibn Taymiyya’s intellectual career and not at the end. For more on this discussion, see Mirza, ‘Ibn
Taymiyya as Exegete’, p. 42. More work needs to be done on dating the treatise and exploring
how it fits within Ibn Taymiyya’s lifelong engagement with the Qur’an and the tafsīr literature.
39 al-Zarkashī, Burhān, vol. 2, p. 175.
40 Rippin, art. ‘al-Zarkashī’, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edn. The fact that al-Zarkashī was a
student of Ibn Kathīr gives further credence that chapter five of the Muqaddima was authored by
Ibn Kathīr, not Ibn Taymiyya.
41 For a translation, see al-Suyūt ̣ī, The Perfect Guide.
42 For instance, al-Suyūt ̣ī inserts that Ibn al-Jawzī (d. 597/1201) authored a book about how
the Qur’an explains itself and expands on certain stories in other places (al-Suyūt ̣ī, al-Itqān,
p. 763).
43 It is important to highlight here that the editor of the work, Shuʿayb Arnāʾūt ̣, notes that
al-Suyūt ̣ī is quoting from Ibn Taymiyya’s Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr but al-Suyūt ̣ī does not use
that title (al-Suyūt ̣ī, al-Itqān, p. 764).
44 al-Suyūt ̣ī, al-Itqān, p. 767.
45 Ibn Taymiyya, Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr, ed. Jād Allāh, p. 45. ‘Intahā kalām Ibn Taymiyya’
could also be understood as indicating the end of the quote, or ‘here end the words of Ibn
Taymiyya’.
47 This edition will be discussed further below.
50 al-Suyūt ̣ī, al-Itqān, p. 765. Also, compare the bottom of page 765 with Ibn Taymiyya,
Muqaddima, ed. Zarzūr, p. 51.
51 For more on al-Zabīdī see Reichmuth, The World of Murtada al-Zabidi.
52 El Shamsy, Rediscovering the Islamic Classics, p. 58. El Shamsy notes that al-Zabīdī
believed that Ibn Taymiyya was one of ‘Islam’s top intellects’.
53 al-Zabīdī, Itḥāf al-sāda al-muttaqīn, vol. 1, pp. 537–540.
54 Jād Allāh also notes that later scholars began to cite Ibn Taymiyya’s treatise through al-Suyūt ̣ī
(Ibn Taymiyya, Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr, ed. Jād Allāh, p. 80).
55 The phrase ‘intahā kalām Ibn Taymiyya’ could also be understood as ‘end of quotation’.
56 ‘It is important to emphasise, however, that there has not been an exhaustive study of the
manuscript tradition of this treatise’ (Saleh, ‘Ibn Taymiyya and the Rise of Radical
Hermeneutics’, p. 126).
57 For more on the history of how manuscripts in medieval Damascus were copied,
transmitted, and published, see Hirschler, A Monument to Medieval Syrian Book Culture.
I agree with Hirschler’s point in the conclusion that: ‘The books that sit on the shelves of the
modern library today tell multifaceted stories of production, usage, ownership and endowment’
(p. 165).
58 For instance, Kifayat Ullah notes that al-Fihris al-shāmil lists 843 manuscripts of
al-Zamakhsharī’s al-Kashshaf and 73 commentaries and abridgements of the work (Ullah,
Al-Zamakhsharī’s Al-Kashshaf, p. 4). These numbers far outweigh the handful of manuscripts
that we see of Ibn Taymiyya’s Muqaddima.
59 al-Fihris al-shāmil, p. 364.
60 Ibn Taymiyya, Qāʿida fī al-tafsīr, MS 299.
61 Jād Allāh contends that this manuscript is an abridged form of the Muqaddima since it was
taken from the abridged form of the manuscript of al-Kawākib (Ibn Taymiyya, Muqaddima fī
us ̣ūl al-tafsīr, ed. Jād Allāh, p. 32).
62 For more on how texts were copied together, see Bori, ‘Istanbul, Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi
MS Sehid Ali Pasa 1553’.
63 See Saleh, ‘Ibn Taymiyya and the Rise of Radical Hermeneutics’ for more of a discussion of
this introduction.
64 Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿaẓīm, vol. 1, p. 4. Jād Allāh makes this observation (Ibn
Taymiyya, Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr, ed. Jād Allāh, p. 36).
65 Nonetheless, Jād Allāh contends that this version was an abridgement and removed Ibn
Kathīr’s name as the author from the last two chapters. It thus mistakenly holds Ibn Taymiyya as
the author of chapters fix and six when he was not (Ibn Taymiyya, Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr,
ed. Jād Allāh, p. 32).
66 Unfortunately, I was not able to find in the secondary sources reference to when exactly
al-Suyūt ̣ī wrote al-Itqān.
67 al-Khiyamī, Fahras al-makṭūt ̣āt, vol. 2, p. 237. The editor al-Khiyamī writes the title as
‘Qāʿida talīn …’. However, Jād Allāh notes that the correct title should start out as ‘Qāʿida
tabyīn …’ based on a cross referencing of the various manuscripts (Ibn Taymiyya, Muqaddima fī
us ̣ūl al-tafsīr, ed. Jād Allāh, p. 30). I agree with Jād Allāh that the title ‘Qāʿida talīn …’ appears
to be a typo or misreading of the manuscript.
68 Ibn Taymiyya, Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr, ed. Jād Allāh, p. 128.
69 Jād Allāh also notes that he was unable to find the manuscripts that al-Shaṭṭī and Zarzūr used
(Ibn Taymiyya, Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr, ed. Jād Allāh, p. 29).
70 This manuscript could not be MS 299 mentioned above because it mentions the name
al-Suyūt ̣ī, who lived much later (Ibn Taymiyya, Muqaddima, ed. al-Shaṭṭī, p. 1).
71 For more on Ṭ āhir al-Jazāʾirī, see El Shamsy, Rediscovering the Islamic Classics, p. 158.
72 al-Shaṭṭī’s efforts will be discussed further below.
73 Ibn Taymiyya, Muqaddima, ed. Khat ̣īb, p. 3. Jād Allāh also states that this manuscript was
from the library of al-Shaṭṭī (Ibn Taymiyya, Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr, ed. Jād Allāh, p. 6).
74 The Muqaddima would be published again in 1385/1965–1966 but the editor Muḥibb al-Dīn
Khat ̣īb does not speak about the manuscripts he worked with (Ibn Taymiyya, Muqaddima, ed.
Khat ̣īb).
75 Zarzūr would go on to write about Ibn Taymiyya’s views of figurative interpretation, or taʾwīl
(Zarzūr, ‘Taʾwīl ʿinda Ibn Taymiyya fī siyāqihi al-tarīkhī’).
78 Compare Zarzūr edition, page 39, with al-Shaṭṭī’s page 3. Jād Allāh also notes that Zarzūr and
al-Shaṭṭī used the same manuscript (Ibn Taymiyya, Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr, ed. Jād Allāh,
pp. 69–70).
79 Unfortunately, similar to al-Shaṭṭī, Zarzūr does not list the index number or name of the
manuscript, making it difficult to locate the text.
80 Zarzūr would eventually go on to write his own introduction on the sciences of the
Qur’an and tafsīr where he devotes a section to the development of the genre; ʿUlūm al-Qurʾān.
Throughout the work, Zarzūr quotes Ibn Taymiyya and his edited edition of his Muqaddima.
However, Ibn Taymiyya would not play a foundational role in the construction of Zarzūr’s
own conception of tafsīr since he was drawn to modern linguistic and literary attempts
to understand the Qur’an; Zarzūr would add a section to this ‘sciences of the Qur’an’
regarding tafsīr al-biyānī, and another to Sayyid Qutb’s Fī ẓilāl al-Qurʾān (Zarzūr, ʿUlūm
al-Qurʾān, p. 408). Zarzūr’s own introduction would be republished multiple times and in
various editions.
83 Ibn Taymiyya, Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr, ed. Jād Allāh, p. 33. In particular, he contends
that al-Shaṭṭī relied on a copy of an abridgement of al-Kawākib noted above.
84 Saleh, ‘Preliminary Remarks’, p. 16.
85 El Shamsy, Rediscovering the Islamic Classics, p. 242.
86 For more on al-Shaṭṭī, see Weismann, Taste of Modernity, p. 232.
87 Jād Allāh points out that this last omission included chapters five and six of the treatise, thus
supporting his argument that the chapters should not be ascribed to Ibn Taymiyya. Al-Shaṭṭī and
Zarzūr relied on a manuscript version of the Muqaddima which only include chapters one to four,
not one to six (Ibn Taymiyya, Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr, ed. Jād Allāh, p. 25).
88 For more about the life and work of Ṭ āhir al-Jazāʾirī, see El Shamsy, Rediscovering the
Islamic Classics, pp. 158–170, and Weisman, Taste of Modernity, pp. 282–291.
89 Weismann notes that al-Jazāʾirī ‘established himself as one of the leading Arabic
bibliographers of his time’ (Weismann, Taste of Modernity, p. 286).
91 El Shamsy, Rediscovering the Islamic Classics, p. 167. Weismann similarly notes that
al-Jazāʾirī ‘immersed himself in Ibn Taymiyya’s books that he found in the Ẓahiriyya Library
and, realising their value for the struggle against the orthodox, began to distribute copies he had
made of them cheaply and without naming their author’ (Weismann, Taste of Modernity, p. 285).
93 al-Jazāʾirī, Tadhkirat, vol. 2, p. 887.
94 The editor of al-Jazāʾirī’s notebook, Muḥammad Khayr Ramaḍān Yūsuf, makes a fascinating
comment in the footnotes, stating that ‘Perhaps what [al-Jazāʾirī] is intending is [Ibn Taymiyya’s]
Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr which was edited by Adnān Zarzūr and published in Kuwait’. The
note perfectly demonstrates the discrepancy between how early twentieth-century and early
twenty-first-century editors and scholars recognised Ibn Taymiyya’s work with the former
understanding it as a ‘treatise’ in reference to al-Suyūt ̣ī’s al-Itqān and the latter as an independent
work edited by Adnān Zarzūr.
95 Ibn Taymiyya, Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr, ed. al-Shaṭṭī, p. 1.
96 For more on the term Salafism and its development in the twentieth century, see Lauzière, The
Making of Salafism. Also, see the following article about the different types of Salafism and how
it was historically understood: Haykel, ‘On the Nature of Salafi Thought and Action’.
97 Pink, Muslim Qurʼānic Interpretation Today, p. 61.
98 Saleh, ‘The Qur’an Commentary of al-Bayḍāwī’, p. 93.
99 Saleh, ‘The Qur’an Commentary of al-Bayḍāwī’, p. 94.
101 El Shamsy, Rediscovering the Islamic Classics, p. 197. El Shamsy goes on to explain
that ‘the drive to discover and resurrect forgotten texts was inherently suspicious: if a text had
fallen out of circulation, it had likely done so for a good reason, being inferior or deviant; and
even if it was neither, the fact that it was no longer encased in a living interpretive tradition in the
form of detailed commentaries meant that both the form and the content of the text were
dangerously underdetermined. Reformist scholars who sought to expand the scope of the
curriculum were implicitly denying the comprehensiveness of the tradition and trying to reinject
into it ideas that it had already discarded’ (El-Shamsy, Rediscovering the Islamic Classics,
p. 158).
102 As El Shamsy explains, ‘By challenging the ‘naturalness’ of the dominance of the
postclassical corpus, they turned tradition from an unquestionable authority to something that
could be negotiated and shaped–and themselves from subjects of tradition to its active makers’
(El Shamsy, Rediscovering the Islamic Classics, p. 237).
103 This phrase is taken from the opening page of the Muqaddima itself; Ibn Taymiyya,
Muqaddima, ed. Zarzūr p. 24.
104 Ibn Taymiyya, Muqaddima, ed. Muḥibb al-Dīn Khat ̣īb.
106 Ibn Taymiyya, Muqaddima, ed. Khat ̣īb, p. 3.

107 Ibn Taymiyya, Muqaddima, ed. Khat ̣īb, p. 52.
108 Walid Saleh notices the importance of the Zarzūr edition in his ‘Ibn Taymiyya and the Rise
of Radical Hermeneutics’. Also, Zarzūr provides a history of the publication of the treatise in his
first edition which does not appear in the second edition. He notes in the first edition that there
was another edition of the text published in Lahore, Pakistan in 1388/1968–1969. The omission
of this in the second edition has contributed to the other editions being forgotten and the idea of
Zarzūr’s edition being the final and most important (Ibn Taymiyya, Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr,
ed. Zarzūr, p. 23).
109 Saleh arguably builds on this introduction, in particular the chapter summaries and the
treatise’s legacy, in his article ‘Ibn Taymiyya and the Rise of Radical Hermeneutics’.
110 Ibn Taymiyya, Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr, ed. Zarzūr, p. 5.
111 For more on al-Thaʿlabī see Saleh, The Formation of the Classical Tafsīr Tradition.
112 Ibn Taymiyya, Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr, ed. Zarzūr, p. 77. Also, for more on al-Thaʿlabī
and isnāds, see Saleh, The Formation of the Classical Tafsīr Tradition, pp. 82–83.
113 al-Shaṭṭī may have preferred the word us ̣ūl because he was a muftī and legal scholar himself.
114 Saleh, ‘Radical Hermeneutics’, p. 156.
115 To add to this point, Jād Allāh’s most recent edition was published in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
116 Jād Allāh’s edition may eventually overtake Zarzūr’s but that has yet to be seen.
117 Future publications of the treatise would also go along with the title Muqaddima fī
us ̣ūl al-tafsīr without any thought or critical analysis. The later, famous Majmūʿ al-fatāwā
collection, for instance, would label the treatise after the Muqaddima title even though the
original manuscript doesn’t appear to have that name (Ibn Taymiyya, Majmūʿ fatāwā, vol. 13,
pp. 329–375).
118 Pink, Muslim Qurʼānic Interpretation Today, p. 180. Pink is specifically speaking
here about Ibn Taymiyya’s view that the Qur’an should be interpreted first through the
Qur’an.
119 However, more work needs to be done to trace Ibn Taymiyya’s influence in the Ottoman
period. For more on the reception of Ibn Taymiyya, see the special issue of Muslim World edited
by Caterina Bori, ‘Ibn Taymiyya: Receptions (14th–17th Century)’.
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‘A Precious Treatise’: How Modern Arab

Editors Helped Create Ibn Taymiyya’s

Journal of Qur’anic Studies 25.1 (2023): 79–107

In summary, whether it is anthologies on Islam, introductory works on tafsīr, or studies

understanding of the Qur’an and a deﬁning feature of Ibn Taymiyya’s intellectual

The Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr in the lists of Ibn Taymiyya’s works

He [Ibn Taymiyya] has [written] principles (qawāʿid) regarding tafsīr in

… made clear the mistakes of many of the statements of the exegetes

In another instance, al-Dhahabī states that Ibn Taymiyya:24

… became prominent in the tafsīr of the Qur’an, immersing himself into

Another exception can be found in a biographical entry written by al-Ṣafadī

References to and Citations of the Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr in

Another manuscript is described by Ṣalāḥ Muḥammad Khiyamī in his index of

The Modern Publication of Ibn Taymiyya’s Muqaddima

Al-Shaṭṭī narrates that he attained the manuscript from al-Jazāʾirī in 1318/1900–1901

In conclusion, we cannot understand the Muqaddima fī us ̣ūl al-tafsīr except through

106 Ibn Taymiyya, Muqaddima, ed. Khat ̣īb, p. 3.

——, ‘The Qur’an Commentary of al-Bayḍāwī: A History of Anwār al-tanzīl’, Journal

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