What Were the Most Popular tafsīrs in Islamic History? Part 1: An Assessment of the Manuscript Record and the State of tafsīr Studies

Abstract

Hitherto, the field of tafsīr studies has been beset by several challenges that have hindered its ability to produce a reliable historical outline of the genre. These challenges include: (1) the voluminous nature of our sources, both in terms of the sheer number of works and their individual length; (2) the fact that the overwhelming majority of works continue to be available only in manuscript form; (3) the tendency of previous scholarship to focus on the ‘classical’ period, leaving the post-classical tafsīr tradition largely unexplored, especially the ḥawāshī; and (4) our limited knowledge about which works were historically popular, when, where, and for whom. This article shares the findings of a multi-year project to convert the most important union catalogue of Arabic tafsīr manuscripts, al-Fihris al-shāmil, into a searchable database and to use this database to pose and answer questions that were hitherto difficult to explore. These questions include: (1) What were the most longitudinally popular commentaries on the Qur’an as suggested by counts of extant manuscripts and their geographic distribution today? (2) To what extent have academic scholars studied these works? It is hoped that these findings will assist the field in planning future scholarly projects and in ultimately developing a more reliable outline of the tafsīr tradition.