Abd al-Rahman al-Muallimi al-Yamani
al-Fawaid al-Tafsiriyya - within Athar al-Muallimi
- Author died
- 1386 AH
- Editions
- Dār ‘Ālam al-Fawā’id lil-Nashr wa-al-Tawzī‘
al-Fawaʾid al-Tafsīriyya (Arabic: الفوائد التفسيرية, lit. 'Exegetical Benefits') is a compilation of Quranic exegesis notes and deductions by the Yemeni scholar Abd al-Rahman al-Muallimi al-Yamani (1312/1313–1386 AH), published as the opening section of Fawāʾid al-Majāmīʿ within his collected works (Athar al-Muallimi) .
Source Material and Compilation
The material comprising al-Fawāʾid al-Tafsīriyya was not composed as a standalone, continuous treatise; rather, it was extracted from al-Muʿallimī's personal notebooks, scrapbooks (kunnāshāt), and manuscript miscellanies (majāmīʿ) . Over a span of roughly fifty years, al-Muʿallimī recorded observations, textual insights, critical rectifications, and analytical deductions while moving between Yemen, Asir, Indonesia, India, and Mecca .
In preparing his collected works, the editors examined twenty-two of his manuscript miscellanies, isolating his original writings and insights from mere transcriptions . These were then arranged thematically into seven distinct fields: exegesis (al-fawāʾid al-tafsīriyya), creed, hadith, jurisprudence, legal theory, linguistics, and miscellaneous subjects .
Structure and Content
Within the exegesis section, the editors organized al-Muʿallimī’s discrete exegetical notes sequentially according to the order of the surahs of the Quran, opening with Surah al-Fatihah . The entries address specific verses, linguistic intricacies, textual nuances, and interpretive disputes, such as discussions on whether the Basmala constitutes an independent verse of al-Fātiḥah .
The editorial team encountered notable difficulties in deciphering the source manuscripts due to al-Muʿallimī’s rapid handwriting, which was largely unpointed and marked by frequent deletions, additions, and revisions, as well as disordered and inconsistent pagination in the notebooks . The editors verified cited texts against their original sources, documented hadith references, provided concise annotations, constructed a thematic subject index, and appended the source miscellany number to each entry .
Publication
The work was edited by Ali ibn Muhammad al-Umran and Nabil ibn Nassar al-Sindi, under the review of Muhammad Ajmal al-Islahi . It appeared as part of Fawāʾid al-Majāmīʿ, which constitutes Volume 24 (totaling 511 pages) of the complete edition of Āthār al-Shaykh al-ʿAllāmah ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Yaḥyā al-Muʿallimī al-Yamānī, published by Dār ʿĀlam al-Fawāʾid in Mecca in 1434 AH (2013 CE) .
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