Aqwal al-Husayn ibn al-Fadl fi al-Tafsir
- Author died
- -
- Editions
- Aqwal al-Husayn ibn al-Fadl fi al-Tafsir
Aqwal al-Husayn ibn al-Fadl fi al-Tafsir (The Exegetical Statements of al-Husayn ibn al-Fadl) is an academic study in Quranic exegesis by the Saudi researcher Nadiya bint Ibrahim al-Nafisa, submitted as a master's thesis in the Department of Quran and Its Sciences at Imam Muhammad ibn Saud Islamic University during the academic year 1425–1426 AH (2004–2005 CE) under the supervision of Hajjaj Arabi Ramadan . The work is dedicated to collecting, editing, and analyzing the dispersed Quranic interpretations of the 3rd-century AH scholar al-Husayn ibn al-Fadl (d. 282 AH / 895 CE) .
Background and Purpose
Prior to this study, al-Husayn ibn al-Fadl's only widely published work in Quranic studies was his treatise on Quranic parables (Amthal al-Qur'an), edited by Ali al-Bawwab, and no dedicated academic work had assembled his scattered interpretations . Although al-Husayn ibn al-Fadl was widely recognized for his deep grasp of the meanings of the Quran (ma'ani al-Qur'an), his primary writings in the discipline appear to have been lost, leaving his interpretive remarks preserved only as quotations across major classical commentaries .
The stated objectives of the study were:
- To gather the extant exegetical statements of al-Husayn ibn al-Fadl into a single academic compendium .
- To highlight his scholarly standing and hermeneutical contributions .
- To compare and contrast his views with those of other major exegetes .
Structure and Content
The thesis consists of an introduction, a biographical and historical prologue, two main divisions, and a conclusion :
- Prologue: Examines the political, social, and scholarly context of the 3rd century AH, followed by a biography of al-Husayn ibn al-Fadl covering his lineage, birth, upbringing, education, teachers, students, creed, scholarly status, works, and death .
- Part One (Hermeneutical Method): Divided into seven sections that analyze his interpretive methodology:
- Interpreting the Quran by the Quran (tafsir al-Qur'an bi-l-Qur'an) .
- Interpreting the Quran through prophetic traditions (tafsir al-Qur'an bi-l-Sunnah) .
- Linguistic and philological interpretation (tafsir al-Qur'an bi-l-lughah) .
- Clarification of difficult or ambiguous verses (bayan al-mushkil) .
- Critical selection and argumentative deduction (al-ikhtiyar wa-l-istidlal) .
- Juristic and theological inference (al-istinbat) .
- A comparative study between his approach and the Ma'ani al-Qur'an of al-Farra' (d. 207 AH / 822 CE) .
- Part Two (The Exegetical Corpus and Analysis): Gathers and analyzes al-Husayn ibn al-Fadl's statements arranged according to the standard order of the Quran, from the opening chapter through the end of the text .
Method and Sources
The author collected al-Husayn ibn al-Fadl's statements from numerous classical works of tafsir and Quranic sciences, including al-Tha'labi's al-Kashf wa-l-Bayan, al-Sam'ani's Tafsir, al-Baghawi's Ma'alim al-Tanzil, Ibn 'Atiyyah's al-Muharrar al-Wajiz, Ibn al-Jawzi's Zad al-Masir, al-Qurtubi's al-Jami' li-Ahkam al-Qur'an, Badr al-Din al-Zarkashi's al-Burhan fi 'Ulum al-Qur'an, Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti's al-Itqan, Mar'i ibn Yusuf al-Karmi's Qala'id al-Marjan fi al-Nasikh wa-l-Mansukh, and al-Shawkani's Fath al-Qadir .
For each verse studied, the author lists the existing scholarly interpretations, contextualizes and analyzes the opinion of al-Husayn ibn al-Fadl, evaluates its soundest aspects, documents the citations from primary references, and provides hadith grading and linguistic clarifications . In her comparison with al-Farra', she identified forty-two verses where both scholars generally aligned in interpretation, noting that while al-Farra' tilted heavily toward grammatical and rhetorical synthesis, al-Husayn ibn al-Fadl focused primarily on rhetorical and conceptual nuance .
Answer updated