Tafsir al-Haddad al-Matbu Khata bi-Ism al-Tafsir al-Kabir lil-Tabarani
- Author died
- 800 AH
- Editions
- Dār al-Kitāb al-Thaqāfī
Tafsir al-Haddad al-Matbu Khata bi-Ism al-Tafsir al-Kabir lil-Tabarani (The Commentary of al-Haddad Mistakenly Printed Under the Name of al-Tafsir al-Kabir by al-Tabarani) refers to the Quran commentary properly titled Kashf al-Tanzil fi Tahqiq al-Mabahith wa-al-Ta'wil by the Yemeni Hanafi scholar Abu Bakr al-Haddad (d. 800 AH / 1398 CE), which was erroneously published as the lost commentary of the early hadith master Abu al-Qasim al-Tabarani (260–360 AH / 873–971 CE) .
Misattribution and Controversy
In 1429 AH, Dar al-Kitab al-Thaqafi in Jordan published the work in six volumes under the title al-Tafsir al-Kabir: Tafsir al-Qur'an al-'Azim, attributed to al-Tabarani and edited by Hisham ibn 'Abd al-Karim al-Badrani . The editor relied exclusively on a single manuscript preserved at the National and University Library of Strasbourg (MS 4174), copied in 964 AH, whose scribe had written on the title page: "This is the book of commentary of... the venerable Shaykh al-Tabarani al-Kabir" .
Quranic researchers rejected the attribution to al-Tabarani because the prose style and methodological framework did not match the third- and fourth-century scholarly era or al-Tabarani's known works . The text contains explicit quotations from scholars who lived centuries after al-Tabarani's death, including Abu al-Tayyib Sahl ibn Muhammad al-'Ijli (d. 404 AH), Abu Ishaq al-Tha'labi (d. 427 AH), Abu Mansur al-Tha'alibi (d. 430 AH), and the Hanafi jurist 'Abd al-Samad al-Ghaznawi (d. 723 AH) . In attempting to resolve these anachronisms, the editor excised some citations from the text or dismissed them in the apparatus as scribal interpolations, in one instance removing ten consecutive lines .
Prior to establishing the definitive authorship, researchers debated the origins of the Strasbourg manuscript: Ibrahim Bajis 'Abd al-Karim suggested it was Tafsir al-Fuqaha' by 'Abd al-Samad al-Ghaznawi, while Bashar 'Awwad Ma'ruf identified it broadly as the work of a late Hanafi scholar . Later comparative analysis by Nayif ibn Sa'id al-Zahrani demonstrated that the text matched Abu Bakr al-Haddad's commentary verbatim across multiple surahs .
Content and Authentic Editions
The commentary is an established work by Abu Bakr al-Haddad, a prominent Hanafi jurist in Zabid, and is also cited in historical bibliographies as Kashf al-Tanzil fi Tahqiq al-Ta'wil and Kashf al-Tanzil 'an Tahqiq al-Ta'wil .
The authentic work was prepared by Muhammad Ibrahim Yahya as a doctoral dissertation at Mohammed V University in Rabat in 1411 AH and subsequently published by Dar al-Madar al-Islami in 1424 AH in seven volumes of text accompanied by an eighth volume dedicated to an introductory study . This edition was established on the basis of three manuscript copies, the third being the same Strasbourg manuscript that had later been misidentified .
Answer updated