Tafsīr — Qurʾānic Exegesis

Tafsīr is the discipline of explaining the Qurʾān — a vast literature that developed several distinct methods and reflects, in its differences, the wider divisions of Islamic thought.

At a glance

Scholars traditionally divide exegesis into two broad approaches. Tafsīr bi-l-maʾthūr interprets the Qurʾān through transmitted material — other verses, reports from the Prophet ﷺ and the early community — and is exemplified by the monumental commentary of al-Ṭabarī (d. 923), which gathers and weighs the inherited reports. Tafsīr bi-l-raʾy interprets through disciplined reasoning, grammar and theology; here the tradition warns against unrestrained personal opinion while accepting principled scholarly judgement.

Beyond that division, commentaries cluster by emphasis and school. Grammatical and rhetorical tafsīr foregrounds language; legal tafsīr (aḥkām al-Qurʾān), such as al-Qurṭubī's, mines the text for rulings; theological tafsīr reflects its author's kalām, as al-Zamakhsharī's celebrated but Muʿtazilī-inflected commentary does; and mystical or "allusive" tafsīr (ishārī) reads the verses for inner meanings, a mode developed in Sufi circles. Each is attributed to its tradition rather than treated as the single correct reading.

The Shiʿi exegetical tradition shares much of this apparatus but gives weight to interpretations transmitted from the Imams; classical works such as al-Ṭūsī's al-Tibyān and al-Ṭabrisī's Majmaʿ al-Bayān are widely respected across sectarian lines for their learning. In the modern period, further approaches — thematic, reformist and socially engaged tafsīr — have joined the older ones, so that the interpretation of the Qurʾān remains, as it has always been, a plural and living science.

Related in Chronicle

Curated reference on Islamic belief and thought. On matters where traditions differ, positions are attributed rather than adjudicated; verify points of doctrine with qualified scholars.