Abd Allah ibn Abbas

ʿ Abd Allāh ibn ʿ Abbās ( عبد الله بن عباس; * 619 in Mecca, † 688 in Taif ) quoted in the tradition beings in general as Ibn ʿ Abbās, was a cousin of the Prophet Muhammad and is considered one of the oldest exegetes of the Qur'an. Because of its great importance as a religious authority he has received the nickname Habr al - umma ( " scholar of the Ummah "). Its traditions are respected by both Sunni and Shia.

Life

He was the son of Al- ʿ Abbās ibn ʿ Abd al - Muttalib ( the progenitor of the Abbasids and the youngest brother of Mohammed's father) and Umm al -Fadl Lubaba, sister of Maymuna bint al - Harith, a later wife of Mohammed. Ibn ʿ Abbās narrated many details from the life of Prophet Muhammad, although he was a small child when the Prophet died. During Uthman ibn Affan by the caliphate, he participated in the collection and editing of the Qur'an text. After taking over the caliphate by Mu ʿ āwiya I. (661), Ibn ʿ Abbās lived, retired from the political arena, in the city of Mecca. During this time, his activities are covered as a scholar, Koranexeget and issuer of legal opinions that he laid the foundation stone of the Meccan scholarship.

Koran exegesis

Ibn ʿ Abbās is known that he heranzog the verses of ancient Arab poets to explain the incomprehensible, strange word good in the Qur'an ( al -Qur ʾ ān Gharib ). On the occasion of the commentary of the word ḥaradsch ( " difficulty " ) in Sura 22:78 it is said to have expressed the principle: "If something appears as alien in the Koran, so take heed to yourselves to in poetry; because it is genuine Arabic ". The scholarly tradition handed down a catalog of 200 words Koran, Ibn ʿ Abbās their importance to have the Charidschitenführer Nafi ʿ ibn al - Azraq explained with quotations from the ancient Arabic poetry.

Ibn ʿ Abbās also worked extensively with the biblical narrative material of the Koran. Many of his observations on this point but also to other areas he referred by the Jewish converts Ka ʿ b al - Ahbar and Abd ibn Salām and generally of the Ahl al - kitab.

The koranexegetischen Ibn ʿ Abbās Posts by have been collected in later works. Has one of the most famous compositions of this type the title Tanwîr al - Tafseer Ibn ʿ Abbās Miqbâs min and the schafiitschen scholar al - Fīrūzābādī (d. 1414) attributed. As Andrew Rippin has shown in 1994, it is however a false attribution. The work must have been compiled long before al - Fīrūzābādī.

Arthur Jeffery has handed in the various sources of Ibn ʿ Abbās reading variants compiled in 1937 to document with their help, the history of the Qur'anic text.