A Peculiar Statement by Nouman Ali Khan Regarding the Tafsir

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Finally, a remark regarding a statement concerning the Tafsir of at-Tabari. Nouman Ali Khan is, in and of himself, someone who, among other things, processes useful information from the Tafsir for a large audience and also engages with the language of the Qur'an. It is therefore initially bewildering that such a person claims about the well-known Tafsir scholar at-Tabari that he was merely a chronicler (Mu'arrikh), a historian who simply compiled everything – regardless of how nonsensical – and whose narrations could not be taken seriously. The Tafsir of at-Tabari, he claims, is merely a collection of all sorts of stories that are by no means authentic.

One wonders how a person can, on the one hand, appear as someone who possesses a certain knowledge of the Tafsir sciences, but then make such a statement about at-Tabari and his Tafsir, which constitutes one of the most significant works of Qur'anic exegesis. Anyone who wishes to study the Tafsir cannot avoid the Tafsir of at-Tabari – even if this does not please some people because they do not understand the contents of this Tafsir and the methodology of its author⁶. All authors in the field of Tafsir after at-Tabari inevitably drew from his work. Whoever, therefore, disparages the Tafsir of at-Tabari in such a manner before a broad public can have no awareness whatsoever of the significance of this Tafsir.

In general, it must be said that the Tafsir sciences in particular are highly complex. Gaining a good overview requires a long time and intensive engagement – especially with the foundations of this discipline (Usulu t-Tafsir) and the methodologies of the Mufassirin (Manahiju l-Mufassirin). And whoever makes such a statement without reservation cannot possibly demonstrate a well-founded knowledge in these areas.

Such an approach – speaking without well-founded knowledge about such complex subjects and renowned personalities of early Islamic history – is reminiscent of the Qussas, that is, those storytellers who were in the vast majority of cases rejected by the early scholars because they narrated all manner of things without well-founded knowledge in order to captivate people and gain their attention. It is people who proceed in such a manner, therefore, who rather deserve such a description as was made by Nouman Ali Khan, not someone like at-Tabari.

Here, too, it must be pointed out once again that such ideas were of course not developed for the first time somewhere in the non-Arab world. These are, once again, ideas that have been circulating in the Arab world for some time. Anyone who has insight into the contemporary literature on the Tafsir sciences will find therein precisely such statements that attest to the complete lack of understanding on the part of the respective authors. Particularly with regard to the Tafsir of at-Tabari, one encounters statements that display an incredible disregard for this Tafsir and for the narrated Tafsir of the Salaf (at-Tafsiru l-ma'thur) in general. The authors of such books have entirely failed to understand the objectives of at-Tabari or other scholars of Tafsir, which is why many statements by such well-known authors of Tafsir then appear to them as entirely meaningless.