Wikipedia:Tafsir Ibn Kathir

Tafsir al-Qur'an al-'Azeem (تفسير القرآن العظيم), also known as Tafsir Ibn Kathir, is a tafsir by the 14th century Islamic scholar, exegete, muhaddith, and historian Ibn Kathir.

Background
tafsir Ibn Kathir references other verses of the Qur'an in its commentary. The work references hadith and the opinions of the companions of the Prophet and the tabi'un. His work frequently quotes the early Muslim scholars Qatadah, Mujahid, Ikrimah, as well as later writers Muhammad Ibn Jareer al-Tabari and Sufyan al-Thawri.

Features
tafsir 'Ibn Kathir may be regarded as a summary of Tafsir al-Tabari. The method adopted by Ibn Kathir is exegesis by narrations, that is, under every verse he has first described a summary of its exegesis, then he mentions whatever narrations and reports are available from Muhammad or the Companions or their followers to explain its various words or sentences. But the earlier commentators viz. Al-Tabari, Ibn Mardawayh, Ibn Majah, etc who had followed this method only undertook the compiling of those narrations but they did not scrutinise them. Since Ibn Kathir was also an eminent Muhaddith apart from being a commentator, and was well versed in the art of criticism and review, he has done away with those weak and Mawḍū narrations that were being transmitted by earlier commentators and, he has warned about relying on weak narrations. For instance, see volume l, page 77, 213, volume 3, pages 17 to 21, 24 to 89, volume 4, page 508, 519, 520, etc. The books on Exegesis by narrations are mostly full of Isra'iliyyats. The author is extremely cautious in treating these citations and his approach is clean and based on the Qur'an and Ahadeeth. Its detail has already been given under the heading Isra'iliyyats in his own words. Hence, his first approach is that he has not cited many Isra'ili narrations, and if he has done so, he has defined them as Isra'ili narrations. For instance, in Surah as Sawffat he has quoted some reports that indicate that the sacrifice offered related to Ibraheem's son Is'haq but he has immediately, clarified: Allah knows better but apparently all these narrations have been reported by Ka'b al-Ahbar in these reports all sorts of things, good and bad, were collected and this Ummah does not need a single word of all those things. (volume 4. page 17) Anyhow, from the narrative point of view tafsir Ibn Kathir is the most cautious and reliable exegesis. But this does not mean that every narration quoted in this exegesis is correct. At some places the author has also quoted weak reports without indicating their weakness. For example, while explaining the Ayat of Surah At-Tawbah, he has quoted a report from Tha'labah that is weak according to the Muhadditheen. (volume 2, page 374) Apart from this, he has also cited many sayings of 'weak' commentators, namely Muqawtil. Kalbi, 'Atiyyah 'Aufi, etc. But generally he has quoted without comment only those sayings which are not against any Islamic tenet. Hence, they are not of an authentic nature but only a commentator's own statement.

Translations and editions
The famous Hanafi exegete Muhammad Ali al-Sabuni summarised the tafsir in 3 volumes.

Sayyid Anzar Shah Kashmiri, the youngest son of Sayyid Muhammad Anwar Shah Kashmiri, has written footnotes to the Urdu translation of Tafsir Ibn Kathir, using Ashraf Ali Thanwi's Urdu translation of the Qur'an.

Professor Mawlana Akhtar Farooq translated the tafsir into Bengali in 1988, along with its introductory book Fada'il al-Qur'an in 11 volumes.

Dr. Muhammad Mahdi Al-Sharif translated the unabridged version of the tafsir as Exegesis of the Grand Holy Qur'an published by Darul Kutub Al-'Ilmiyyah, Lebanon in 2006.

A second unabridged English translation is in progress by Mawlana Ameen Kholwadiyah, the director of Darul Qasim in Glendale Heights suburb, Chicago, USA. Only two volumes have been published so far.

In 2005, Jordanian Salafi scholar Muhammad bin Musa Al-Nasr published an abridged Arabic version of the tafsir that removed weak hadith and Isra'iliyyat traditions. Tafsir Ibn Kathir has been translated into many languages including Indonesian, Bengali, English, French, Turkish, German and Urdu. A Bengali translation was done by Dr. Mujeebur-Rawhmaan.

An Urdu translation was prepared by Muhammad Junagarhi.

In 2000, Darussalam Publishers published an abridged version of Tafsir Ibn Kathir translated by Saifur-Rahman al-Mubarakpuri and a team of scholars. The version of Tafsir Ibn Kathir edited and translated by al-Mubarakpuri has become popular among English-speaking Muslims because of its simplicity and a dearth of English language tafsir.

In 2006, 11 Muslim scholars translated the commentary into Swahili.