Tafseer Jalalayn – Jalal ad-Din al-Maḥalli, Jalal ad-Din as-Suyuti

Introduction to Tafsīr al-Jalālayn

The fifteenth-century Qur’anic commentary or Tafsīr of ‘the two Jalāls’ (al-Jalālayn) — the Egyptian Shafi‘i-madhhab scholar Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Aḥmad al-Maḥallī (d. 864 AH / 1459 CE), and his (also Egyptian) student the famous ‘ālim and polymath, Jalāl al-Dīn ‘Abd al-Raḥmān b. Abī Bakr al-Suyūṭī (d. 911AH / 1505 CE) — is one of the most popular Tafsīrs in the Islamic world, perhaps even the most popular Tafsīr. Copies of it are available in almost every bookshop and library in the Arab and Islamic world, in dozens of different editions, and it sits, well-loved and respected, in countless homes, schools and mosques all over the world. Moreover, of the great Sunni Orthodox Classical Tafsīrs — what might be called the ‘unofficial Sunni Canon’ of Tafsīr — namely, the Tafsīrs of Ṭabarī, Rāzī, Qurṭubī, Bayḍāwī, Ibn Kathīr and Jalālayn, it is by far the shortest and easiest to read and understand. Consequently, it is invariably read as an introduction to Classical Tafsīrs — or even to Tafsīr as such — such that for millions of students and adults who never go further into the subject, it is the only Tafsīr they ever come to know extensively. Finally, because it is so accessible and ubiquitous, and because in Arabic it is always printed in a single volume, in the margins of the Qur’an itself (where it fits quite easily and legibly), it is habitually used as an instant reference work for words in the Qur’an whose meaning is not immediately clear to the modern reader, and this arguably is its real forte. It is thus an immensely successful and influential work not just as the classic introduction to Tafsīr, but also as the standard reference work for the language of the Qur’an.