The Institute of Asian and African Studies

The Max Schloessinger Memorial Foundation

Oprint from

JERUSALEM STUDIES IN
ARABIC AND ISLAM

31(2006)

Harald Motzki
Dating the so-called Tafsr Ibn ,Abbas :
some additional remarks

THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM

THE FACULTY OF HUMANITIES
JSAI 31 (2006)

DATING THE SO-CALLED  IBN

TAFSIR
,  :
ABBAS SOME ADDITIONAL REMARKS

Harald Motzki

Radboud University, Nijmegen

The commentary called Tafsr Ibn ,Abbas or Tanwr al-miqbas min Tafsr
Ibn ,Abbas 1 ascribed to Muh.ammad b. al-Sa-ib al-Kalb (d. 146/ 763)
was for a long time considered to be early. More than a decade ago,
however, Andrew Rippin convincingly showed that it is neither a work
edited by al-Fruzabad (d. 817/1414) nor the Tafsr of Muh.ammad al-
Kalb (,an Ibn ,Abbas), but a work entitled Kitab al-Wad.ih. f tafsr
al-Qur -an written in the second half of the 3rd /9th or at the beginning
of the 4th /10th century.2 Yet some questions remain. Is ,Abd Allah
b. Muh.ammad al-Dnawar really the author of Kitab al-Wad.ih. as Rippin
suggests? His conclusion that \there is some relationship between" Kitab
al-Wadih. and \the tafsr of al-Kalb but that, most certainly, the two
works are not the same"3 is surely correct. Yet is this all that can be said
about the relationship between the two works of which the latter seems
to have survived only in scattered quotations found in later sources?4
Finally, are the methods of dating that Rippin suggests for dating early
tafsr texts reliable? These three questions will be dealt with in this
article.

Who is the author?

Following Brockelmann and Sezgin,5 Rippin maintains that the author of

al-Wad.ih. f tafsr al-Qur -an is Abu Muh.ammad ,Abd Allah b. Muh.am-
1 Tanwr al-miqb
as min Tafsr Ibn ,Abbas (Beirut, 1987).
2 See Rippin, \Tafsr Ibn ,Abbas." See, however, the opinions of Josef van Ess
Theologie und Gesellschaft, vol. 1, pp. 300{302, and of Scholler, \Sra and Tafsr,"
pp. 42{44, who continue to see in it a valuable source for al-Kalb's exegesis or, at
least, for the exegesis of his time.
3 Rippin, \Tafsr Ibn ,Abb as," p. 56.
4 Scholler, \Sra and Tafsr," pp. 18{48, esp. 20{22.
5 See Rippin, \Tafsr Ibn ,Abb as," p. 47. Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen
Litteratur, vol. 1, p. 204, Suppl. vol. 1, p. 334; Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen
Schrifttums, vol. 1, p. 42.

147
148 Harald Motzki

mad b. Wahb al-Dnawar (d. 308/920), a well-known Sunn scholar.6

In the manuscripts and editions, however, the name is given as Abu
Muh.ammad ,Abd Allah b. al-Mubarak al-Dnawar.7 The dierent name
of the father indicates that the two are not the same person. Josef van
Ess has already argued that they are not identical and that the author
of al-Wad.ih. is not ,Abd Allah b. Muh.ammad al-Dnawar.8 Rippin men-
tions van Ess' study, but rejects his opinion with the remark that \van
Ess did not compare the isnad s of the printed editions of the text."9 We
can infer from Rippin's remark that his own identication of the author
and his dating of al-Wad.ih. is derived from the isnad s contained in the
manuscripts and the printed editions of the text, although in his article
he argues in favour of an approach to dating that must essentially be
based on literary criteria rather than on isnad s.10 Reading Rippin's lit-
erary analysis of al-Wad.ih., one becomes aware of the problems caused
by his approach.
The literary analysis of the rst Sura that Rippin presents does
not help to date the commentary with any precision. Being aware of
the fact that \literary elements by themselves can provide no historical
data," Rippin proposes to compare those elements \with other works
of known dating" in order to date them.11 At rst glance this seems
a viable solution to the problem, but one must ask on which criteria
the \known dating" of other works is based. Are they merely literary
criteria that Rippin prefers for dating texts (books) or are they isnad s
and biographical information that are considered suspect by sceptical
6 See his biography in, e.g., al-Dhahab, Tadhkirat al-hu
. a.z, vol. 2, 754{756; id.,
Mzan al-i ,tidal f naqd al-rijal, vol. 2, pp. 494{495. Al-Dhahab's assessment of him
as a h.adth scholar is rather negative.
7 The full name is not always given. He was assumed to be the author of al-W ad.ih.
by van Ess already before the publication of Rippin's article. See van Ess, Ungenutzte
Texte zur Karramya, pp. 50{52. Claude Gilliot followed van Ess in his article \Les
debuts de l'exegese coranique," p. 87, but adopted Rippin's view in \Exegesis of the
Qur-an: Classical and Medieval," p. 104.
8 Van Ess, Ungen utzte Texte, p. 51.
9 Rippin, \Tafsr Ibn ,Abbas," p. 48, note 29. Van Ess' discussion of ,Abd Allah
b. al-Mubarak al-Dnawar is based, on the one hand, on an anonymous and untitled
Qur-anic commentary (MS British Library Or. 8049) dated by van Ess to around
400/1009-10 and, on the other hand, on a manuscript of al-Wad.ih. (MS Aya Sofya
221{222). In Theologie und Gesellschaft, vol. 4, p. 742, van Ess notes with regret
that Rippin in his article does not go into the problems mentioned in Ungenutzte
Texte. However, van Ess ignores Rippin's nding that the putative Tafsr of al-Kalb
that Wansbrough analysed in Quranic Studies is not a real recension of al-Kalb's
Tafsr, but a version of al-Dnawar's al-Wad.ih. (Theologie und Gesellschaft, vol. 1,
pp. 300, 302). Van Ess' characterization of the latter (\Er schliet sich eng an Kalb
an"), although correct, does not depict the actual character of the work.
10 Rippin, \Tafsr Ibn ,Abbas," pp. 61{62.
11 Ibid., p. 69.
 Dating the so-called Tafsr Ibn ,Abbas 149

scholars?12 The commentaries that Rippin uses for comparison, such as

the Tafsr of Muqatil, al-Farra-'s Ma ,an al-Qur -an, al-T.abar's Jami ,
al-bayan and al-Wah.id's (d. 468/1075{6) al-Wajz,13 are not preserved
as autographs. The ascription of these works to their authors is based
on isnad s (riwayas ) and transmitted biographical information. Rippin
does not deal with the problem this poses for his approach. Besides, his
comparison of al-Wad.ih. with these commentaries does not necessarily
lead to a date around 300/912{3. On the basis of literary criteria it
could be dated to the rst half of the 3rd /9th century just as well as to
the rst half of the 5th /11th or even to the 9th /15th centuries. There
seems to be no option but to fall back on other evidence. Hence in order
to date al-Wad.ih. more precisely, Rippin needs to identify and date its
author.14
This insight leads us back to the question of how Rippin arrives at
the identication of the author of al-Wad.ih. as ,Abd Allah b. Muh.ammad
al-Dnawar. Since he does not explain his choice, we can only speculate
about his procedure. He probably searched through the biographical
dictionaries for the name of the author and found several persons with a
similar name. In order to choose between them he needed a rough idea
about when the author lived. An approximate date could be gained from
the isnad s of Tafsr Ibn ,Abbas. In his remark on van Ess' discussion of
al-Wad.ih. and its author, mentioned above, Rippin hints that he himself
used the isnad s for this purpose. A key transmitter of the isnad s is
,Al b. Ish.aq al-H.anz.al al-Samarqand, whose date of death (237/852)
is found in the biographical sources. According to some of the isnad s,
al-Dnawar lived two generations later.15 Hence a dating of around 300
would be reasonable.16 Since in the biographical sources Rippin could
not nd a scholar called ,Abd Allah b. al-Mubarak who tted that date,17
he seems to have thought that ,Abd Allah b. Muh.ammad al-Dnawar
must be the author of al-Wad.ih. because he died in 308/920 and also
had the kunya Abu Muh.ammad, which is mentioned together with the
12 See Berg, The Development of Exegesis, pp. 136 f, 219 .
13 Ibid., pp. 69{70.
14 The possibility of later editing and glossing is a separate question.
15 ,Amm ar b. ,Abd al-Majd and/or al-Ma-mun b. Ahmad are given as transmitters
.
between ,Al b. Ish.aq and ,Abd Allah b. al-Mubarak al-Dnawar. See Rippin, \Tafsr
Ibn ,Abbas," Appendix 2.
16 This conclusion can be drawn by consulting one of the manuscripts, e.g., Aya
Sofya 221{222, as van Ess has done. The editions of Tafsr Ibn ,Abbas do not help
because in their isnad s ,Abd Allah b. al-Mubarak is either not found or found only
in isnad fragments that vary from the isnad s given in the manuscripts and that are
probably abbreviated; see below.
17 As Rippin notes (ibid., p. 48), ,Abd All ah b. al-Mubarak and his work are only
found in Muh.ammad al-Dawud's (d. 945/1539), T.abaqat al-mufassirn but no further
information about author and work is given there.
150 Harald Motzki

name ,Abd Allah b. al-Mubarak in some versions of the commentary. All

in all, this procedure of identifying the author and of dating the work
contradicts Rippin's own rule that the dating of a work should not be
based on isnad s, a method of dating incompatible with the \sceptical
approach."
Be that as it may, there are several reasons for agreeing with Rippin's
dating of the author, but for doubting his identication of him as ,Abd
Allah b. Muh.ammad al-Dnawar. Let us start with the doubts. First,
a problem is that in the biographical sources ,Abd Allah b. Muh.ammad
al-Dnawar is not known as a mufassir or author of a tafsr.18 Second,
van Ess argues that ,Abd Allah b. al-Mubarak al-Dnawar belonged to
a circle of scholars known or suspected to be followers of Ibn Karram
(d. 255/869), an ascetic from Sijistan whose teachings had been con-
demned as heretical.19 ,Al b. Ish.aq al-H.anz.al is said to have been a
teacher of Ibn Karram.20 ,Al b. Ish.aq's pupil, Ma-mun b. Ah.mad, is
likely to have been a follower and important missionary of Ibn Karram.
According to the isnad s of the manuscripts of al-Wad.ih. preserved in
Leiden and Istanbul, (al-)Mah.mud b. Ah.mad21 and ,Ammar b. ,Abd al-
Majd, both of whom originated from Herat, were teachers of ,Abd Allah
b. al-Mubarak al-Dnawar.22 They are not found among the teachers
of ,Abd Allah b. Muh.ammad b. Wahb al-Dnawar mentioned in bio-
graphical sources or in isnad s containing his name.23 Nowhere is ,Abd
Allah b. Muh.ammad suspected of heretical ideas. Thirdly, when the
sources mention the commentary al-Wad.ih., ,Abd Allah b. al-Mubarak
al-Dnawar is always given as the author, not ,Abd Allah b. Muh.ammad
al-Dnawar.24
18 This has already been noted by van Ess, Ungen utzte Texte, p. 50.
19 See ibid. and Bosworth, \Karr
amiyya," pp. 667{669.
20 The sources are given by van Ess, Ungenutzte Texte, p. 48, note 197.
21 Massignon and van Ess are probably right in assuming that the Mah.mud
b. Ah.mad al-Sulam mentioned in ,Umar al-Samarqand's Kitab Rawnaq al-qulub is
the Mah.mud b. Ah.mad in ,Abd Allah b. al-Mubarak al-Dnawar's isnad s; Ungenutzte
Texte, pp. 31, 48{50. For the exegesis of the Karramites see Gilliot, \L'exegese du
Coran en Asie Centrale et au Khorasan," p. 146 and id., \Les sciences coraniques
chez les Karramites du Khorasan."
22 See van Ess, Ungen utzte Texte, pp. 50{51; Rippin, \Tafsr Ibn ,Abbas," Appendix
2.
23 I have found six isnad s containing his name in mostly Sunn sources but also in
a Sh, one. ,Abd Allah b. al-Mubarak al-Dnawar's teachers do not appear in any
of them.
24 This is the case in a) the introduction of al-Tha,lab's (d. 427/1035) commentary
al-Kashf wa-l-bayan (see Rippin, \Tafsr Ibn ,Abbas," p. 48, based on Isaiah Goldfeld,
Qur -anic commentary in the eastern Islamic tradition of the rst four centuries of
the hijra: An annotated edition of the preface to al-Tha ,lab's \Kitab al-kashf wa
'l-bayan ,an tafsr al-Qur -an" [Acre, 1984]. This has been noted already by van Ess,
who quotes Rieu, Catalogue British Museum. See van Ess, Ungenutzte Texte, p. 51;
 Dating the so-called Tafsr Ibn ,Abbas 151

Now I come to the reasons why I think that Rippin's dating of the
author is correct. There are exegetical traditions in which ,Abd Allah
b. al-Mubarak al-Dnawar is mentioned as a transmitter in isnad s that
do not agree with those given in the dierent versions of al-Wad.ih. (Tafsr
Ibn ,Abbas ). This may indicate that he also transmitted (or scholars
transmitted from him) exegetical traditions independent of al-Wad.ih..
According to van Ess' description of manuscript British Library Or. 8049,
an anonymous exegetical work probably compiled around the turn of the
4th /10th century, the sources used by the anonymous author25 (or his
father, Abu Muh.ammad al-Haraw) are referred to by 17 isnad s that all
end with the names al-Kalb | Abu S.alih. | Ibn ,Abbas. Five of the
chains go back to ,Abd Allah b. al-Mubarak al-Dnawar via the author's
father and then via al-H.asan b. Ja,far al-Zawah.26 Three of these ve
chains give names of teachers of al-Dnawar that are also found in the
isnad s of al-Wad.ih. (Ma-mun b. Ah.mad and ,Ammar b. ,Abd al-Majd).
This leads van Ess to conclude that the author of the manuscript used
al-Wad.ih. as a source.27 It seems that this conclusion is only based on
the isnad s since van Ess does not mention that he compared the content
of the passages ascribed to al-Dnawar in the British Library manuscript
with al-Wad.ih.. Yet the fact that two of the isnad s give al-H.asan b. ,Al
b. Bishr al-Malin as al-Dnawar's informant, a name not found in the
isnad s of al-Wad.ih., suggests that the material may not be or may be
only partially derived from al-Wad.ih.. It is also conspicuous that only
one of the isnad s of al-Malin goes further back to ,Al b. Ish.aq, as is the
case in the chains of al-Wad.ih.; the other isnad goes to Yusuf b. Bilal, an
important transmitter of Tafsr al-Kalb as we shall see below. If these
pieces of exegesis ascribed to ,Abd Allah b. al-Mubarak al-Dnawar do
not derive from al-Wad.ih., from where could they have come? The most
obvious answer is that they are part of al-Dnawar's transmissions of
Tafsr al-Kalb since this is what the isnad s suggest.
There is more evidence available for the supposition that al-Dnawar
was not only the author of al-Wad.ih. but that he also transmitted al-
Kalb's Tafsr. Rippin has shown that the introduction to al-Wad.ih.
contained in the Leiden manuscript 1651 mentions that al-Dnawar's
most important source for his concise commentary was al-Kalb's more

b) in the much later History of Nishapur by ,Abd al-Ghar al-Faris (ibid., p. 52) and
in al-Dawud's T.abaqat al-mufassirn (ibid. and Rippin, \Tafsr Ibn ,Abbas," p. 48).
For Tha,lab and his Kashf see also Gilliot, \L'exegese du Coran," pp. 139f.
25 Van Ess, Ungen utzte Texte, pp. 54{55, surmises that he could be Ibrahm b. Ish.aq
al-Ghaznaw.
26 See van Ess, Ungen utzte Texte, pp. 43{46.
27 Van Ess, Ungen utzte Texte, p. 51.
152 Harald Motzki

detailed Tafsr in the riwaya of Yusuf b. Bilal.28 This means that he

must also have known and perhaps even transmitted this Tafsr. This
is in agreement with the isnad contained in the anonymous exegetical
work described by van Ess in which the exegesis of al-Kalb is quoted
via al-Dnawar from Yusuf b. Bilal.29 We also learn from al-Tha,lab's
(d. 427/1035) introduction to his commentary al-Kashf wa-l-bayan and
from H.ajj Khalfah's (d. 1067/1657) Kashf al-z.unun that Yusuf b. Bilal
was an important transmitter of al-Kalb's Tafsr.30

The relationship between al-W

ad. ih 's Tafs
. and al-Kalb r

The concrete relationship between al-Wad.ih. and the Tafsr of al-Kalb

can be described more exactly by comparing passages of al-Wad.ih. with
quotations from al-Kalb's Tafsr found in Muslim scholarly literature.
Two examples will be given to illustrate that point.
1) An instance of al-Kalb's exegesis is found in Zad al-masr f
,ilm al-tafs
r, written by the famous H.anbal scholar ,Abd al-Rah.man
b. ,Al known as Ibn al-Jawz (d. 597/1200).31 He quotes al-Kalb
among numerous other mufassirun : Muqatil, Ibn al-Anbar, al-Farra-,
al-,Awf ,an Ibn ,Abbas, al-H.asan (al-Bas.r), Mujahid, Sa,d b. Jubayr
,an Ibn ,Abb as, ,Ikrima, Qatada, ,Abd al-Rah.man b. Zayd, al-Kisa-,
Abu Ubayda and Ibn Jurayj ,an Mujahid. As far as I can see, Ibn
,

al-Jawz's quotations of their exegetical opinions are in agreement with

what is preserved of their exegesis by earlier authors such as al-T.abar,
or in the transmissions of the works ascribed to them, like the works of
Muqatil, Abu ,Ubaydah, al-Farra- and al-Kisa-. Hence we can assume
that Ibn al-Jawz also quotes al-Kalb from a work known to him as
transmitting the latter's exegesis. The text deals with Qur-an 15:90{91
and is as follows:
Ibn al-Sa-ib said: They are a group of the people of Mecca.
They spread out (iqtasamu ) on the passes of Mecca when
28 Rippin, \Tafsr Ibn ,Abb
as," p. 55; van Ess, Ungenutzte Texte, p. 53, note 222.
29 Isn
ad IX of van Ess' list in Ungenutzte Texte, p. 45.
30 Rippin, \Tafsr Ibn ,Abb
as," pp. 54, 55; van Ess, Ungenutzte Texte, p. 53. For the
dierent riwaya s through which al-Kalb's Tafsr has been transmitted see Goldfeld,
\The Tafsr," pp. 132{135. Van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft, vol. 1, p. 299, notes
that al-Kalb's Tafsr in the riwaya of Yusuf b. Bilal is also quoted by the Sh,
author Ibn T.awus (d. 664/1266) in his Kitab Sa ,d al-su ,ud. Yusuf b. Bilal is also
mentioned as transmitter of al-Kalb's Tafsr in Ibn Makula, al-Ikmal, vol. 7, p. 78.
The transmitter of his version of al-Kalb's Tafsr quoted here is Ah.mad b. Isma,l
b. Jibra-l b. Fl who died in 333/944{5 at the age of 82.
31 Ibn al-Jawz, Z ad al-masr, vol. 4, p. 305.
 Dating the so-called Tafsr Ibn ,Abbas 153

the time of the h.ajj festival (mawsim ) had come. Al-Wald

b. al-Mughrah said to them: \Start out and spread out (ta-
farraqu ) on the passes of Mecca where the visitors of the
festival will pass you. When they ask you about him, i.e. the
messenger of God, then some of you must say: `a soothsayer,'
some of you: `a sorcerer,' some of you: `a poet,' and some
of you: `a seducer (ghawin ).' And then come back to your
comrades!"32 To them [this group] belonged: H.anz.ala b. Ab
Sufyan, ,Utba and Shayba, the sons of Rab,a, al-Wald b. al-
Mughra, Abu Jahl, al-,As . b. Hisham, Abu Qays b. al-Wald,
Qays b. al-Fakih, Zuhayr b. Ab Umayya, Hilal b. ,Abd al-
Aswad, al-Sa-ib b. S.ayf, al-Nad.r b. al-H.arith, Abu Bakhtar
b. Hisham, Zama,ah b. al-H.ajjaj, Umayya b. Khalaf, and
Aws b. al-Mughra.
This is a version of the story about al-Wald b. al-Mughra's advice
to the Quraysh of which variants are transmitted from Ibn Ish.aq and
Muqatil.33 It is more similar to Muqatil's variant, but is much shorter.
Since both texts vary considerably it is not reasonable to assume that
al-Kalb received his version from Muqatil or the other way around. It
seems more probable that both derived their story from a common source
that can be approximately dated to the turn of the 1st /7th century.34
The text found in the so-called Tafsr Ibn ,Abbas (or Tafsr al-Kalb
,an Ibn ,Abb as or Tanwr al-miqbas min tafsr Ibn ,Abbas ) diers from
this putative fragment of al-Kalb's exegesis. Commenting on verse 90
it says:
kama anzalna (as we sent down) on the day [the battle] of
Badr ,ala l-muqtasimn (on the partitioners) the comrades
of the pass (,aqaba ). They are: Abu Jahl, Ibn Hisham, al-
Wald b. al-Mughra al-Makhzum, H.anz.ala b. Ab Sufyan,
,Utba and Shayba, the sons of Rab ,a and all their comrades
who were killed on the day [i.e., in the battle] of Badr.
Verse 91 is explained by:
alladhna ja ,alu l-Qur -an ,id.n (those who made the Qur-an
into bits) they said about the Qur-an dierent things (say-
ings). Some of them said: \sorcery," some of them said:
32 I read suhbatikum instead of sadaqatikum.
. . .
aq, Srat Rasul Allah, pp. 171{172. Ibn
33 Ibn Ish
. Ish.aq, Sra, pp. 131{132 (no. 196).
On this version see also H. Berg, \Competing Paradigms," pp. 273{274, and Motzki,
\The Origins of Muslim Exegesis." Muqatil, Tafsr, vol. 2, pp. 437{438. On this
version see Motzki, op. cit.
34 See Motzki, op. cit.
154 Harald Motzki

\poetry," some of them said: \soothsaying," some of them

said: \legends of the ancients," and some of them said: \lie,"
inventing it of their own accord.
Comparing these texts with the quotation from al-Kalb's exegesis
preserved by Ibn al-Jawz it becomes obvious that the so-called Tafsr
Ibn ,Abbas is not a recension of al-Kalb's original exegesis (or what
was transmitted as that) but, at best, a summary of it. Yet there are
also dierences between the texts that suggest that the author of Tafsr
Ibn ,Abbas did not limit himself to summarizing al-Kalb's text, but
also changed it and added notions derived from other sources. Al-Kalb
related the sayings of the Quraysh to Muh.ammad. His text has \a sooth-
sayer, a sorcerer" etc. This corresponds to the stories transmitted by Ibn
Ish.aq and Muqatil. The author of Tafsr Ibn ,Abbas, however, reproduces
it as \soothsaying, sorcery," relating it to the Qur-an itself. With this
slight change the story better ts the verse, which does not speak about
Muh.ammad but about people who did something with the Qur-an. The
author of Tafsr Ibn ,Abbas mentions \legends of the ancients" and \lie,"
which are not found in al-Kalb's text. The former expression is found in
Sa,d b. Ab ,Aruba's transmission from Qatada and in that of Ibn Wahb
from Yazd.35 The notion of \lie" is found in Muqatil's story about al-
Wald's advice where Muh.ammad is called a \liar."36 According to the
exegesis of Tafsr Ibn ,Abbas, it is the punishment of \the partitioners"
taking place in the battle of Badr that God \sent down". This is ex-
ceptional and in early commentaries it is only found in that of al-Farra-,
who seems to base himself on Muqatil or al-Kalb or on a version of their
common source. Possibly this was already al-Kalb's interpretation, but
the fragment quoted by Ibn al-Jawz does not contain it. According to
most early exegetes, however, it is a revelation or a revealed scripture
that has been \sent down."
The result of the comparison between a fragment of al-Kalb's puta-
tive exegesis and the so-called Tafsr Ibn ,Abbas corroborates Rippin's
view that the latter is a commentary in its own right, which was com-
piled some time after al-Kalb. The author uses al-Kalb's exegesis but
does not conne himself to it.37 Ibn al-Jawz's quotation, on the other
35 See Berg, \Competing Paradigms," p. 274 and Motzki, \Origins of Muslim Exe-
gesis."
a- also has this; see al-Farra-, Ma ,an al-Qur -an, vol. 2, pp. 91{92. A
36 Al-Farr
translation is given in Berg, \Competing Paradigms," p. 280.
37 The author of Tafsr Ibn ,Abb as also mentions the exegesis that al-muqtasimun
means the Jews and the Christians but he connects it with verse 87 instead of 90
and does not say what their action was. Since there does not seem to be a parallel
text ascribed to al-Kalb for this interpretation, we cannot know whether it was also
taught by him or whether the author of Tafsr Ibn ,Abbas adopted it from the Kufan
 Dating the so-called Tafsr Ibn ,Abbas 155

hand, seems to be taken from the transmission of al-Kalb's exegesis and

it seems to be more original than the text given in Tafsr Ibn ,Abbas.
There is no reason to reject the ascription of the fragment to al-Kalb.
The text resembles in style and content the stories transmitted by his
contemporaries, Ibn Ish.aq and Muqatil, and is likely to be al-Kalb's
rendering of a source or sources available to the three scholars.38
2) In the Sh, source Mi -at manqaba min manaqib amr al-mu -minn
written by Muh.ammad b. Ah.mad al-Qumm (d. 412/1021{2),39 a tradi-
tion is found that is introduced by the isnad al-H.usayn b. Muh.ammad
b. Mihran al-Damighan min kitabih (from his book) | Muh.ammad
b. ,Abd Allah b. Nas.r | ,Abd Allah b. al-Mubarak al-Dnawar | al-
H.asan b. ,Al [b. Bishr al-Malin] | Muh.ammad b. ,Abd Allah b. ,Urwa
| Yusuf b. Bilal | Muh.ammad b. Marwan | [Muh.ammad b.] al-Sa-ib
[al-Kalb] | Abu S.alih. | Ibn ,Abbas. This isnad is identical to the
isnad found in the British Library manuscript mentioned above,40 ex-
cept that in the Sh, source the tradition is transmitted from al-Dnawar
by Muh.ammad b. ,Abd Allah b. Nas.r, not by al-H.asan b. Ja,far. There
are thus two isnad s that indicate that ,Abd Allah b. al-Mubarak al-
Dnawar transmitted exegetical material deriving from Tafsr al-Kalb
in the riwaya of Yusuf b. Bilal. They corroborate the statement made in
the introduction of al-Wad.ih.. This conrms van Ess' conclusion that al-
exegesis transmitted by al-A,mash from Abu Z.abyan (ascribed to Ibn ,Abbas). On
this tradition and the sources where it is found, see Berg, \Competing Paradigms,"
pp. 267, 270. One can imagine that al-Kalb, a Kufan scholar himself, knew this
exegesis as well.
38 A comparison of the variants of the story about the ve `mockers' who were
punished by God at the hand of the angel Jibrl leads to a similar result. The
versions transmitted by Ibn Ish.aq, Muqatil and al-Kalb have a similar content, but
clearly dier in structure and wording (see Ibn Ish.aq, Srat Rasul Allah, p. 272;
Muqatil, Tafsr, vol. 2, pp. 438{440; Tafsr Ibn ,Abbas, ad Qur-an 15:96). In the
three texts the ve people are dealt with in a dierent order, their names vary in
some details etc. This variation shows that the three versions are independent of
each other. On the other hand, the common elements indicate that the three texts
are based on a common source (or dierent versions of it). The version given in
Tafsr Ibn ,Abbas diers substantially from the other two and also from the variants
transmitted from Muh.ammad b. Ab Muh.ammad, Sa,d b. Jubayr, ,Ikrima, al-Sha,b,
Qatada and ,Uthman ,an Miqsam (see al-T.abar, Jami ,, vol. 14, pp. 95{97). This
supports the assumption that the text of Tafsr Ibn ,Abbas may be a summary of
al-Kalb's version of the story. The tradition mentioned by al-T.abar that al-Zuhr
(d. 124/742) was asked about the dierence that the versions of Ibn Jubayr and
,Ikrima show concerning the name of one of the ve `mockers' suggests that dierent

versions ascribed to the two scholars already circulated in al-Zuhr's time, i.e., the
rst two decades of the 2nd /8th century. Their versions are relatively short compared
to that of Muqatil. There was probably an earlier, longer story as early as the second
half of the 1st /7th century on which all the later ones are based.
39 Qum 1407/1986{7, pp. 149{150.
40 Isnad no. IX in van Ess, Ungenutzte Texte, p. 45.
156 Harald Motzki

Dnawar belonged to a circle of scholars active in the east, more precisely

in Khurasan,41 who cultivated the transmission of Tafsr al-Kalb.42
The matn of the tradition reports an event that happened during the
Prophet's mi ,raj to heaven and is aimed at explaining Qur-an 43:45. I
give a translation of it and also translate the corresponding passage of
Tafsr Ibn ,Abbas.

The h th of Mi -at manqaba

. ad

The Messenger of God (.sal ,am ) said: When He brought me

to heaven, the journey with Jibrl led me to the fourth heaven.
[There] I saw a shrine (bayt ) [made] of ruby. Jibrl said <to
me>: \<O Muh.ammad>,43 this is the populous shrine (al-
bayt al-ma ,mur )44 which God, the sublime, created 50,000
years before <the creation> of the heavens and the earth.
Rise and come to it!" The Prophet (.sal ,am ) said: <Then
God, the sublime, ordered that all messengers and prophets
assemble>. Jibrl (,alayhi salam ) put them up in a row be-
hind me and I performed the prayer with them. When <I
had nished the prayer> someone came from my Lord and
said to me: \O Muh.ammad, your Lord extends greetings to
you and says to you: `Ask the messengers for what I sent
them before you!' I said: \O ye messengers, for what did my
Lord send you before me?" The messengers said: \To assist
you (,ala wilayatika ) and to assist ,Al b. Ab T.alib (,alayhi
salam )!"45 This is [to this refers] His saying: \And ask the
messengers We sent before thee."46
The exegesis of Qur-an 45:43 in Tanwr al-miqbas min tafsr Ibn
Abbas is:
,

41 According to the isnad s of Tafsr Ibn ,Abbas and the manuscript British Library
Or. 8049, his teachers came from Herat and Malin, his pupils from Zawa, Naysabur
and Marw. Some of them were living in Samarqand where ,Al b. Ish.aq, the key
transmitter in the isnad s, also came from.
42 See van Ess, Ungen utzte Texte, pp. 50{51 and id., Theologie und Gesellschaft,
vol. 1, p. 299.
43 This type of brackets indicate additions in one of the two manuscripts.
44 The heavenly counterpart of the Ka,ba around which the angels circle, praying
every day. See Lane, Arabic-English Lexicon, s.v. ma ,mur.
45 It is possible that the mentioning of ,Al is an addition by one of the last two
transmitters who are Sh,s.
46 Qur-an 43:45.
 Dating the so-called Tafsr Ibn ,Abbas 157

fAnd ask those I sent before theeg47 O Muh.ammad fof the

messengersg like Jesus, Moses and Abraham. This [hap-
pened] in the night in which He brought him (asra bihi )
to heaven and [when] he prayed with 70 prophets such as
Abraham, Moses and Jesus. God ordered His prophet: O
Muh.ammad, ask them: fhave we appointed, apart from the
Merciful, gods to be worshipped?g
The matn of the h.adth is not identical with the exegesis of the verse
in al-Wad.ih. (Tafsr Ibn ,Abbas ), but seems to be a basic source for it. Al-
Wad.ih. summarizes the detailed text of the tradition and at the same time
elaborates on it.48 Yet al-Wad.ih. also contains exegetical views not found
in the tradition; they perhaps do not derive from al-Kalb's Tafsr, but
from earlier exegetes like Qatada and al-D.ah.h.ak.49 We cannot be sure
because the tradition may contain only a fragment of al-Kalb's exegesis
of Qur-an 43:45. The comparison of the two exegetical texts leads to a
similar conclusion as in the case of al-Kalb's exegesis of Qur-an 15:90-
91. The style of al-Kalb's exegesis diers from al-Wad.ih. (Tafsr Ibn
,Abbas).50 Rippin's assumption proves to be correct.51 Hence, not only
the isnad but also the text of this tradition corroborate the statement
made in the introduction of al-Dnawar's al-Wad.ih. about the relation
between his commentary and Tafsr al-Kalb.

47 This type of brackets indicates the elements of the Qur- anic verse commentated
upon.
48 There seems to be only one other early exegetical tradition that links the passage
with the isra -, the night-journey, that of ,Abd al-Rah.man b. Zayd (see al-T.abar,
Jami ,, vol. 25, p. 99). Yet, contrary to the texts of al-Wad.ih. and al-Kalb, there is
no mention of heaven; instead it is said that the event happened in bayt al-maqdis.
This is commonly understood as Jerusalem, but perhaps originally it was a synonym
of al-bayt al-ma ,mur in heaven. See Busse, \Jerusalem in the Story of Muh.ammad's
Night Journey and ascension."
49 See al-Tabar, J
ami ,, vol. 25, pp. 98{100.
.
50 Rippin, \Tafsr Ibn ,Abb as," pp. 52-54.
51 Wansbrough was puzzled by the observation that the text he considered to be
a version of Tafsr al-Kalb did not contain h.adth s (Quranic Studies, pp. 133{134).
Van Ess emphasizes this strange fact again in his Theologie und Gesellschaft (vol. 1,
pp. 300, 302). Neither realized that the source on which their judgment was based is
not a pure transmission of Tafsr al-Kalb, but al-Dnawar's commentary, although
based on a transmission of al-Kalb's Tafsr, also contains other exegetical opinions
and, in every case, summarizes his sources. The traditions found in Ibn al-Jawz's Zad
al-masr and in al-Qumm's Mi -at manqaba prove that al-Kalb's Tafsr did contain
h.adth s. For a recent study based on material in al-Kalb's Tafsr see Scholler, \Sra
and Tafsr," pp. 18{48 (see especially his survey of traditions ascribed to al-Kalb in
dierent types of sources, pp. 20{22, and the conclusion on Tafsr al-Kalb represented
by al-Wad.ih., pp. 42{44).
158 Harald Motzki

Dating the author and his work

The isnad of the tradition found in the Sh, source makes it possible to
approximately determine the lifetime of ,Abd Allah b. al-Mubarak al-
Dnawar. There are two transmitters between al-Qumm (d. 412/1021{
2), the author of Mi -at manqaba, and al-Dnawar. This means that the
latter must have lived in about the year 300/912{3. This dating is in
line with the isnad given by al-Tha,lab (d. 427/1035) for al-Wad.ih..52
He also names two transmitters between him and al-Dnawar.53
All the pieces of evidence collected above suggest that al-Wad.ih. is a
commentary written by ,Abd Allah b. al-Mubarak al-Dnawar, not by
,Abd All ah b. Muh.ammad al-Dnawar. The author must have lived in
about 300/912{3. Rippin is right in claiming that this commentary is
not a recension of Tafsr al-Kalb. Yet al-Wad.ih. is based on the latter
and perhaps also on other exegetical sources. This identication and
dating of the author is based on three main pieces of evidence: First, on
a comparison of matn s, namely of the exegesis of al-Wad.ih. and exegetical
traditions ascribed to al-Kalb found in a Sunn and a Sh, compilation;
second, on a comparison of isnad s external to Tafsr Ibn ,Abbas, namely
that of al-Tha,lab and al-Qumm; and third, on the statements made in
the introduction of ,Abdallah b. al-Mubarak al-Dnawar's al-Wad.ih..

Remaining problems

What should we make of the isnad s of Tafsr Ibn ,Abbas ? They raise
several questions.54 First, there are isnad s in which ,Abd Allah b. al-
Mubarak (al-Dnawar) is only a transmitter of his work, which is thus
ascribed not to him, but to al-Kalb and nally to Ibn ,Abbas. This
is odd for a work which the introduction says was composed by \ex-
tracting it from sources and abbreviating it," even if the author ex-
pressly refers to al-Kalb's Tafsr as an important source for his work.
Second, and stranger still, is the fact that all the isnad s of al-Wad.ih.
(Tafsr Ibn ,Abbas ) go back via ,Al b. Ish.aq (al-H.ad.ram, al-H.anz.al,
al-Samarqand) to al-Kalb, whereas the introduction of al-Wad.ih. men-
tions al-Kalb's Tafsr in the recension of Yusuf b. Bilal. As shown above,
52 See above p. 150 and note 24.
53 Abu Bakr Muhammad b. Ya,qub al-Ustuwa- and Abu H.anfa al-Qazwn. Yet
.
the former is probably not identical with the Abu Bakr al-Ustuwa- mentioned in
Tarkh-i Bayhaq by Ibn-i Funduq (d. 565/1169{70), as van Ess assumed (Ungenutzte
Texte, p. 51), because the names dier.
54 See the table in Rippin, \Tafsr Ibn ,Abb
as," pp. 77{78.
 Dating the so-called Tafsr Ibn ,Abbas 159

there is evidence that al-Dnawar indeed transmitted parts of this recen-

sion. Third, there are versions of Tafsr Ibn ,Abbas that are introduced
by isnad s ignoring the name ,Abd Allah b. al-Mubarak al-Dnawar com-
pletely. Nevertheless, later in the commentary he reappears in the for-
mula wa-bi-isnadihi ,an 55 ,Abd Allah b. al-Mubarak qala h.addathana
,Al b. Ish.aq al-Samarqand ,an Muh.ammad b. Marwan etc. (with his
isnad [i.e., that of one of the transmitters in the chain which introduces
the work] from ,Abd Allah b. al-Mubarak who said: ,Al b. Ish.aq trans-
mitted to us from Muh.ammad b. Marwan etc.). This isnad fragment is
strange because it does not t the introductory isnad. Moreover, in this
fragment ,Abd Allah b. al-Mubarak directly transmits from ,Al b. Ish.aq
(d. 237/852), whereas in another isnad version there is a generation of
transmitters (,Ammar b. ,Abd al-Majd or al-Ma-mun b. Ah.mad)56 be-
tween them that seems to be more in line with the approximate date
established for al-Dnawar's scholarly activity.
How to explain all these contradictions? Strangely enough, Rippin
does not give a clear judgment on this issue.57 He trusts the isnad s
and therefore suspects that the work was not composed by al-Dnawar
himself, but \has its ultimate origin in preaching in the time of the gener-
ation before al-Dnawar," or that it stems not from al-Dnawar himself,
but \from one of his teachers or from within his circle."58 This does not
explain all the peculiarities of the isnad structure and contradicts what
is stated in the introduction of the Leiden manuscript. My solution to
the problems that arise from the isnad s is based on a distinction be-
tween two issues: on the one hand, the isnads that make al-Dnawar's
commentary a recension of Tafsr al-Kalb and, on the other hand, the
isnad s that ignore al-Dnawar.
As the introduction of al-Wad.ih. says, we should consider al-Dnawar
as its real author. The evidence presented above suggests that he also
transmitted al-Kalb's Tafsr in the riwaya of Yusuf b. Bilal. Hence it
makes no sense to assume that he provided his own commentary with an
isnad that would make it another recension of al-Kalb's Tafsr, transmit-
ted by ,Al b. Ish.aq. Thus, the isnad s of al-Wad.ih. (Tafsr Ibn ,Abbas )
that go back to al-Kalb must have been added later. We can only
speculate about how this happened. Al-Dnawar's pupils, Abu ,Al al-
55 Some editions have il
a.
56 The rst cannot be identied. The latter is probably al-Ma-mun b. Ah.mad al-
Sulam al-Haraw (see also note 15). According to his own statement, he came to
Syria (or Damascus) in 250/864. Ibn H.ibban, Kitab al-Majruh.n, Mah.mud Ibrahm
Zayid (ed.), (n.p. 1402/1981{2), vol. 3, pp. 45{46; al-Dhahab, Mzan, vol. 3, pp. 429{
430. According to Ibn H.ibban and al-Dhahab, his h.adth transmissions were \lies."
See van Ess, Ungenutzte Texte, pp. 49{50 and Gilliot, \Les debuts," pp. 96{97, n. 49.
57 See his remarks on the isn
ad structure in Rippin, \Tafsr Ibn ,Abbas," pp. 60{62.
58 Ibid., pp. 49{50, 71.
160 Harald Motzki

H.asan b. Muh.ammad b. Ja,far59 or Abu Ish.aq Ibrahm b. Muh.ammad

b. Ah.mad b. Quraysh al-Marwaz,60 who transmitted al-Wad.ih., or even a
transmitter from them61 may have been responsible for adding the isnad,
making al-Dnawar's commentary a version of al-Kalb's Tafsr. One of
them must have added the isnad and others must have copied it. The
editor of al-Wadih. who added the false isnad did not use Yusuf b. Bilal's
riwaya, which al-Dnawar himself considered the best or which was
perhaps the most complete available to him, but rather ,Al b. Ish.aq's
riwaya.62 It is dicult to say why he chose the latter. Perhaps he was
aware that Yusuf b. Bilal's transmission of al-Kalb's Tafsr was more
complete and did not t the summarizing character of al-Wadh.. He
may also have known parts of ,Al b. Ish.aq's riwaya of al-Kalb's Tafsr,
which perhaps was less complete. It is possible that al-Dnawar not
only transmitted Yusuf b. Bilal's riwaya, but transmitted also, at least
partially, ,Al b. Ish.aq's. This is suggested by one of the isnad s found in
manuscript British Library Or. 8049 which has no parallel in the trans-
mission lines of al-Wad.ih..63 Yet this issue can only be decided denitely
by comparing the text in question with al-Dnawar's commentary.
Another problem are the isnad s of al-Wad.ih. (Tafsr Ibn ,Abbas )
in which al-Dnawar does not appear,64 despite being its author. It
seems likely that these isnad s belong to a secondary stage in turning
al-Dnawar's al-Wad.ih. into a version of Tafsr al-Kalb. As mentioned
above, some versions of Tafsr Ibn ,Abbas are introduced by an isnad in
which the name of ,Abd Allah b. al-Mubarak al-Dnawar is not given.
Yet later on he `reappears' in a fragmentary isnad without his nisba al-
Dnawar (hence with an unclear identity) as a direct transmitter from
 b. Ish.aq. This fragmentary isnad is presumably the relic of an isnad
,Al

that earlier had introduced the commentary.

59 Instead of al-Hasan some manuscripts have al-Husayn (see van Ess, Ungen utzte
. .
Texte, p. 52). Rippin's \ibn al-H.asan" (\Tafsr Ibn ,Abbas," Appendix 2) is certainly
an error. Most probably this al-H.asan is the same as al-H.asan b. Ja,far al-Zawah,
the transmitter from al-Dnawar in the manuscript British Library 8049.
60 According to the manuscript Aya Sofya 222. See van Ess, Ungen utzte Texte,
p. 52.
61 In the manuscript Aya Sofya 222 the transmitter from both is Ab u l-Qasim Hibat
Allah b. al-H.asan al-T.abar. See van Ess, Ungenutzte Texte, p. 52.
62 Ten of the 17 isn ad s in the manuscript British Library Or. 8049 have ,Al b. Ish.aq
as key transmitter of al-Kalb's Tafsr, only three of them also have al-Dnawar as
transmitter (See van Ess, Ungenutzte Texte, pp. 43{45), and their texts may derive
from al-Wad.ih. instead of from al-Kalb's Tafsr. A transmission of the latter by ,Al
b. Ish.aq from Muh.ammad b. Marwan is mentioned in Muh.y al-Sunnah al-Baghaw's
(d. 407{8/1117) Ma ,alim al-tanzl. See Goldfeld, \The Tafsr," p. 135. On ,Al
b. Ish.aq see al-Mizz, Tahdhb al-kamal, vol. 5, pp. 222{223.
63 Isnad no. X in van Ess, Ungenutzte Texte, p. 45.
64 Rippin, \Tafsr Ibn ,Abb as," p. 49 and his Appendix 2.
 Dating the so-called Tafsr Ibn ,Abbas 161

Why may al-Dnawar have been wiped out of some of the transmis-
sions of his commentary after it had become a Tafsr al-Kalb, allegedly
transmitting the exegesis of Ibn ,Abbas? The most obvious reason would
be al-Dnawar's relation to the Karramiyya sect. For orthodox schol-
ars who liked his commentary for its conciseness and for its supposedly
being a Tafsr Ibn ,Abbas it must have been embarrassing that a key
transmitter of this commentary belonged to or was suspected of belong-
ing to a heretical group. It is conspicuous that in the isnad s ignoring
al-Dnawar, (al-)Ma-mun b. Ah.mad, who seems to have been an impor-
tant gure of the Karramiyya, is also missing. Possibly ,Ammar b. ,Abd
al-Majd al-Haraw and ,Al b. Isma,l al-Khajnad, who are named as
transmitters from ,Al b. Ish.aq in these isnad s, did not (or were not
known to) belong to the sect.65 Be that as it may, the common link
,Al b. Ish.aq in the isnad structure of Tafsr Ibn ,Abbas seems to be
the result of isnad forgery (`spread of isnad s').66 True, this scenario
is hypothetical, but it is concrete and makes sense of the chaotic isnad
structure of Tafsr Ibn ,Abbas.
To conclude these re ections on the criteria for dating the so-called
Tafsr Ibn ,Abbas, we can record that both isnad s that ascribe al-Dna-
war's al-Wad.ih. to al-Kalb and through him to Ibn ,Abbas, and those
that ignore the author, are spurious. Such cases of late isnad forgery
must not be taken as proof, however, that isnad s are generally unreliable.
For the dating of the work and its author it was possible and necessary
to fall back on other isnad s that seem to be more reliable than those of
Tafsr Ibn ,Abbas. Dating cannot do without isnad s and biographical
traditions, at least if fairly accurate dates are desired. A dating based
only on literary criteria remains vague and inconclusive. Undoubtedly,
literary analysis is legitimate. It can be a useful tool to check the dating
based on isnad s and other evidence, and to detect later additions and
revisions of a text.67

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