ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbbās

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ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbbās (عبد الله بن عباس; born 619 in Mecca ; died around 688 in Ta'if ), generally cited in tradition as Ibn ʿAbbās , was a cousin of the Prophet Mohammed and is considered one of the oldest exegetes of the Koran . Because of his great importance as a religious authority, he was nicknamed ḥabr al-umma ("scholar of the umma "). His traditions are respected by both Sunnis and Shiites .

Life

He was the son of al-ʿAbbās ibn ʿAbd al-Muttalib (the ancestor of the Abbasids and youngest brother of Mohammed's father) and Umm al-Fadl Lubaba , the sister of Maymuna bint al-Harith , a later wife of Mohammed, whom he was around 629 is said to have married in the town of Sarif. Ibn ʿAbbās narrated many details from the life of the Prophet Mohammed, even though he was a child when the Prophet died. During the caliphate of ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān he took part in the collection and editing of the Koran text. After Muʿāwiya I took over the caliphate (661), Ibn ʿAbbās lived in the city of Mecca, withdrawn from the political scene. During this time he worked as a scholar, Koran exegete and issuer of legal opinions , with which he laid the foundation of Meccan scholarship.

Koran exegesis

Ibn ʿAbbās is known for using the verses of ancient Arabic poets to explain the incomprehensible, strange word material in the Koran ( Gharīb al-Qurʾān ). On the occasion of the commentary on the word ḥaraj (“ arduousness ”) in sura 22 : 78, he is said to have expressed the principle: “If something in the Qur'an appears strange, look around in poetry; because it is really Arabic ”. The learned tradition has handed down a catalog of 200 Koranic words, the meaning of which Ibn ʿAbbās is said to have explained to the Kharijite leader Nāfiʿ ibn al-Azraq with quotations from ancient Arabic poetry .

Ibn ʿAbbās also dealt intensively with the biblical narratives of the Koran. He obtained many of his explanations on this, but also on other areas, from the Jewish converts Kaʿb al-Aḥbār and ʿAbdallāh ibn Salām as well as generally from the Ahl al-kitāb .

The Koran exegetical contributions of Ibn ʿAbbās have been collected in later works. One of the most famous compilations of this kind has the title Tanwīr al-miqbās min tafsīr Ibn ʿAbbās and is attributed to the Shafi scholar al-Fīrūzābādī (d. 1414). As Andrew Rippin showed in 1994, however, it is a mistake. The work must have been compiled long before al-Fīrūzābādī.

Arthur Jeffery has compiled the reading variants of Ibn ʿAbbās from 1937 that have come down to us in the various sources in order to document the history of the Quran with their help.

literature

  • Frederick Stephen Colby: Narrating Muḥammad's night journey: tracing the development of the Ibn ʻAbbās ascension discourse . SUNY Press, Albany, 2008.
  • Ignaz Goldziher: The directions of the Islamic Koran interpretation . Leiden 1920. pp. 65-81.
  • Arthur Jeffery : Materials for the History of the Text of the Qurʾān. The old codices. Brill, Leiden 1937.
  • Wilferd Madelung: "ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAbbās and Shiʿite Law" in Urbain Vermeulen (Ed.): Law, Christianity and modernism in Islamic society . Peeters, Leuven, 1998. pp. 13-26.
  • Andrew Rippin: "Ibn ʿAbbās's Al-lughāt fiʾl-Qurʾān" in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 44/1 (1981) 15-25.
  • Andrew Rippin: "Ibn ʿAbbās's Gharīb al-Qurʾān." In Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 46/2 (1983) 332–333.
  • Andrew Rippin: "Tafsir Ibn 'Abbas and the Criteria for Dating Early Tafsir Texts" in Jerusalem Studies on Arabic and Islam 18 (1994) 38-83.
  • Fuat Sezgin : History of Arabic Literature. Brill, Leiden 1967. Vol. IS 25-28

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans Jansen : Mohammed. A biography. (2005/2007) Translated from the Dutch by Marlene Müller-Haas. CH Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-56858-9 , p. 368.
  2. ↑ See Harald Motzki: The beginnings of Islamic jurisprudence. Their development in Mecca up to the middle of the 2nd / 8th centuries Century. Stuttgart 1991. p. 256.
  3. ↑ See Goldziher 70.
  4. ↑ See Goldziher 67f.
  5. ↑ An English translation of the work is available online: http://www.altafsir.com/Books/IbnAbbas.pdf
personal data
SURNAME ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbbās
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Abdullah ibn Abbas; Ibn ʿAbbās
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Islamic scholar and cousin of the Prophet Mohammed
DATE OF BIRTH 619
PLACE OF BIRTH Mecca
DATE OF DEATH at 688
Place of death Ta'if