Mujahid ibn Jabr

Mujāhid ibn Jabr Abū l-Hajjaj (مجاهد بن جبر أبو الحجاج, DMG Muǧāhid b. Ǧabr, Abū l-Ḥaǧǧāǧ ; born at 641; died 722 ) was a client of the Meccan clan Machzūm, who acted as a Koran reciter in Mecca and wrote his own commentary on the Koran . The original of this commentary has not survived, but in the last few decades it was based on quotations in al-Tabarī's commentary on the Koran and a review of the work that was received in Egypt (Cairo, Dār al-Kutub, Ms. 1075 tafsīr ) based on the Iraqi traditionarian Warqā 'ibn ʿUmar (d. 776) is reconstructed.

Mujahid's commentary exists in a total of five main traditions. Of these, four go back to Mujāhid's disciple Ibn Abī Najīh (d. 748/9), the fifth to the Meccan scholar Ibn Juraidsch (d. 767). They both used a book by al-Qāsim ibn Abī Bazza (st. 741) as a basis. One difference between the two, however, is that Ibn Abī Najīh heard from Mujāhid himself, while Ibn Juraidsch did not. Ibn Abī Najīh passed on Mujāhid's commentary to various other people, one of whom was the traditionalist Warqāʾ. His review is not only preserved in the Cairo manuscript, but was also used by at-Tabarī in his commentary on the Koran. Georg Stauth, who compared the two versions of the Warqāʾ review, comes to the conclusion that the text in at-Tabarī has been grammatically and syntactically smoothed afterwards. Another well-known person to whom Ibn Abī Najīh Mujāhid's commentary conveyed was the Kufic lawyer Sufyān ath-Thaurī .

Metaphorical interpretations of the text of the Koran can be found in the commentary of the mujāhid . In the following generations the work was used with a certain reservation, as the author often resorted to Christian and Jewish sources in his own interpretations. The orientalist Ignaz Goldziher describes him as the oldest exponent of the rationalistic interpretation of the Koran.

literature

• Ignaz Goldziher : The directions of the Islamic Koran interpretation. Leiden 1920. pp. 107-110 and Index
• A. Rippin: Mu dj āhid b. Dj abr al-Makkī. In: The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition . Volume VII, p. 293.
• Fuat Sezgin : History of Arabic Literature. Volume I, Brill, Leiden 1967, p. 29
• Georg Stauth : The tradition of the Koran commentary Muǧāhid b. Ǧabrs. On the question of the reconstruction of the collections in the 3rd century d. H. used early Islamic collections. Giessen 1969 (dissertation)
• Fred Leemhuis: Ms. 1075 tafsīr of the Cairene Dār al-Kutub and Muǧāhid's Tafsīr. In: R. Peters (Ed.): Proceedings of the Ninth Congress of the Union Européenne des Arabisants et Islamisants. Leiden 1981, pp. 169-180

supporting documents

1. ↑ On him, see F. Leemhuis: Article Warḳāʾ ibn ʿUmar. In: The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition . Volume XI, p. 148.
2. ↑ See Stauth 138.
3. ↑ See Stauth 71.
4. ↑ See Stauth 184-186.
5. ↑ See Stauth 191-200.