—of our Shaykh, and the one who wrote down his words the most and was the keenest to gather them—said:

The Shaykh—may Allah have mercy on him—compiled the statements of the early generations, presenting them just as they are, without adducing proofs, for the whole of the Qur’an (1). At the beginning he added a large section (2) that does contain evidentiary discussion. I have also seen surahs and verses that he explained, and on some of them he remarked (3): “I wrote this simply as a reminder,” and the like.

Later, when he was imprisoned near the end of his life, I wrote to him asking that he compose a commentary on the entire Qur’an, arranged (4) surah by surah. He replied in writing:

“The Qur’an includes passages that are clear in themselves, and others that the commentators have already clarified in books outside this one. Yet certain verses have remained difficult for a number of scholars: a person may consult (5) several works and still not discern their interpretation, and a single author might explain one verse in a particular way while interpreting its counterpart differently (6). My intention, therefore, has been to explain those specific verses with evidence, because that is more important than anything else (7). And whenever …”