ʿAbd al-Laṭīf—Professor in the Faculty of Sharīʿah at al-Azhar University—and it was released by al-Nahḍah Bookshop in Mecca.
It later appeared in eight volumes in Egypt under the “Kītāb al-Shaʿb Edition,” critically prepared by al-Bannā, Ghunaym, and ʿĀshūr, who appended both scholarly and topical indexes. In 1418 AH it was issued once more, in eight volumes, by Dār Ṭaybah in Riyadh, edited by Sāmī ibn Muḥammad al-Salāmah on the basis of two complete manuscripts and more than ten partial copies, all of which together cover the entire tafsīr.
Commercial impressions were also produced in Egypt and Lebanon, but they contain no verification, editing, or scholarly review.
Dār Ibn Kathīr published a revised, corrected, fully vocalized four-volume edition in 1315 AH, collated against several earlier printings. A new critical edition, compared with a manuscript copy, is presently under way; its introduction includes the author’s work Faḍāʾil al-Qurʾān, exactly as he stated.
• Among narration-based commentaries, this work is one of the most beneficial. Ibn Kathīr scrutinizes the chains of transmission, critiques the narrators, and treats them impartially with both censure and commendation (jarḥ and taʿdīl). He does not simply quote ḥadīths without comment—as many exegetes do—but rather pronounces them sound or weak.
• Its significance among the works of tafsīr is manifest in the following scholarly features:
- A fluent, elegant, and deceptively simple overall explanation of each verse.
- Interpreting the Qur’an by the Qur’an itself.
- Citing ḥadīths with their isnāds and primary sources.
- Judging the authenticity of those ḥadīths.
- Avoiding a large portion of Isrāʾīliyyāt reports.
- Critical assessment and preference without excess or partisanship.
- Entrusting the precise modality of verses dealing with the Divine Names and Attributes to Allah (tafwīḍ).
• Earlier scholars lavished praise on Ibn Kathīr’s commentary. Al-Dhahabī described the author as “a discerning exegete” (1). Al-Suyūṭī said, “No other commentary has been composed in its mold” (2). Al-Shawkānī remarked, “It is among the finest tafsīrs—if not the finest. He gathered and encompassed, transmitted the various opinions, reports, and narrations, and spoke in the most excellent and noble manner” (3).
Shaykh Aḥmad Shākir stated, “It is the best, most reliable, and most precise commentary we have seen after the tafsīr of the Imām…"