Editor’s Introduction
Praise be to Allah. We praise Him, seek His help and forgiveness, and seek refuge in Allah from the evil within ourselves and from our wicked deeds. Whoever Allah guides, none can lead astray; and whoever He allows to stray, none can guide. I bear witness that none is worthy of worship except Allah alone, without partner, and I bear witness that Muhammad is His servant and Messenger. May Allah bestow blessings and abundant peace upon him, his family, and his Companions.
To proceed:
The revelation of the Noble Quran to this Ummah is an immense blessing, for it is the path of guidance and the way to safety from error and waywardness:
“Whenever guidance comes to you from Me, whoever follows My guidance will neither go astray nor suffer. But whoever turns away from My remembrance will have a miserable life, and We shall raise him blind on the Day of Resurrection.”
True benefit from this Noble Book, however, comes through maintaining a constant connection with it in knowledge and practice, through recitation, reflection, and understanding:
“This is a blessed Book which We have sent down to you, so that they may contemplate its verses and people of understanding may take heed.”
One means of attaining such reflection and understanding is to consult what the scholars have written in commentary on the Glorious Quran. As part of Allah’s—Glorious and Exalted is He—perfect preservation of this Wise Reminder, He raised up for it eminent scholars who understood Allah’s intent as conveyed by Allah and His Messenger—may Allah bestow blessings and peace upon him. They authored books on the subject in which they expounded the wording of the Quran, clarified what was difficult to understand, explained in detail its general principles and universal precepts, dispelled apparent contradictions, identified the antecedents of pronouns, and specified the intended meanings wherever the wording admitted several interpretations. Their approaches to serving this Glorious Book varied widely, until the teacher of our teachers, the erudite scholar Abd al-Rahmān ibn Nāsir ibn Abd Allāh ibn Sa‘dī—may Allah have mercy upon him—came and devoted most of his attention to the meanings, which are the primary objective. His book was therefore a breakthrough in this field: it enabled the reader to grasp the intended meaning and assisted him in reflecting upon the Revelation, without detaining him over distractions that divert from this purpose, such as purely linguistic discussions, Israelite reports, and the like. This was not due to any deficiency, for no one can reach such a level of skill in making meanings accessible and clarifying what is intended unless he has mastered the auxiliary disciplines and possesses the broad familiarity with works of tafsīr needed to undertake this momentous task.
Allah has indeed favored me with a special concern for this tafsīr, love for its author—may Allah have mercy upon him—and the opportunity to read it, teach it, and recommend its study. Allah also favored me with the opportunity to oversee its publication in a single volume, thereby removing the psychological barriers that deterred people from reading it in the seven-volume format of its best-known previous editions. My concern had been focused upon this, and I had paid no attention to the various editions of the book or the errors they contained, until I received telephone calls from several esteemed seekers of knowledge, themselves respected shaykhs. Among them were His Eminence Dr. Abd al-Razzāq, son of Shaykh Abd al-Muhsin al-Abbād al-Badr, and His Eminence Dr. Khālid ibn Uthmān al-Sabt. Several telephone conversations took place with them, as well as a meeting with Shaykh Abd al-Razzāq. These marked an auspicious beginning for giving close attention to the tafsīr, its manuscript copies, and its printed editions. It then became clear that the printed editions contained numerous defects and that the tafsīr had not yet been published in the form in which the shaykh—may Allah have mercy upon him—had left it. Explaining this requires a detailed chronological account of the shaykh’s composition of the tafsīr and its publication history. I therefore decided to present the matter in detail in this introduction, so that it may become clear to the esteemed reader and he may see what book dealers and publishers can do to books.
The Shaykh’s Composition of the Tafsīr
The shaykh—may Allah have mercy upon him—began composing this blessed tafsīr in 1342 AH and completed it in 1344 AH.
It is thus evident that he began it when he was thirty-five years old and completed it when he was thirty-seven.