How tafsīr worksأصول التفسير

The classical method is an order, not a menu. The Qur'an is explained first by the Qur'an itself, since what is brief in one place is expanded in another. Then by the Sunnah, because the Prophet ﷺ was sent to make the revelation clear. Then by the statements of the Companions, who witnessed the revelation and knew the circumstances. Then by the Successors who learned from them.

Only after all of that does a scholar's own reasoning enter, and even then it is bound by the Arabic language and by what came before.

When this app cites al-Ṭabarī, Ibn Kathīr or al-Qurṭubī, it is citing scholars who worked in exactly this order and who record their chains.

A sabab al-nuzūl is a reported event or question that a passage came down in response to. It is history attached to revelation, and it is enormously useful: it tells you what problem the āyah was solving and who was in the room.

It does not narrow the āyah to that moment. The established principle is that the ruling follows the generality of the wording, not the particularity of the cause — so a verse revealed about one man's question still governs everyone in his situation.

And not every surah has one. Where no sound report exists, the honest answer is that we know the setting in general but not a specific occasion — which is what this app says rather than filling the gap.

An isnād is the list of people who passed a report down, each naming the one they heard it from, back to the original witness. Muslim scholarship judges a narration by examining that chain: were these people known, honest, accurate, and did they actually meet?

This is why two reports with identical wording can be graded differently. The text is not the evidence; the transmission is.

When a surah page here says a report is well attested or that its chain is weak, it is repeating a judgement the ḥadīth scholars made about the people in that chain.

Ṣaḥīḥ: a connected chain of upright, precise narrators, free of irregularity and hidden defect — acted upon and relied on. Ḥasan: the same, with slightly lesser precision — still usable.

Ḍaʿīf: weak, because a narrator is unreliable or the chain is broken. It is not evidence, though it may be mentioned so the reader knows what circulates.

Mursal: a Successor reports directly from the Prophet ﷺ without naming the Companion in between. The missing link matters, which is why most ḥadīth scholars do not accept mursal reports as independent proof. A great deal of the sīrah and sabab material is mursal — which is exactly why this app names it rather than quietly passing it on as established.

Much early exegetical difference is ikhtilāf al-tanawwuʿ — difference of variety, not contradiction. Two Companions describe the same reality from different angles, and both descriptions are true. A later reader who insists on one has narrowed the verse, not clarified it.

Real contradiction — ikhtilāf al-taḍādd — also exists, and there the scholars weigh the evidence: which report is stronger, which reading fits the Arabic and the context.

When this app says 'the majority held', it is reporting where the weight of the scholars settled, while still naming the other view. Where the early authorities are genuinely split, it says so instead of manufacturing a verdict.

Every tafsīr note here names the scholar and the work, and where a ḥadīth is used, the collection and number, so it can be opened on sunnah.com. Āyah references open on quran.com against the canonical text.

Where a report is weak or disputed, the note says so in the same sentence rather than in a footnote. Where the app is summarising rather than quoting, it is written as a summary.

The rule to carry with you: a claim about what an āyah means should be traceable to a named source, and if you cannot see the source, treat the claim as unverified — including on this site.