Advice of Scholars - READING THE BOOKS OF TAFSÎR (I)

To understand books of interpretation, it is necessary to learn the twenty main branches of knowledge well by working ceaselessly for thirty years. There are eighty subdivisions that are the branches of these twenty main branches of knowledge. One of the main branches is the knowledge of tafsîr (interpretation). These branches of knowledge had different savants and many books.

Various Arabic words that are used today have different meanings in the knowledge of fiqh than from the meanings which they have in the knowledge of interpretation. Even the same word conveys different meanings according to its place in the Qur’ân and the particles it takes. The Qur’ân’s translations by those who do not know these vast branches of knowledge or made according to today’s Arabic convey meanings far from the meanings in the Qur’ân-al karîm. Everybody understands the hints, the meanings from the symbols in the Qur’ân in proportion to the strength of his îmân.

Tafsîr is not something done simply by writing or by expressing in words. Tafsîr is a radiance (nûr) that occurs to the heart of great religious men. The books of Tafsîr (interpretation) are the keys to this radiance. As the jewels are revealed when you unlock the drawer with the key, in a similar way does a radiance occur to the heart by reading those interpretations. Those who knew the eighty branches of knowledge well understood the Tafsîrs and, in order to explain them to religiously ignorant people as we are, they wrote thousands of books suitable for people of various categories.