al-Jami' li-Ahkam al-Qur'an (Tafsir al-Qurtubi)

al-Jami' li-Ahkam al-Qur'an wa'l-Mubayyin li-ma Tadammanahu min al-Sunna wa-Ay al-Furqan ("The Compendium of the Qur'an's Rulings, Explaining the Sunna and Verses It Contains") is a commentary on the whole Qur'an by Abu Abd Allah Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Abi Bakr ibn Farh al-Ansari al-Khazraji of al-Andalus, later of Córdoba — al-Qurtubi (d. 671 AH) — and is known as Tafsir al-Qurtubi. ^{1 2 3} It is distinguished by its attention to the legal content of the Qur'an, dividing every verse that carries a ruling into questions (masa'il). ³ See also al-Qurtubi's composition of the Jami'.

Al-Qurtubi opens by saying that God entrusted His Messenger with explaining what the Book states briefly and clarifying what is obscure, and then entrusted scholars with drawing out what it points to, "so the Book became the root, the Sunna its explanation, and the scholars' derivation its clarification". ⁴ Since God's Book contains all the sciences of the Law, he resolved to devote his life to it by writing a "concise commentary" containing points of interpretation, lexicon, grammar and readings, rebuttals of the deviant and misguided, and many hadith attesting the rulings and occasions of revelation he mentions, explaining what is difficult by the sayings of the early generations and those who followed them. ⁴ He made it "a reminder for himself and a provision for the day of his burial". ³

Al-Qurtubi writes: "My rule in this book is to attribute sayings to those who said them and hadith to those who compiled them, for it is said that part of the blessing of knowledge is to attribute a saying to its speaker." ³ He explains that hadith often appear in books of fiqh and tafsir without attribution, recognisable only to those who know the hadith collections, so the inexpert reader is left unable to tell sound from weak, and a hadith may not be used as proof until it is attributed to the imam who compiled it. ³ He says he left out many of the commentators' stories and the historians' reports, except what is indispensable, and instead set out the legal verses through questions that reveal their meaning: every verse containing one ruling or more is given numbered questions on its occasion of revelation, rare words and ruling, while verses without a ruling receive interpretation and explanation. ³

Al-Qurtubi prefaced his commentary with long chapters, among them: the merits of the Qur'an; how it is to be recited and what is disliked; what befits one who carries the Qur'an; its grammatical analysis; the merit of tafsir and its people; the warning against interpreting the Qur'an by opinion; the explanation of the Book by the Sunna; the meaning of the hadith of the seven ahruf; the collection of the Qur'an; the order of its suras and verses, its vowelling, dotting and division into parts and tenths; the meaning of sura and verse; words from outside the Arabs' languages; inimitability; a warning on hadith forged about the merits of suras; and the reply to those who attack the Qur'an. ^{5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17}

Among the positions in these chapters:

• The order of the suras: he reports the judge Abu Bakr ibn al-Tayyib's view that the order may have been the Companions' own judgement, and the view of others, among them Malik and Abu Bakr ibn al-Anbari, that it was fixed by the Prophet ﷺ; see Is the order of the suras fixed by revelation?. ^{18 19}
• Hadith forged on the merits of suras: "no attention is to be paid to what the forgers forged" about the merits of the suras and other matters; he classifies the forgers and mentions Abu Isma Nuh ibn Abi Maryam and the long hadith of Ubayy on the merit of each sura in turn; see fabrication of hadith. ^{16 20 21}

Majd Makki, introducing al-Muharrar al-Wajiz, lists al-Qurtubi's commentary among the four books in which Ibn Atiyya's influence is plain, and says that al-Qurtubi followed him in citing some weak and forged hadith. ^{22 23}

The museum used volume 1 of the Mu'assasat al-Risala (Beirut) edition by Dr Abd Allah ibn Abd al-Muhsin al-Turki, with Muhammad Ridwan Irqsusi sharing in this volume, 1st edition 1427 AH / 2006; the editor collates the text against manuscripts marked (ظ), (د) and (ز) and an earlier printing marked (م), and references the hadith in footnotes. ^{1 24 2 25}

Al-Qurtubi divides his commentary on al-Fatiha into chapters, the second 'on its revelation and its rulings', with twenty numbered questions: the first on the number of its verses and the community's agreement that it is part of the Qur'an, the second on whether it is Meccan or Medinan, the fourth on joining the opening takbir to it and the opening supplication, then the questions on whether its recitation is required of the imam, the one praying alone and the follower, then on one unable to learn it and one who does not know Arabic, then on saying amin. ^{26 27 28 29 30} In each question he lists the jurists' views by name — Malik and his school, al-Shafi'i in his Iraqi and Egyptian views, Ahmad, Abu Hanifa and his two companions, al-Thawri and al-Awza'i, al-Hasan al-Basri, al-Tabari — quoting Ibn Abd al-Barr's al-Tamhid and al-Istidhkar, Ibn al-Mundhir, Ibn al-Arabi and Ibn Khuwayz Mandad, and then gives his preference with 'I say' or 'the sound one among these views'. ^{29 31 30 32} He does not bind himself to Malik's school: on the follower's recitation he judges sound the view of al-Shafi'i, Ahmad and one narration from Malik, against the school's well-known view. ³² See Must al-Fatiha be recited in every rak'a? and Does the follower recite behind the imam?.

His introduction has a chapter on whether the Qur'an contains words from other languages, reporting al-Baqillani, al-Tabari and Ibn Atiyya; see Does the Qur'an contain non-Arabic words?. ^{14 33}