This is a manual of the principles and subtleties of Qur’anic tafsir. In it, the author outlines the five fundamental sciences that the Qur’an contains: the science of judgements (ahkam), reminding others of the Favours of Allah, the Days of Allah and the Life after Death, and giving particular attention to the science of polemics. He also reviews the other sciences of tafsir such as the circumstances of revelation (asbab an-nuzul), abrogating and abrogated ayat (an-nasikh wa’l-mansukh) and the unusual words and phrases of the Qur’an (ghara’ib al-Qur’an), before concluding the book by looking at the extraordinary and miraculous aspects of the Noble Book, and a final chapter on the meanings of the letters of the Arabic alphabet.
The Author
Shah Waliyyullah Dehlawi was a prominent Islamic scholar of Delhi. He was known as Shah Walliullah because of his piety. He memorised the Quran by the age of seven. Soon thereafter, he mastered Arabic and Persian letters. By sixteen he had completed the standard curriculum of Hanafi law, theology, geometry, arithmetic and logic.
