How Did False Stories Enter Our Books?
Tafseer Surat Al-Anbiya Episode 22: The Story of Prophet Ayub and the Development of Islamic Exegesis
Summary
In this episode of Tafseer Surat Al-Anbiya, Sheikh Ali Mashhour discusses the story of Prophet Ayub (Job) and his extraordinary patience through severe trials, including illness, loss of family, wealth, and social status. The lecture emphasizes the importance of carefully distinguishing authentic Islamic sources from fabrications, particularly regarding the stories of prophets and messengers. Sheikh Ali provides a detailed explanation of how Tafseer (Quranic exegesis) developed from the time of the Companions through subsequent generations, highlighting how the removal of chains of narration in later centuries allowed foreign and inaccurate material, particularly from Christian and Jewish sources, to enter Islamic scholarly works.
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An Arabic letters. It is is not considered by many Christians and Jews to be a prophet. He is considered to be a man who was mentioned in a biblical context and this is not the first of their menu fabrications against prophets and messengers. Many prophets and messengers of Allah they ascribe different lies and fabrications to them accusing them of atrocities really and of these lies is covering up their heinous acts of disbelief in their own prophets by claiming that these men are not prophets or by claiming that people who were not prophets to be prophets. For instance, they do not believe that Job was a prophet. They do not believe that Lot, Lut, was a prophet. They did not believe that David or Solomon were prophets. but they believe that Esther was a prophet, a prophetess Ayub Alaihi Salam is a prophet of Allah. from the lineage of Ibrahim Alaihi Salam or I should say from the prodigy of Ibrahim from the offspring of Ibrahim. by way of is a prophet.
[Silence]
Many things are mentioned with regards to his story. The story of his patience and the story of his tribulation, mentioned that family was killed This is the pleasure of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala with and his patience dare to try to take a yube off of the path of righteousness. and said, if you allow me to afflict him, it will become impatient. It's mentioned that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala allowed such affliction. So, Ayub fell ill Children were killed in a freak accident lost his wealth, he lost his livestock, he lost his status socially mentioned that He had Disease inside of his body and outside He remained in this state, patient, and dutiful for a number of years. The number of years is unclear. It's not explicitly mentioned. In the Quran or authentic sunnah of the prophet mentioned that it was 18 years less than this, more than this, and these estimates are taken from the estimates of the people of the scripture. their books And so, Ayub Alaihi Salam was patient We have to be very very prudent and careful and dealing with the stories of the prophets and messengers Because unfortunately throughout time, Many of the books of history and books of Tefsir. Have been infected with fabrications against the prophets and messengers and some of the scholars of Islam, mention in passing from the people of the book From the Torah, from the Gospels, the from the book of Dawood Alaihi Salam, etcetera. ghastly heinous things have been ascribed to prophets and messengers. You have to understand the history of Tefsir. history of exegesis in Islam. FCA was essentially science of the companions. companions understood the Quran because they spent time with the prophet after his death and of course, there were elements of the Quran that needed to be explicitly mentioned and explained. So, the prophet explained them. The narrations that explain explicitly this verse means this are not very many. They're few because it was largely unnecessary. and so The time of the companions was spent with the prophet And the prophet through his life's legacy and his life and times explained the Quran Either by action or by explicit statements or what have you. In the time of the the generation that came after the companions It became more crucial or explicit statements to be made about verses of the Quran and what they mean. Because the generation that came after the companions was a generation that did not spend time with the prophet and so, the companions we find many more statements of the companions saying, this verse means this, this word means this, etcetera. Because of the necessity at the time. Likewise, those who came after the generation that came after the companions. So, two generations after the companions. We have the students of the companions expounding on meanings of the Quran even more. Because the Muslims are coming from all walks of life. They come from different cultures. They come from different backgrounds, different languages. And the is no longer as clear to them as it was to the earlier generations. Many of the or all of the narrations from the companions, from the companion students were collected by the scholars of hadith and the scholars of Tafsir, with chains of narration. So, all of the statements of even Abbas, all of the statements of Abdullah and Omar, Abdullah, Omar Abdul Khatab, all of these scholars of Tafseer, of the companions, and of the Tabereen, Mujahid, Said.
[Silence]
Sometimes fifteen, 20 people would be in one chain of narration and the books of hadith that collected these narrations were mainly, were mainly preserved and so people started to say, Al Bukhari reported and and skipped the chain of narration. In the fifth century, after Hijla, we're talking 500 years now, Chains of narration were no longer used as they were in the earlier times. And so scholars of Tafseer started to just mention narrations without chains of narration. and during this time, when this shift happened, this is when other scholars who had good intentions and others who may not have had good intentions, started to enter things into the of the verses of the Quran that had no business being there. Mainly, from the books of the people of the scripture. From the books of the Christians and the Jews. And we know that there are lots of fabrications in these books. Fabrications are numerous. These fabrications are even in the most critical of verses in their books that they base their beliefs on and when this happened, it could not be undone When this kind of explosion of of writing happened because it so happens that at that same time, the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh century after Hijrah, this is when there was an intellectual, literate, literate, an explosion of of literature from the scholars of Tafseer and from scholars hadith and because the Muslims became very wealthy and many kings, sultans, and so forth, they would have scholars working full time for them, paid. All they had to do was spend their time writing books. and so, many books were written and during this era, many fabrications were entered in to the books of Tafsir, history books, books on history, Tafsir, Firk, etcetera. This caused a lot of problems because later, when it was no longer scholars reading these books who knew what the other scholars meant when it was the layperson and regular people now starting to become literates and reading books that they shouldn't be reading yet they started to pick these things up and assume that everything that the scholar wrote was authentic. and this entered many fabrications into thee, into the mind, into the Muslim mind And we have been recovering ever since. We will continue inshallah tomorrow.