Tafsir: The Science of Quranic Interpretation

Tafsir is the scholarly discipline of interpreting and explaining the Quran — its meaning, the context behind specific verses, its grammar and rhetoric, and how one passage relates to another. It exists because the Quran, though its Arabic text has never changed, requires explanation for readers to fully understand its historical context, legal implications, and layered meaning. Scholars traditionally rank sources of tafsir in order of reliability: first, explaining the Quran with the Quran itself, since one passage often clarifies another; second, explaining it through the hadith and practice of the Prophet ﷺ, who is understood to have explained the Quran to his companions directly; third, through the statements of the companions, who witnessed the Quran's revelation and its context firsthand; and fourth, through the reasoned scholarship of later generations building on the first three. Well-known classical works of tafsir include those of Ibn Kathir, Al-Tabari, and Al-Qurtubi, among many others, each drawing on this same layered methodology while differing in emphasis — some focused heavily on hadith and historical narration, others more on language and legal derivation. Tafsir remains an active field of scholarship today, continuing a chain of interpretation that Muslims are taught to approach with care rather than treat any single scholar's reading as the final word.