Tafsir

A journalist, Qur'anic commentator and political thinker who founded the Jamaat-e-Islami at Lahore in 1941. His six-volume Urdu commentary Tafhim al-Qur'an and his writings on the Islamic state were among the most widely circulated Muslim political works of the twentieth century.

A wife of the Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him), daughter of Abu Bakr al-Siddiq, and the most prolific woman transmitter of hadith in Islam. The Prophet died in her apartment. She taught and issued legal rulings in Medina for more than four decades after him.

Al-Tabari (839-923) was the most important historian and Quranic exegete of the early Islamic period. His annalistic History and his vast commentary on the Quran preserved earlier scholarship that would otherwise be lost, and both remain foundational sources.

Al-Zamakhshari (1075-1144) was an Arabic scholar of Khwarazm whose commentary Al-Kashshaf read the Qur'an through its grammar and rhetoric. Completed at Mecca, where he earned the name Jar Allah, it became a standard text of Islamic learning despite his Mu'tazilite theology.

Ibn Kathir (c. 1300-1373) was a Shafi'i scholar of Mamluk Damascus whose commentary on the Quran and universal history became two of the most widely read works in Sunni Islam. He studied under al-Mizzi, al-Dhahabi and Ibn Taymiyya.

A Hanafi jurist who served as head mufti of Darul Uloom Deoband and founded Darul Uloom Karachi in 1951. His Urdu commentary Ma'arif al-Qur'an, which began as a radio programme, became one of the most widely read Qur'anic commentaries in South Asia.

A scholar of hadith and Qur'anic commentary who taught at Darul Uloom Deoband, Hyderabad State, Bahawalpur and Lahore. He wrote an eight-volume Urdu tafsir, an Arabic commentary on the Mishkat al-Masabih, and a four-volume Urdu life of the Prophet.

Sayyid Muhammad Rashid Rida (1865-1935) was an Islamic scholar of Ottoman Syria who settled in Egypt and founded the journal al-Manar in 1898, editing it until his death. Through it he framed an intellectual response to the pressures of the modern world on Islamic learning.

A scholar of hadith and Qur'anic commentary, chancellor of Darul Uloom Deoband. He completed Mahmud Hasan's Qur'an glosses, began the Arabic commentary Fath al-Mulhim on Sahih Muslim, and led the Deobandi scholars who supported the creation of Pakistan.

The Quran is the scripture of Islam, held by Muslims to be the speech of Allah revealed to Prophet Muhammad over some twenty-three years. It comprises 114 surahs and, in the Egyptian standard edition, 6,236 verses.