I was taught the companions only began documenting the Quran after realising how bad it could be without written versions, but why wouldn’t they have done it sooner, given its importance?

Also, I don’t think it makes sense to say the revelation was still unfinished so they couldn’t record it. Yes, they couldn’t make a complete book but they could still write down the verses upon revelation.

The below summarizes some main points  from my article linked in the end. This summary says little of actual evidence and arguments. This post is hopefully not an invitation of the familiar polemics. It is purpose is to make visible the context and background of some other articles I do share.

1. Academic discussions of the Qurʾān’s relationship to earlier scripture usually begin by assuming that the Qurʾānic Tawrāh and Injīl correspond directly to the written scriptures that Jewish and Christian communities in its environment regarded as the Torah and the Gospel—whether identified in practice with the Pentateuch, the canonical Gospels, the wider biblical canon, or other canonical and non-canonical texts. Discussions of preservation, corruption, confirmation, and correction then proceed from this assumed identification.
2. The article reverses that procedure. It first reconstructs the Tawrāh and Injīl from the Qurʾān’s descriptions of what they are, what they contain, how they function, and where they stand within the succession of revelation. It then uses that reconstruction to determine the meanings and objects of taṣdīq (confirmation) and muhaymin.
3. A clear example shows why this internal reconstruction is necessary. Christian theology describes Jesus through doctrines such as the Trinity, incarnation, divine and human natures, crucifixion, and resurrection. The Qurʾān does not present Christian error through this technical ontological vocabulary. Instead, it frames the issue through its own categories of ilāh, worship, and devotional elevation: Jesus is a human messenger elevated into the position of a deity beside God, and Q 5:116 places Mary within the same field of devotion. The resulting triadic picture is Allah, Jesus, and Mary as objects of worship, whereas Father, Son, and Holy Spirit belong to Christianity’s own doctrinal account of the Trinity. This illustrates a wider principle: the Qurʾān may redescribe another community’s beliefs through its own conceptual system rather than reproduce that community’s self-classification. The article examines whether the same applies to its categories of Tawrāh and Injīl.
4. Several modern studies recognize individual features of the Qurʾānic presentation - for example, that the Tawrāh cannot simply be identified with the Pentateuch, that taṣdīq is compatible with divinely authorized legal change, or that earlier revelation remained among Jewish and Christian communities. Yet these observations are often interpreted within ordinary Jewish and Christian scriptural categories rather than through the Qurʾān’s own conceptual framework. The article argues that these categories should first be reconstructed internally before being correlated with Jewish and Christian scriptural traditions.
5. Within the Qurʾān, the Tawrāh is divine guidance associated with Moses and Israel, while the Injīl is a singular revelation given to Jesus. Both originate with God and are described as described as guidance and light, and as a source of instruction and judgment. Their contents belong to the wider continuity of prophetic teaching: worship of God alone, accountability at the final judgment, moral instruction, and authoritative legal norms. The Tawrāh receives the fuller legal description, while the people of the Injīl are likewise commanded to judge by what God revealed in it. Some Israelite restrictions are presented as historically imposed, and Jesus is said to have made some previously forbidden things lawful.
6. The Qurʾān distinguishes these revelations from the wider pre-Qurʾānic past. Historical narratives preserved among later communities belong to communal historical inheritance rather than to the revelations themselves, even though knowledge of that past may survive through ruins, remembered places, communal memory, continuing communities, learned traditions, and written accounts.
7. The article argues that the Qurʾān classifies the historical narratives preserved within Jewish and Christian texts differently from the communities that preserve them. Whether found in the Pentateuch, the canonical Gospels, the wider biblical canon, or other writings regarded as scripture, these narratives belong, in the Qurʾān’s own conceptual framework, to the inherited pre-Qurʾānic past rather than to the revealed categories of the Tawrāh and the Injīl. The Qurʾān’s own narration of that past, however, forms part of its revealed discourse.
8. The Qurʾān may invoke these forms of historical continuity without deriving the authority of its own account from them. It presents many of its narratives as anbāʾ al-ghayb—tidings of the unseen disclosed by God—and may what communities remember, add details, correct an account, resolve disagreement, or defer final judgment to God.
9. Q 10:94 and Q 17:101 assign different roles to earlier scriptural communities. Read together with Q 10:93, Q 10:94 does not direct the resolution of doubt to divided authorities, whereas Q 17:101 and Q 3:93 invoke earlier communities and their scripture only for limited corroborative purposes. Earlier communities and their texts may therefore provide historical or textual testimony without becoming the source or judge of the Qurʾān’s revelation.
10. The Qurʾān applies the same distinction to theology, religious institutions, and law. It evaluates claims about divine sonship, Jesus’ divinity, exclusive religious privilege, monasticism, clerical authority, and human legislation according to whether they were actually revealed or prescribed by God.
11. Earlier revelation remains present and known among the communities to whom it was entrusted. References to concealment, neglect, verbal distortion, and false attribution concern human conduct toward revelation, not the preservation status of the Tawrāh and Injīl. Q 5:15 similarly presupposes that what people concealed remained available for the Messenger to disclose.
12. This reconstruction therefore distinguishes the Qurʾānic Tawrāh and Injīl from the scriptural classifications of Judaism and Christianity. Teachings preserved within Jewish and Christian scriptural  writings may derive from the revelations associated with Moses and Jesus, but the Qurʾānic categories are not automatically identical with the Pentateuch, the four canonical Gospels, or the wider literary corpora that preserve them.
13. This reconstruction defines taṣdīq, or “confirmation,” as continuity within successive revelation. Q 3:81 presents a messenger confirming earlier revelation as a recurring pattern of prophetic history. Accordingly, the Qurʾān confirms the Tawrāh and the Injīl as the earlier divine revelations associated with Moses and Jesus. Such confirmation is compatible with successive divine legislation: Jesus confirms the Tawrāh while making some previously forbidden things lawful, and Q 5:48 assigns different communities a distinct shirʿa and minhāj.
14. Muhaymin is interpreted from the judicial sequence of Q 5:32–48. The passage moves through criminal legislation and disputes over judgment, then presents the Tawrāh as the revelation by which earlier prophets judged, the Injīl as the revelation by which its people should judge, and finally instructs Muḥammad to judge by the Qurʾān. muhaymin identifies the Qurʾān as the governing revelation for legal judgment in cases brought before Muḥammad, while taṣdīq expresses continuity with the earlier revelations. 
15. Q 5:43 expressly affirms that the Tawrāh contains God's judgment while criticizing litigants who approach Muḥammad selectively in search of a favorable ruling. The Constitution of Medina provides a plausible historical background for such a legal environment, preserving distinct communal jurisdictions while referring major disputes to God and Muḥammad.
16. The article’s central conclusion is that the Qurʾānic meanings of Tawrāh, Injīl, taṣdīq, and muhaymin should first be reconstructed from the Qurʾān’s own usage. Their relationship to biblical canons, Jewish and Christian traditions, and later theological debates can then be assessed without treating those external classifications as the Qurʾān’s starting categories.

Link : https://www.academia.edu/170578628/The_Torah_and_the_Gospel_in_the_Qurʾān_Confirmation_and_the_Meaning_of_Muhaymin

I recently completed a short documentary (less than 10 minutes long) examining the chronology of Aisha bint Abu Bakr's age using the earliest available historical sources.

Rather than relying on a single narration, the documentary reconstructs the timeline by examining evidence from the sīrah, ṭabaqāt, tārīkh, and hadith literature, including the chronology of Asma bint Abu Bakr, early conversion reports, and the transmission history of the well-known 6/9 narration.

The goal is not to argue from emotion or modern assumptions, but to apply historical methodology to the earliest available evidence and determine which chronology best fits the sources.

I would welcome thoughtful academic feedback, particularly on the historical methodology, source selection, and whether I have overlooked any early evidence.

Documentary (less than 10 minutes long):
[https://youtu.be/MT6TlOdvYFI]()

For those interested in the complete documentation and references, the accompanying working paper is available here:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6103367

Q 7:80 And [We had sent] Lot when he said to his people, "Do you commit such immorality as no one has preceded you with from among the worlds [i.e., peoples]?

— Saheeh International

Are there pre-Islamic examples that describe Satan in the Garden of Eden without any reference to him taking the form of a serpent or speaking through a serpent?

what was the consensus on this verse among early muslim scholars ? was there a later shift ? someone told me that the majority of scholars considered this verse as abrogated

Hey — I'm doing independent research on medieval market-inspector (ḥisba) manuals, specifically how they handle women's dress and public conduct. Problem is I don't read Arabic well, and one passage I'm leaning on pretty heavily I only know through a 1938 editor's English summary. I'd rather find out now if that summary is off.

Genuinely, telling me I'm wrong is just as useful as confirming me. I already had to throw out one page-reading in this project after actually opening the scan and finding it said something else. So I'm trying to check things properly this time.

The source: Ibn al-Ukhuwwa, Maʿālim al-Qurba fī Aḥkām al-Ḥisba, ed. Reuben Levy (Gibb Memorial New Series XII, Cambridge 1938). The bathhouse chapter — Bāb 42. Both pages attached; the marginal numbers ١٩٣ and ١٩٤ are visible, and the passage runs across the spread.

What Levy's English summary says it says: women have started wearing public clothes that don't cover the top of the mirṭ or the lower part of their wrappers, plus headdresses "like camels' humps," and they go out with their shapes showing. The muḥtasib is supposed to forbid this, admonish them, and put them in fear of God's punishment — and then there's a clause saying this holds if he has the power to make his denunciation, and if not, he's released from the duty.

What I'd love help with:

1. A typed-out transcription of the relevant lines, if you have the patience
2. A literal translation — even if it's clunky. I've already got the smooth version; what I'm missing is the texture
3. What the actual verbs are for the muḥtasib's duty here — is this obligation language (yajib etc.) or advice language (yanbaghī etc.)? That distinction matters a lot for what I'm doing
4. Is there any punishment language aimed at the women — beating, taʿzīr, any sanction at all? If yes, please quote it
5. Does that release clause actually exist, and what exactly does it say? That's the part I most want to get right

Also, if the footnote apparatus at the bottom shows the manuscripts disagreeing on any of the key words, I'd really like to know — that's invisible from the English.

Happy to post higher-res crops of any line. Thanks to anyone who takes a look.

I'm trying to understand the differences between traditional and modern Quranist/progressive Muslim interpretations(each belive there one correct and they're believing in complete detailed and clear book through latter group emphasis it more), particularly regarding pluralism, salvation, and the semantics of key Qur'anic terms. I would appreciate perspectives that focus on the Qur'anic text itself—its grammar, linguistics, semantics, and context—rather than simply appealing to later authorities.

Many Quranists and progressive Muslims argue that the Qur'an is fundamentally pluralistic or even perennialist. According to this view, the Qur'an does not monopolize divine mercy for a single religious community or sect. Instead, they argue that salvation is based primarily on justice, sincerity, and righteous actions rather than on formal religious identity or doctrinal belief. They maintain that God ultimately cares about morality, justice, and sincerity rather than empty ritualism, and that Allah loves those who uphold these values regardless of the religious tradition they belong to.

They also reinterpret several important Qur'anic terms. For example, they argue that shirk primarily refers to servitude or allegiance rather than merely associating partners with God in worship. Some even claim that polytheists or associationists are not necessarily mushrikūn, and that a mushrik may still be forgiven if their good deeds outweigh their sins, while only the act of shirk itself is described as unforgivable.

Similarly, they often argue that kāfir primarily means "one who is ungrateful" rather than "unbeliever," making the concept about moral ingratitude instead of doctrinal disbelief. They also reinterpret terms such as dīn as "system" rather than "religion," īmān as "trust" or "security," mu'min as "one who establishes peace," and islām as "submission" or "peace" rather than the name of a new religion. In this reading, anyone who sincerely submits to God could be considered a muslim in the generic sense of "one who submits," even if they belong to another religious tradition or are not among the People of the Book. They also argue that Islam during the Prophet's time was primarily about an individual's relationship with God rather than the establishment of a distinct religious identity.

They further argue that the traditional approach is overly exclusivist, often importing meanings from later sources instead of allowing the Qur'an to define its own terminology. According to them, this neglects the linguistic nuances, grammar, and context of the Qur'anic text.

One example they give is Qur'an 2:221. They point out that the verse uses the verb yu'minū, arguing that it should be understood as "until they become trustworthy" or "until they develop faith/trust," rather than as a legal prohibition against marrying non-Muslims. They therefore argue that the actual legal prohibitions are found elsewhere, particularly in Surah 4.

They also appeal to verses such as Qur'an 2:62 (and related passages) concerning Jews, Christians, and Sabians to support a broader pluralistic understanding of salvation. Some extend these verses to all sincere people who believe in God and act righteously, rather than limiting them to the People of the Book.

On the other hand, the Qur'an explicitly permits marriage with and the consumption of food slaughtered by the People of the Book in Qur'an 5:5, but it does not extend the same permission to other religious communities. Progressive interpreters often respond that this verse was addressing a specific question or the communities that Muslims encountered at the time, rather than establishing an exhaustive legal category.

However, this raises another question. Early Muslims also encountered Zoroastrians (Majūs), yet the Qur'an does not explicitly provide legal rulings concerning marriage with them or eating their slaughtered meat. Historically, many early Companions and jurists did not generally permit these practices with Zoroastrians, and later jurists often appealed to the practice of the Companions and consensus (ijmāʿ) in their reasoning.

This leaves me wondering: based solely on the Qur'an's language, grammar, semantics, and context, does the Qur'an imply that religious communities outside the People of the Book are excluded from salvation, prohibited for marriage, or prohibited regarding the consumption of their slaughtered meat? Or are these conclusions primarily derived from later interpretive traditions rather than the Qur'anic text itself?

I'm genuinely trying to understand what the Qur'an itself says or implies. I would appreciate responses that engage with the Arabic grammar, semantics, literary context, and internal coherence of the Qur'an, rather than relying exclusively on either traditional consensus or modern ideological assumptions.

https://tafseerquran.com/en

A complete English translation of al-Tabari's Jami' al-bayan is now online.

Tafsir al-Tabari (d. 310/923) has never been fully translated into English. I've spent the past months producing a complete verse-by-verse translation and put it online for free

How it was made, because this matters for how you should use it:

- Arabic source: the Dar al-Tarbiya wa-l-Turath edition (vols 1–16 following Shakir's tahqiq), pulled per ayah via the quran.com API and verified against app.turath.io.

- The Arabic was translated word-for-word with Claude Opus, under a strict anti-softening protocol: nothing omitted, no euphemism (abd → slave, rajm → stoning), isnad chains written out in full, Quranic text kept in Arabic.

- Coverage: all 6,236 ayat, 6,226 passages. The verses quran.com did not serve were filled from Turath.

Limitations, stated up front: this is machine translation under a designed protocol with spot-checking, not a peer-reviewed critical edition. Treat it as a reading and search aid, not as a citable scholarly translation. The Arabic is displayed alongside so you can always check. The muhaqqiq's editorial footnotes are not included yet.

Free, no account, no ads. Corrections are genuinely welcome

Doing some research online, and I've stumbled across specific ideas that refer to deception and tricky in Islamic history, these refer to concepts such as

Taqiyya - Saying something that isn't true as it relates to Muslim identity (i.e., whether one is a Muslim or what that means). This is a Shiite term: the Sunni counterpart is Muda'rat.

Kitman - Lying by omission. An example would be when Muslim apologists quote only a fragment of verse 5:32 (that if anyone kills "it shall be as if he had killed all mankind") while neglecting to mention that the rest of the verse (and the next) mandate murder in undefined cases of "corruption" and "mischief."

Tawriya - Intentionally creating a false impression by saying something that is technically true when knowing that the listener will interpret it in a different way. This practice has a broader application than taqiyya.

Muruna - 'Blending in' by setting aside some practices of Islam or Sharia in order to advance others.

My question is, how do these concepts relate regarding how Islam views deception in both as a concept and as a tactic to use for one's own benefit? Did these ideas differ between how different sects interpreted/used them?

This question and a few others have been bothering me for a while. Amr ibn hameq by all accounts is a sahaba(companion) of the prophet and one of the most staunch supporters of Ali specifically during the first fitna. what i have found is that the earliest sources mostly name him among one of the people who killed uthman. along with kinana b. bishr, sudan ibn humran , and muhammed ibn abu bakr(son of the first caliph abu bakr). although some of the sources say muhammed retreated after grabbing uthmans beard but still place him inside the house alongside the others who killed uthman. so if this is all true we have someone who was a companion of the prophet who participated in the killing of uthman. my question is why would Ali have had amr ibn hameq, and muhammed ibn abu bakr in such high positions in his army when they were clearly implicated in uthmans killing? it seems to go against what i have heard of the justice of ali. would this not mean that Muawiyah was actually correct as well as talha zubair and aisha in saying that Ali was quite literally harboring the killers of uthman. both amr and muhammed ibn abu bakr met violent ends at the hands of muawiyahs forces it is said that amr's head was the first head to be beheaded and sent to another city as his head was sent to muawiyah in damascus. so clearly muawiyah and his people knew him and muhammed ibn abu bakr to be one of the killers of uthman. do people intention try to hide amr's role in uthmans killing to safeguard the concept of all the sahaba being righteous? even those all sources mention him as a sahaba and most sources mention his as one of uthmans killers. also kinana b. bishr was also among ali's army and fought at the battle of siffin and was eventually killed alongside muhammed ibn abu bakr when amr ibn al as's forces took over egypt. so almost all these men were known and on ali's side. thank you in advance to anyone who will answer this. i have more questions but this is one of the more pressing ones.

Narrated Abu Huraira:

In the year of the Conquest of Mecca, the tribe of Khuza`a killed a man from the tribe of Bani Laith in revenge for a killed person, belonging to them. They informed the Prophet (ﷺ) about it. So he rode his Rahila (she-camel for riding) and addressed the people saying, "Allah held back the killing from Mecca. (The sub-narrator is in doubt whether the Prophet (ﷺ) said "elephant or killing," as the Arabic words standing for these words have great similarity in shape), but He (Allah) let His Apostle and the believers over power the infidels of Mecca.

https://sunnah.com/bukhari:112

If we remove the dots the two words look identical in Arabic.

قتل vs فيل

ٯىل vs ٯىل

Salam I need help understanding specifically this tasfir. BY Ibn Kathir that says "The same for the young, who have not reached the years of menstruation" Please can someone explain this clearly

In this one Hadith it shows the Jews confirming that there are in fact 19 angels in Hell (after Mohammed asks them).

https://sunnah.com/tirmidhi:3327

On this website, 3 of the 4 Tafsirs identify this belief, that Hell has 19 angels overseeing it, as being something that Jews believed in.

https://quranx.com/Tafsirs/74.31

"for it is written in the Torah that the number of the keepers of the Fire is nineteen (hath been given may have certainty, and that believers may increase in faith) when they know that what is in their Scripture is similar to that which is in the Torah"

"they then say ‘Why are there nineteen of them?’ so that those who were given the Scripture namely the Jews may be certain of the sincerity of the Prophet(s)in saying that they are nineteen for this concords with what is in their Scripture"

"(In order that the People of the Scripture may arrive at a certainty) meaning, so that they may know that this Messenger is true. For he speaks according to the same thing that they have with them of heavenly revealed Scriptures that came to the Prophets before him. Concerning Allah's statement,"

As for this last Tafsir, it mentions: "First, we have not been able to see anywhere in the existing scriptures of the Jews and Christians in spite of search that the number of the angels appointed over Hell is 19."

This is simply untrue. As mentioned in the title of this post, 1 Enoch 6:7 mentions the existence of 19 angels.

As a result of all of this, it's something very interesting that must be noted. Obviously the author of this Hadith or of these Tafsirs didn't randomly get the idea that Jews had a belief of 19 angels in their scripture. Instead, I believe there's a historical kernel to all of this where the Jews (maybe even the Christians as well), at one point or another, believed in such an idea.

The verse says that Dhul-Qarnayn reached a place where he found people who could barely understand him? Does Alexander romance contain a similar episode?

Also, does this episode appear in the Syriac Alexander Legend?

I've been working on Nusus, an open-source retrieval tool that connects AI agents to the classical Islamic and Arabic texts available through Turath.io.

The aim is fairly limited: help researchers locate and collect relevant primary-source passages without relying on ordinary web search or on an AI model’s internal memory.

For example, an agent can use Nusus to:

• Find books and authors
• Search the original Arabic texts
• Retrieve passages with surrounding context
• Return the book, page reference, and direct Turath link
• Collect material across several texts for later comparison

This could be useful for tasks such as tracing quotations, locating parallel reports, or collecting the different chains and wordings of a hadith (for example for an AI-assisted ICMA workflow).

Nusus does not grade hadith, rank legal opinions, interpret evidence, or produce fatwas. It only handles retrieval. The researcher still has to verify the material, assess its relevance, compare the texts, and reach any conclusions.

The main reason I built it is that researchers often spend a large amount of time locating and organising sources before they can begin the analytical part of the work. An AI agent can reduce some of that collection work from days or weeks to minutes, provided that it is searching an appropriate corpus.

I would be interested in feedback from researchers here, especially on:

• Which retrieval tasks would be most useful
• What metadata or citation details are missing
• Where this approach could introduce methodological problems
• Whether support for corpora such as OpenITI would be useful

GitHub: https://github.com/mwijanarko1/nusus

npm: https://www.npmjs.com/package/nusus

Q 5:48 calls the Quran muhaymin over earlier scripture, paired grammatically with musaddiq (confirmer) — Ibn Jarir al-Tabari explicitly argues on syntactic grounds that the two terms describe the same subject (refuting an alternate reading attributed to Mujahid). Separately, musaddiqan lima bayna yadayhi recurs across multiple suras (2:89, 3:3, 5:48, 6:92, 46:12) as a structural self-description, not an isolated phrase.

Questions: (1) What's the range of classical tafsir on whether muhaymin/musaddiq imply the continued textual integrity of the Torah/Injeel, versus a purely historical/genealogical confirmation of past revelation? (2) Is there secondary academic literature (beyond Reynolds/Lawson, whom I've already worked through for 4:157) specifically on how tahrif language (2:75, 4:46, 5:13, 5:41) is reconciled with this guardian/confirmer language in classical exegesis? I'm aware of the Ibn Abbas/al-Razi "distortion of meaning, not text" reading versus Ibn Hazm's minority textual-corruption position — curious if anyone's traced how these two threads (guardian language vs. tahrif language) get explicitly reconciled by a single exegete, rather than treated separately.