Seerah al-Baydawi — Nasir al-Din al-Baydawi (1215-1286 CE): The Persian Judge Who Wrote Anwar al-Tanzil wal-Asrar al-Ta'wil (the Most-Assigned Classical Tafsir in Many Traditional Schools) as a Sunni Revision of al-Zamakhshari's al-Kashshaf, Preserving the Linguistic Methodology While Correcting the Mu'tazili Theology

Seerah al-Baydawi (سِيرَةُ البَيضَاوِيّ; full name: Nasir al-Din Abu al-Khayr 'Abdullah ibn 'Umar al-Baydawi; born approximately 615 AH / 1215 CE, probably in Bayda [near Shiraz] in Persia; died approximately 691 AH / 1286 CE [exact date uncertain — some say 685 or 716 AH]; a Shafi'i judge [qadi] who served in Shiraz under the Ilkhanid Mongol rulers; his context: al-Baydawi lived in the period following the Mongol conquest of Baghdad [1258 CE] and the destruction of the Abbasid caliphate; the Ilkhanid Mongols ruled Persia; al-Baydawi served in the judicial system of this new regime; the major work: Anwar al-Tanzil wa-Asrar al-Ta'wil [The Lights of Revelation and the Secrets of Interpretation], universally called Tafsir al-Baydawi: a comprehensive tafsir of the entire Quran; al-Baydawi's method: he consciously produced a condensed Sunni revision of al-Zamakhshari's al-Kashshaf [while also drawing on al-Tabari's Jami' al-Bayan, al-Zamakhshari, al-Razi, and others]; the revision consisted of: [1] preserving al-Zamakhshari's extraordinary Arabic linguistic and rhetorical analysis — which is simply the best available; [2] correcting or removing al-Zamakhshari's Mu'tazili theological positions [the createdness of the Quran, divine obligation to reward and punish, the denial of intercession]; [3] condensing the text to make it manageable for educational use; [4] adding additional interpretations from non-Zamakhshari sources; the result: a tafsir that combines the linguistic depth of al-Kashshaf with orthodox Sunni Ash'ari theology in a condensed format; the educational deployment: Tafsir al-Baydawi became the standard advanced tafsir text in Ottoman and South Asian madrasa education; in many traditional curricula, al-Baydawi is the tafsir studied — not al-Tabari [too long], not al-Zamakhshari [Mu'tazili], not Ibn Kathir [less linguistic depth]; the glosses and super-glosses: al-Baydawi attracted an enormous scholarly commentary tradition; dozens of hashiyas [marginal glosses] and sharhs [commentaries] were written; the most famous is by Shamsuddin Muhammad al-Kayali [the Kayali hashiya]; Ottoman scholars produced multiple important glosses; this secondary apparatus makes al-Baydawi one of the most-commented-on texts in Islamic educational history; other works: al-Minhaj al-Wusul ila 'Ilm al-Usul [The Clear Path to the Knowledge of the Principles of Jurisprudence]: a text on usul al-fiqh [jurisprudential theory] that attracted commentary; Tawali' al-Anwar [The Rising of Lights]: a text on kalam; the personality question: the biographical sources on al-Baydawi are relatively sparse; the dates of his birth and death are uncertain; what is clear is that the work was influential within decades of its composition; legacy: in many traditional Islamic educational curricula worldwide, al-Baydawi's tafsir is the first or only complete tafsir a student studies; its combination of linguistic precision and theological orthodoxy made it the educational tool that al-Zamakhshari himself — despite his brilliance — could not be, given his Mu'tazili commitments) is the most-taught classical Quran commentary in traditional Islamic education.