Books of Interpretation in the Umayyad Era (A Historical Study)

Abstract

Most of the ancient and modern historians point out that the codification of Islamic sciences- including the science of interpretation - began in the Abbasid era, that modern studies have proven that the beginnings of codification go back to much before the Abbasid era, and that some written traces have been found since the era of the Messenger and his companions from whom the generation of followers took, but it is likely that these written traces remained limited.

Books classified in the interpretation were lost, as were most of the books that were classified in history and Hadith in the Umayyad era. The advanced Muslim scholars, as well as some of the later scholars knew the interpretations of the Qur’an in different narrations, and only a small remnant has reached us from the Qur’anic interpretations that were taken directly from the oldest interpretations, which date back to the first half of the second Hijri century.

A number of early Muslims were embarrassed to engage in the interpretation of the Qur’an, and this is the case of the Caliph Abu Bakr, Omar Ibn Al-Khattab, and some of the followers such as Saeed Ibn Al-Musayyib, but the news and indications indicate that the first attempts to interpret the Qur’an go back to the beginning of Islam. The interpretations of these scholars include the interpretation of historical and jurisprudential explanations and depictions of the unseen world, in addition to many explanations of a linguistic nature that enter into the study of language vocabulary.

Most of the interpretations that were developed in the first and second Hijri centuries were affected by the school of Ibn Abbas, and among these interpretations are the interpretation of Mujahid, Akrima and Al-Hasan Al-Basri. Many Isra'iliyat entered the domain of interpretation, because of the large number of Christians (Ahl al-Kitab) embraced Islam, and their minds were still holding news not related to the legal rules, such as the news of the beginning of creation and the beginning of beings, as well as a lot of stories. The souls at that time were inclined to hear the details of what the Qur’an refers to in terms of Jewish or Christian events, so the followers were lenient, so they were pushed into many Isra'iliyat with no criticism.