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works, owing to his immense popularity in Egypt even after his death
in 1998.24 So far, however, his complete tafsr inasfar as it has been
publishedhas not been examined. Shaykh al-Sharw was born in a NileDelta village in 1911. He
received a religious education and went on to study at al-Azhar, from
where he graduated in 1941 with a diploma in Arabic language. In
1943, he started teaching at several Azhar institutes in the Delta.
Between 1950 and 1974, he spent most of his time in Saudi-Arabia
and Algeria, teaching religious subjects. After his return to Cairo, he
started to take part in a religious programme on state TV, Nr al nr,
in which he delivered his exegesis of the Qurn in the form of a sermon
directed to the common people during about a quarter of a century.
For a short period under Sadat, he became Minister of Religious Affairs,
for in spite of his extremely conservative views and a brief affiliation
with the Muslim Brotherhood in his youth, he always abstained from
criticising the government directly. At the time, he also benefitted from
the fact that, due to his long absence from Egypt, he was not associated
with the Nasserists. However, for most of his later life, until his death
in 1998, he was a popular preacher who appeared on TV, published
books, audio and video tapes and a newspaper.25
His Qurnic commentary was thus first and foremost delivered and
presented on television, which accounts for its enormous success. e
printed version, which is incomplete26, clearly reveals these oral origins.
e commentary is full of repetitions, paraphrases, rhetorical questions;
it explains words and syntactic constructions in a way that people with
little education can understand. It treats the Qurn verse by verse,
without forming larger units, but makes ample reference to other verses
of the Qurn. Apart from that, al-Sharw does not usually mention
his sources or refer to other scholars; very occasionally, the printed
version
contains a reference in a footnote. If al-Sharw mentions the
occasion of revelation at all, he usually does so in a very general way,
without providing names or other details.
While Shaykh al-Sharw was and still is extremely popular with a
predominantly Egyptian middle and lower class audience, his work
does not seem to have had an impact on Muslim scholarship, nor had it
been intended for that purpose. His commentary has not been translated,
nor is it cited by any of the other Arabic or Turkish commentators.
e Indonesian Muhammad Quraish Shihab does mention him
as one of his central sources, though.27 His commentary is also included
in the selection of tafsr works that is available on the website Altafsir.
com.
(5) Anwar al-Bz (Egypt): Al-tafsr al-tarbaw li-l-Qurn al-karm
(3 volumes)28
Virtually nothing could be found about Anwar al-Bz, besides the fact
that he edited Ibn Kathrs abaqt al-fuqah al-shfiyn29 and Ibn
Taymiyyas Majm al-fatw, the latter together with a co-editor.30
His concise commentary was published by Dr al-Nashr li-l-Gmit,
a Cairo-based publisher whose publication programme reveals an
affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood.31 e same can be said for
the commentary, whose main source is Sayyid Qubs F ill al-Qurn
which is quoted extensively in nearly every section. Another often-used
source is Sad awws commentary, which again owes a lot to
Qubs. Occasionally, al-Bz quotes other commentaries, but is remarkably
the Muslim World League, but never published, then writing a thematic
commentary grouped around central verses of the Qurn, and finally
his Fath al-Rahmn, a commentary on the complete Qurn.54
His commentary is rather concise and intended to be easy to read
and not partisan to any theological school or ideology.55 It is certainly
brief and to the point; it discusses groups of several verses, clarifies the
meanings of difficult words or expressions and then gives the meaning
phrase by phrase. It uses a broad range of inner- and extra-Qurnic
references, making use of a large number of sources, but does not quote
them extensively. In contrast to al-Jazirs commentary, it does not
obviously pursue a Wahhabite or Salaf agenda. In fact, it does frequently
not express any opinion at all, occasionally making it rather
difficult for the reader to find his way between the conflicting points
of view about particular exegetical problems.
Tuaylabs commentary is the subject of a very favourable review on
the popular website IslamOnline; it does not seem to have been cited
by any of the other commentators, nor to have been translated or
reedited.
In Egypt, Muhammad Ab Zahra (18981974), the Dean of Cairo
Universitys
Shara Faculty and a member of al-Azhars Islamic Research Academy,
started
publishing his Quran commentary, Zahrat al-tafsr,5 in an Islamic
magazine in
the mid 1950s. Publication had to be interrupted for political reasons
during the
1960s, probably due to Ab Zahras Islamist leanings; after Nassers death
he
resumed writing the tafsr until his demise in 1974, at which time he had
reached
the twenty-seventh sura (Srat al-Naml) of the Quran.6 His family had the
book
printed around 1987; it has lately been scanned and made available for
download on
the internet.7
Muhammad Sayyid anw (19282010), shaykh al-Azhar until his recent
death,
wrote his al-Tafsr al-was8 while holding faculty positions in Islamic
theology in
Egypt, Libya and Saudi Arabia.9 The fifteen volumes were published
between 1974
and 1986; a second edition was printed in 1992. It is available online on
the internet
platform Altafsir.com.
Another Egyptian medium-sized commentary on the Quran, al-Tafsr alwas
lil-Qurn al-karm was published between 1972 and 1986, in the form of
small
booklets, by a committee of scholars under the auspices of al-Azhars
Islamic
Research Academy;10 the endeavour seems to have been abandoned in
1986.11 The
commentary was written by 40 scholars and edited by a committee of ten
members,