Tafsīr al-ʿAyyāshī is a fourth/tenth century commentary of the Qurʾan by the Shīʿī Imāmī exegete Abū al-Naḍr Muḥammad b. Masʿūd al-ʿAyyāshī (d. 320/932). Composed during the period of the Twelfth Imam’s minor occultation (al-ghaybat al-ṣughrā) it counts as one of the earliest surviving commentaries from the early phase of Imāmī Shīʿism. Comprising several thousand traditions gathered from the Prophet Muḥammad and his household (ahl al-bayt) al-ʿAyyāshī’s tafsīr provides an overall unique Shīʿī conception of Islamic sacred history as well as an early representation of Imāmī exegesis and commentary on the outer and inner meanings of the Qurʾan, the sacred scripture of Islam. This bilingual Arabic-English edition of al-ʿAyyāshī’s tafsīr provides a complete translation in three volumes of a key text from the classical period of Imāmī Shīʿism and offers an indispensable resource for specialists and non-specialists alike interested in the history of Qurʾanic exegesis. This multivolume translation includes a detailed introduction by Professor Meir Bar-Asher, who has written extensively on the history of Imāmī exegesis, as well as multiple indices that enable the reader to engage with the text as an ongoing tool for study and research.
