Muqatil ibn sulayman

Muqatil ibn Sulayman al-Balkhi (died 767 ^[1]) was a 8th-century Sunni mufassir of the Quran.

Ibn Sa'd's complete biography of Muqatil is "The one who had a tafsir, He related from al-Dahhak ibn Muzahim and Ata ibn Abi Rabah, students of Ibn Abbas. Some of the people of hadith were wary of his hadith and objected to them," ^[2] Ibn Sa'd descibes him as one of the Fuqaha' and Hadith Scholars in Khurasan and does not give him a date of death.

Imam al-Shafi'i declared that "People are all the children of Abu Hanifa in fiqh, of Ibn Ishaq in history, of Imam Malik in hadith, and of Muqatil in tafsîr.^[3]

Muqatil is the alleged author of a tafsir (commentary) on the Quran that Wansbrough considers the oldest surviving complete tafsir and discusses in some detail ^[4]. This work was still in manuscript when Wansbrough wrote but has since been published ^[5].

He also played some part in the Civil War during the Caliphate of Marwan ibn Muhammad ^[6]

His views on divine anthropomorphism were notorious to later generations, but in spite of his “extreme” corporealism, he employed ta'wil in his tafsir even on verses on the attributes of Allah believed by many to show the contradiction in his thought.^[7]

References

1. ^ needed
2. ^ Aisha Bewley (trans) "The Men of Madina, volume 1" 1997 page 231
3. ^ http://www.livingislam.org/ahanifa_e.html
4. ^ John Wansbrough "The Sectarian Milieu" 2006 (original 1978)
5. ^ see John Wansbrough "Quranic Studies" 2005 (original 1977) page xli
6. ^ "The History of al-Tabari, volume 27" 1985
7. ^ Wesley Williams, ASPECTS OF THE CREED OF IMAM AHMAD IBN HANBAL: A STUDY OF ANTHROPOMORPHISM IN EARLY ISLAMIC DISCOURSE. Int. J. Middle East Stud. 34 (2002), 441–463.

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Name	Muqatil Ibn Sulayman
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Date of death	767
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