Editorial Conventions

Structure and method

The present edition presents the Arabic text of Fī Riyāḍ al-Tafsīr in the Warsh ʿan Nāfiʼ rasm, the orthographic standard of North and West Africa in which the tafsīr was delivered, with an English translation on facing pages. The edition is structured in seven volumes, each corresponding to one of the seven manzils, the weekly Qurʾānic recitation cycle that Niasse himself practised and celebrated in verse. He enumerated the opening sūra of each manzil in verse and invoked two of the Qurʾān's names, al-Furqān (the Criterion) and al-Jamʼ (the Joining):

Al-Fātiḥah, al-Māʾida, Yūnus, al-Isrāʾ,
al-Shuʿarāʾ, al-Ṣāffāt, Qāf, thus it is clarified.
He who joins the Criterion with the Joining
completes a full recitation of the Criterion.

This structure reflects fidelity to the Shaykh's own relationship to the Qurʾān. Qurʾānic audio is presented per verse using the recitation of Maḥmūd Khalīl al-Ḥuṣarī (1917–1980) in the Warsh riwāya. The Warsh rasm is the standard of the Qurʾān as recited and taught in the Tijānī tradition, and it differs in certain orthographic details from the Ḥafṣ rasm more familiar to readers outside it.

Digitisation and display

The Arabic text was digitised from the printed ten-volume edition. The compiled edition presents the commentary as continuous Arabic prose with footnotes interspersed throughout each lesson section. For readability, this edition separates the body text — Niasse's commentary — from the footnote block, the compiler's documentary apparatus. The body text appears in the Shaykh's Tafsīr panel; the footnotes in the Critical Apparatus beside it.

The lesson structure follows the compiler's ten-volume organisation: each lesson corresponds to a session of oral delivery. The site presents all fifty-six lessons, covering the Qurʾān from al-Fātiḥa through al-Nās (Q. 1:1–114:6).

On the verse pages, a word of the Qurʾānic text carrying an underline opens the lexicon on its root: al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī's Mufradāt, Ibn Fāris's Maqāyīs al-lugha, and Lane. Two limits are worth stating plainly rather than leaving to be inferred. The first is scope: roots are supplied for the Qurʾānic text only, from a morphologically annotated corpus, and a word with no underline is one this edition is not offering to gloss. Niasse's own commentary carries no such annotation and is deliberately untouched — automatic root extraction on unvocalised prose is accurate enough to be useful and not accurate enough for a critical edition. The second is authority: the digitised lexica name no printed edition, so the panel gives work and headword but never a page. It is a reading aid. The edition does not cite it, and neither should you.

Footnote markers

The compiler's footnotes are marked inline in the Arabic text with superscript numbers ^[n]. Each marker is a link that opens the corresponding entry in the Critical Apparatus, where the full footnote appears in Arabic with an English citation header. The same markers appear in the translated lessons, where the translation preserves the footnote numbering of the Arabic source.

The apparatus has been classified by subject genre — Hadith Sciences, Tafsīr, Theology, Sufism, Fiqh, Linguistics, History — a classification not present in the printed Arabic text and an original editorial contribution of this digital edition. It covers 7 of the 56 lessons, 324 footnotes in all. The apparatus for the remaining lessons is withheld while its inline markers are re-checked against the verified documents. Browse what is published at Footnotes.

The apparatus throughout preserves all of Niasse's original scholarly citations — to the hadith collections, to al-Suyūṭī's al-Itqān, to al-Ghazālī, to Ibn ʿArabī — traced to their canonical sources.

Three voices

Three people speak on a lesson page, and the edition keeps them apart. The commentary is Niasse's. The footnotes are Muḥammad ibn al-Shaykh's, and they are documentary: they record where a ḥadīth comes from, in which collection, at which number, on which page. The editor's notes are the present editor's, and they are interpretive: they place a passage in the debate it addresses, name the position Niasse is answering, or identify a source he alludes to without naming it.

The two apparatuses are never merged. The editor's notes stand above the compiler's in the Critical Apparatus panel, ruled in gold, each carrying its author's name and marked as absent from the printed edition. Where this edition asks you to accept a judgement rather than a citation, it tells you whose.

Verse ranges and volume references

The verse range given for each lesson (Q. 2:6–25, for instance) has been verified against the ten-volume structural document prepared for this edition and, for Volumes 1–5 (Lessons 1–30), against the physical printed volumes. Volume and page references cite the ten-volume compiled edition, and page numbers are given for all ten volumes.

The translation

The English translation is by Amadu Kunateh and currently covers Lessons 1–5; the complete bilingual translation is under contract for publication. It proceeds from a commitment to scholarly precision and readability. The register is formal academic prose that preserves the oral cadences of the original — its directness, its rhythmic repetitions, and its transitions between legal analysis and spiritual address. Technical terms are retained in Arabic on first occurrence, with English equivalents in parentheses, and thereafter used in transliteration.

Three translation choices warrant explicit statement. First, the Basmala is rendered “By Allāh's Name, The Entirely Merciful, The Especially Merciful,” preserving the theological distinction between al-Raḥmān and al-Raḥīm that Niasse himself elaborates at length. Second, ʿabd is translated “slave” throughout, as the more precise rendering of the term's theological weight — the relationship of complete ontological submission that ʿabd carries in Niasse's usage. Third, al-ḥamdu lillāh is rendered as two words, “al-ḥamdu lillāh (The Praise is for God),” preserving both the Arabic formula and its syntactic structure.

Transliteration and honorifics

Arabic transliteration follows IJMES conventions throughout. Following the name of the Prophet, the ligature ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam, “may Allāh's peace and blessings be upon him”) stands in the English text for whatever form the Arabic gives; the Arabic itself is left exactly as the compiled edition prints it, whether spelled out or contracted, and is not emended to match. Following the names of Companions and recognized saints, r.a. (raḍiya Allāhu ʿanhu/ʿanhā, “may Allāh be pleased with him/her”) is retained in abbreviated form. ʿAlayhi al-salām, after the names of prophets other than Muḥammad, is left as the Arabic has it. Qurʾānic citations are given as Q. followed by chapter and verse. Technical Arabic terms are given in transliteration on first occurrence with an English equivalent in parentheses; thereafter in transliteration only.

The Qurʾānic Text, and What the Marks Beside It Mean

The edition is set from a scan of the Tunis printing, and scanning damages Arabic in a particular way: it confuses letters that differ only by their dots, and it loses the seat under a hamza. Inside a Qurʾānic quotation that damage is not a typo but a corrupted scriptural text, so every bracketed citation in all 56 lessons has been read against a reference muṣḥaf in the riwāya of Warsh ʿan Nāfiʿ — the reading this printing follows.

The reference detects damage; it does not settle orthography. Where the printing and the reference differ over an alif, a hamza seat or a vowel, the printing stands, because those are the printing’s own conventions and a digital text is no authority over them. What the reference is used for is the letter skeleton underneath.

A small mark after each bracketed citation says how far that reading has been carried, and the marks are not decoration: they are the apparatus. A ✓ means the passage stands in the āya named beside it, letter for letter. A ≠ means the āya is identified and the printing reads otherwise — which may be scan damage, or the compiler quoting from memory, and nothing inside the quotation itself can tell those apart. A ? means the scan has damaged the passage past the point where the āya can be identified at all, so there is nothing to collate it against.

Of 15,611 bracketed citations, 5,499 are collated and agree; 83 are identified and diverge; and 2,989 of four words or more cannot yet be placed. The remaining 7,040 run under four words — a lemma the commentary is about to gloss rather than a citation making a claim — and carry no mark.

The divergent and unplaced citations are the edition’s open work. They are shown rather than hidden, and they are not silently emended: a reading that cannot be settled on the evidence is left as the printing has it, and marked.

Every mark is also a way in. Click one and you can propose what the passage should read and say on what evidence — a muṣḥaf, a printed edition, a parallel elsewhere in the commentary. Suggestions reach the editor and are weighed one by one; none of them alters the text on its own, and an accepted one is applied with its warrant recorded. Readers who know this material have caught what a rule cannot, and the marks are there partly to make that possible.

Citation

How to cite this edition, its copyright, and its version history are on the About page. Any passage you save on the site carries its own citation.