Ibn Abbas Biography

Abdullah ibn Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib (RA) was a Companion of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, his cousin, and the most renowned exegete of the Qur'an in the first generation of Muslims. Born in Mecca around three years before the Hijrah — roughly 619 CE — he was the son of the Prophet's ﷺ paternal uncle al-Abbas and Lubaba bint al-Harith, one of the earliest women to embrace Islam. He was thirteen years old at the time of the Prophet's ﷺ death and had already received from him the famous supplication: 'O Allah, give him deep understanding of the religion and teach him the interpretation.'

After the Prophet's ﷺ passing, Ibn Abbas devoted himself to systematically gathering and verifying knowledge from the senior Companions, traveling to those who had spent the most time with the Prophet ﷺ and cross-checking what he heard. He served briefly as governor of Basra under Caliph Ali ibn Abi Talib (RA) and later withdrew from political life to teach in Mecca and the Hijaz. His circles drew students by the hundreds; he is reported to have set aside separate days for different disciplines — tafsir, fiqh, hadith, Arabic poetry, and the science of inheritance. He was titled Tarjuman al-Qur'an ('The Interpreter of the Qur'an'), Habr al-Ummah ('The Scholar of the Community'), and al-Bahr ('The Ocean') for the depth of his knowledge.

Ibn Abbas narrated approximately 1,660 hadith and is the source of an enormous body of early Qur'anic exegesis preserved through his students — particularly Mujahid, Ikrimah, and Sa'id ibn Jubayr — whose chains underpin the major classical tafsirs from al-Tabari onward. He died in al-Ta'if in 68 AH / 687 CE and was buried there, mourned across the Muslim world as the foundational teacher of Qur'anic interpretation.