Juz' Tabaarak (Tafseer Ibn Katheer, Part 29)

Imam 'Imad al-Din Isma'il ibn 'Umar ibn Kathir al-Dimashqi was a fourteenth-century Syrian historian, jurist, hadith scholar, and exegete, best known to the Muslim world today for his Tafsir al-Qur'an al-'Azim — universally known as Tafsir Ibn Kathir — and his monumental world history al-Bidaya wa al-Nihaya. Born in 701 AH / 1300 CE in the village of Mijdal near Bosra in southern Syria, he lost his father at the age of three and moved with his family to Damascus, where he received a comprehensive scholarly formation under the leading masters of his time, including al-Mizzi (whose daughter he later married), al-Birzali, and the controversial reformer Ibn Taymiyya, who became a profound and lasting influence.

Tafsir Ibn Kathir is the most widely read and translated work of classical Qur'anic exegesis. Methodologically it pioneered tafsir bi'l-ma'thur — interpreting the Qur'an by means of the Qur'an itself, then through authentic hadith, then through the statements of the Companions and their students — and it systematically excludes the Israelite traditions and weak narrations that had accumulated in earlier commentaries. Al-Bidaya wa al-Nihaya ('The Beginning and the End') is a fourteen-volume universal history covering creation through prophetic biographies, early Islam, the caliphates, and the author's own time, ending with the eschatological narratives of the end of days. Ibn Kathir also authored a hadith primer Ikhtisar 'Ulum al-Hadith, the Sira al-Nabawiyya, and works on jurisprudence and Qur'anic readings.

Ibn Kathir lost his sight near the end of his life and died in Damascus in 774 AH / 1373 CE, where he was buried alongside his teacher Ibn Taymiyya at the Sufi cemetery. His tafsir remains the standard reference for English-speaking Muslims through Mukhtasar Tafsir Ibn Kathir, the abridgement edited by Safiur Rahman Mubarakpuri and published by Darussalam, which has introduced his methodology to a new generation worldwide.

Sameh Strauch is a German-born Muslim convert, writer, and translator best known to English-speaking Muslim readers as the author of Islam: The True Religion, an accessible introductory comparative-religion guide published through the International Islamic Publishing House (IIPH) and widely distributed in da'wah settings across the English-speaking world. His writing focuses on the foundational beliefs of Sunni Islam, the prophetic tradition, and the comparative encounter between Islam and modern Western religious sensibilities.

Strauch's published works also include Islam, the True Religion (an expanded comparative study), shorter da'wah-oriented treatises, and translation work supporting the broader IIPH publishing program in English. His writing register is characterized by clear prose, careful primary-source citation, and a measured, conversational tone calibrated to readers approaching Islam from a Western Christian or post-Christian background. His convert's perspective informs much of his framing — addressing the questions and assumptions a Western reader is most likely to bring to the texts of Islam.

Specific biographical details — including birth date, education, and convert journey — remain unevenly documented in publicly available sources. His enduring contribution lies in producing concise, accessible English-language da'wah literature that has made the major themes of Islamic creed and the Prophetic biography available to general English-speaking readers, with his books continuing to be stocked at da'wah tables and Islamic centers across the English-speaking Muslim world.