The Commentator’s Companion Book
🎧 Listen to this chapter (2 min)
Welcome. If you have ever read an English translation of a classical commentary on the Qur’an, there is a good chance it was the commentary of Ibn Kathir.
He lived in Damascus in the fourteenth century. A student of the great scholars of his age, a historian, a hadith master, and above all, a lover of the Qur’an. His tafsir has become one of the most widely read commentaries in the world.
But alongside that great work, he wrote a smaller companion. A book about the Qur’an itself. How it came down. How it was written. How it was gathered and protected. And what the Prophet ﷺ said about its virtues.
He called it simply The Virtues of the Qur’an.
Much of it follows the chapters of Imam al-Bukhari’s famous collection, with Ibn Kathir’s explanations woven in between. So it is both a history and a guide.
In this summary, we will follow the Qur’an’s journey, from a cave near Makkah, to the copies in our hands today. And then we will listen to what the Prophet ﷺ said about how to live with it.
