So I made it the master exemplar for publishing this Book. As for the rest of the manuscripts, they are defective and poor, benefiting neither much nor little, not to mention being merely small fragments of it.

Therefore, I adopted another approach in collating and correcting this Tafsir, namely by cross-referencing the traditions contained within it against the book al-Durr al-Manthūr by al-Suyūṭī and Fatḥ al-Qadīr by al-Shawkānī, as both quote extensively from the Tafsir of Abū Jaʿfar. As for Ibn Kathīr in his Tafsir, he did not restrict himself to quoting traditions, but rather cited some of Abū Jaʿfar's verbatim commentary in various places; likewise, Abū Ḥayyān and al-Qurṭubī quoted from it in a few places in their respective exegeses. Thus, I compared the printed and manuscript copies of the Tafsir of Abū Jaʿfar against these books. In this first volume of the Tafsir, I used to mention the source reference for every tradition from these books, but then I realized that doing so lengthened the Book unnecessarily, so starting from the second volume, I omitted mentioning the references, except in cases of discrepancy, correction, or other reasons requiring clarification of the sources.

I also verified many of the traditions in the Tafsir against all other books that are likely repositories for their transmission, especially the History of al-Ṭabarī himself, as well as works by those of his generation who transmitted traditions with chains of transmission. In doing so, I was able to edit and refine most of them in al-Ṭabarī in a manner that I hope is good and acceptable.

As for his discussion of grammar and language, I reviewed it against its original sources, such as Majāz al-Qurʾān by Abū ʿUbayda, Maʿānī al-Qurʾān by al-Farrāʾ, and others who cite the opinions of the scholars of Quranic meanings from among the Kufans and Basrans.

And as for his poetic evidence, I tracked down what I could of it in the poetic collections of the Arabs, and attributed