whatever of it was unattributed, explained them, and verified what required verification among their poems, keeping it as concise as I could.

During my reviews, I noticed that many of those who quoted al-Ṭabarī sometimes misunderstood his intention and objected to him when some of his phrasing seemed obscure to them. Therefore, I noted down some of what occurred to me in the commentary, though I did not cover every instance for fear of lengthening the work, and I left out much of what I encountered of that in the first volume; however, I hope to make up for what I missed in the remaining volumes of the Tafsir, if Allah, our Lord, the Glorified and Exalted, so wills.

I also clarified what I came across regarding the terminology of early grammarians and others which al-Ṭabarī used, but which later grammarians and others departed from in favor of newly introduced terminology. I may have missed some of this, but I hope to clarify it in the upcoming volumes. I have placed a special index for terminology at the end of each volume so that a student seeking it may easily find any term that was unclear to him in one place explained in another volume of the Book.