I would have liked to clarify what al-Ṭabarī was unique in saying concerning the interpretation of certain verses, and to explain what other exegetes neglected, but I feared that this would cause the book to increase in length upon length; despite my viewing that this is something that unveils al-Ṭabarī's book and increases our knowledge of al-Ṭabarī the exegete, and of his methodology that he carved out in Tafsir, and why the exegetes after him differed, neglecting what he was keen to clarify.

I would also have liked to make things easier for the reader of his book, by placing at the end of consecutive verses whose explanation he concluded a summary that gathers what was scattered across dozens of pages. That is because I saw myself in the past, and I saw the exegetes who quoted from him, reading a portion of the Tafsir detached from what preceded it, or reading it piecemeal. This reading, as became clear to me, was the cause of much confusion in knowing al-Ṭabarī's intent, and in attributing views to him that he never expressed. For when he feared repetition due to the length of the book, he restricted himself in some places to what was indispensable, trusting that he had already clarified in the preceding parts of his book his methodology in interpreting verses of connected meanings. A reader seeking the meaning of a given verse might be unaware of this interconnection between the verse he is reading and the verses about which al-Ṭabarī previously provided an explanation intimately connected to his explanation of this verse. However, when I began doing that, I found the matter difficult and arduous, requiring the repetition of some past material and a lengthy explanation. And this is something that would further increase the Tafsir in length and bulk.

When I saw that many scholars used to fault al-Ṭabarī for crowding his book with numerous narrations from the predecessors who read the [earlier] Scriptures, and who mentioned regarding the meanings of the Qurʾān what they mentioned of narrations from the people of the two previous Scriptures—the Torah and the Gospel—I wished to reveal al-Ṭabarī's method in adducing these narrations, narration by narration, and to show how people erred in understanding his objective, and that he never made these narrations dominant over the Book of Allah, which falsehood cannot approach from before it or from behind it. I also wished to clarify, with every narration, al-Ṭabarī's statement regarding its chain of transmission, and that it is a chain of transmission by which no proof can be established in the religion of Allah, nor in the exegesis of His Book,