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to the stories concerning the
origin of the world, and the former prophets, and the prophecies of future
events and wars.Sprenger, iii. p. cix.
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The chief patron of Jewish
commentators was Ibn Abbâs, son of the Prophet's uncle. Born while Mahomet
and his kinsmen were shut up under the ban of the Coreish in the Hâshimite
quarter of Mecca, he was yet a boy when the Prophet died. Powerful in make, he
was clear in intellect, energetic, arrogant, but crafty and variable. Like his
father Abbâs; he followed wind and tide; and, at first attached to the side
of Aly, went over, on Aly's death, to the Omeyyad dynasty. In politics a
cypher, he ruled with despotic power in matters spiritual.
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Ibn Abbâs revised his own edition of the Coran with the aid of Zeid (editor
of the recognised version), and collated it with the recensions of Ibn Masûd
and others. He numbered its verses, its words, and even its letters.
Profoundly versed not only in tradition, but in the poetry and dialects of
Arabia, he found little trouble in mastering his difficulties by construing
this word in its Himyarite, and that in its Ethiopic sense. Jewish legend he
borrowed from Kab the Rabbin, a Himyarite of Jewish parentage, who was
converted to Islam on the reconquest of Yemen under Abu Bekr, and afterwards
settled at Medina. From him, and from another converted Jew named Wahb, also
from Yemen, Jewish legend was thus copiously drawn, and became embodied in the
stream of Mahometan tradition.
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Ibn Abbâs himself was called the
"Arab Rabbi." It is related that Mujâhid went three times over the
Coran with him, dwelling upon each word. He appears to have held certain
esoteric views which he communicated only to his most intimate friends,
saying, -Were I to teach all, the people would stone me. His high social rank
was not in those days inconsistent with his assumption of the office of
teacher. He held public lectures on the Coran and, according to the custom of
the time, was stormed by his auditors with questions and difficulties,enigmas
to them, but trifles to him. As we have seen, he left a mass of manuscript
notes. Thus Ibn Abbâs acquired a prodigious influence in the development of
theology: he is the father of exegesis, and his lectures form the mould in
which all the Commentaries of the
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