Abdullah ibn Abbas
عبد الله بن عباس
c. 619 CE – c. 688 CE · c. 68 AH† †
† Hijri date derived by computation from the Gregorian/Julian date; it may differ from the transmitted date by a day or two.
The Prophet's young cousin who grew up in Medina and became the tradition's founding authority on the interpretation of the Qur'an — remembered as the father of tafsir.
At a glance
- Roles
- Companion · Scholar
- Counted among
- Sunni
- Era
- The Prophetic Era · The Rashidun Caliphate · The Umayyad Period
- Region
- Arabia
- Review
- Draft Completeness 2/5 · Help complete it
Life in time
In space
Map: Natural Earth, public domain · places and route from the graph
Scripture and its sciencesDevelopment of law, theology and institutions
Place in the story
- Family of the ProphetTradition
- Companion · 622 CE · 1 BH†Tradition
- Scholar · c. 640 CE · c. 19 AH†Historical
- Official · c. 656 CE · c. 35 AH† – c. 660 CE · c. 40 AH†Tradition
Sunni (transmitted)
How others named them
- “Hibr al-Umma (the scholar of the community); Tarjuman al-Qur'an (interpreter of the Qur'an)” — Islamic tradition
Roles are dated and sourced; the museum describes the act and attributes the judgement.
Brief
Abdullah ibn Abbas was the Prophet's young cousin — a boy when the Prophet died, and later the tradition's founding authority on what the Qur'an means.
Life
Born about 619 CE, three years before the Hijra, Ibn Abbas grew up in Medina in the Prophet's extended household 1. The traditions describe the Prophet praying that God teach him the interpretation — and describe the boy's hunger to learn from every Companion he could find.
Under the caliphs he became a teacher and jurist; under Ali he served as governor of Basra, then withdrew to the Hijaz after Ali's death 1. Generations of students memorized his explanations of Qur'an passages, his legal judgments, and his store of Arabic poetry; nearly every later commentary cites him. He died at Taif about 688 1.
Legacy
The whole genre of Qur'an commentary — tafsir — traces its ancestry to his teaching. Wherever a commentator writes "Ibn Abbas said," the chain claims to start here.
For young visitors
Ibn Abbas was only a boy when the Prophet died, but he spent his life asking the elders everything they remembered — and became the great explainer of the Qur'an.
Connections
- Born in
- Mecca
- Died in
- Ta'if
- Child of
- al-Abbas ibn Abd al-MuttalibUmm al-Fadl Lubaba bint al-Harith
- Member of
- Banu HashimQuraysh
- Participated in
- The HijraThe pen-and-paper incident
- Mentioned in
- Arba'un 19 — O boy, I shall teach you words
People and things also explored
MeccaUmar ibn al-KhattabAbd al-Muttalib ibn HashimMuhammadBanu Hashimal-Abbas ibn Abd al-MuttalibUthman ibn AffanUmm Salama (Hind bint Abi Umayya)
Sources
- Ibn Sa'd, Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir (Bewley translation, Ta-Ha)
- Watt, Muhammad at Medina (1956)
Cite this page
islam.museum contributors. “Abdullah ibn Abbas”. islam.museum, https://islam.museum/en/person/abdullah-ibn-abbas/. CC BY-SA 4.0. Accessed 2026-10-12.