Newly Found Copies of Khājih Abdullah Ansari's Qur'anic Commentary in Turkey and Najaf

Abu Ismail Abdullah Ibn Muhammad Ibn Ali Ansari Hirawi(391-481 AH) known as Shaikh al-Islam or Khawaja Abdullah Ansari is one of the greatest Hanbali scholars of Khorasan who is better known among Persian speakers as Sufi and ascetic. He was a preacher, narrator, commentator, and scholar of history and genealogy, and in his time he made many efforts to promote the Hanbali religion in Khorasan, and especially in his hometown of Herat. There are several works left in Arabic and Persian by him, some of which are sometimes properly doubted about their authenticity. One of the most important works attributed to him is his commentary on the Holy Qur'an, which Meybodi states at the beginning of his Kashf al-Asrār, that he saw it brief and concise, and therefore expanded and elaborated it in a new format. However, the original text of the commentary of Khājih Abdullah Ansari, which was the basis of Meybodi’s work, remains unknown. This article, for the first time, introduces new copies of this Persian-Arabic commentary in the two libraries of Khalil Hamid Pasha (in Sparta, Turkey) and the library of the Alavi shrine (in Najaf Ashraf), which confirm its attribution to Khājih Abdullah Ansari, and by introducing the characteristics and interpretive method of Khājih Abdullah, it deals with some of its most important linguistic aspects such as Hirawi Persian dialect, ancient Persian words and Hirawi syntax in this work.