Abstract
The commentary of Muqātil b. Sulaymān (d. 150/767) is very important because it is the oldest exegesis that has survived to the present day. As much as the importance of this tafsir is indisputable, the sectarian identity of the author is just as controversial. The sectarian belonging of the author is also closely related to the value of being a source of this commentary. Because the evaluations about Muqātil follow two extremes: “lying” and “authority in tafsir”. In the contemporary period, some researchers have taken these discussions on the sectarian identity of the author to the point that Muqātil is seen as "inconvenient" in the Sunnī tafsir tradition and this situation causes the tafsir of the author to be ignored. Therefore, the claims in question remove the problem from being a question of Muqātil's sectarian identity and argue that Muqātil's tafsir is sacrificed to ideological motives in the tafsir tradition. There are different opinions about whether Muqātil is attributed to Mushabbiha, Murjiʾa or Shīʿa/Zaydiyya. This study focuses on the claim that the author is Shīʿīte/Zaydī, which was brought to the fore by names such as Muhammad Ebu Zehre (d. 1974), especially Abdullah Mahmud Shahhâte (b. 1951), who was the interpreter of his commentary. The claim that Muqātil was a Shīʿīte/Zaydī was first put forward by Ibn al-Nadīm (d. 385/995), who was known for his Shīʿa inclination. While the prominent Shīʿīte scholar al-Kashshī (III-IV. /IX-X. century) and Abu Ja'fer et-Tusi (d. 460/1067) argued that he was a Shīʿīte/Zaydī. Also Tusi states that he was one of the companions of Muhammad al-Bakir (d. 114/733) and Ca'fer-i Sadik (d. 148/765). Again, a relationship was established between Muqātil b. Sulaymān and Zaydiyya by orientalists such as Louis Massignon (d. 1962) and Montgomery Watt (d. 2006). Our research has two main purposes: First, it is to make some convincing determinations that he is not a Shīʿīte/Zaydī based on the author's own commentary. The second is to make some determinations about the place and influence of Muqātil in the Shīʿīte tradition, especially the sources of tafsir. Here, it will be tried to determine whether the narrations from Muqātil are included in the main tafsir and hadith sources of Shīʿa, and these narrations will be compared with the existing works. As a result, in this study, the Hijri II. the sectarian belonging of Muqātil, one of the leading commentators of the century, is evaluated through Shīʿīte sources.