Theological and Legal Expansions

Beyond its grammatical contributions, Al-Futuhat al-Ilahiyyah provides important theological and legal expansions of Tafsir al-Jalalayn's highly compressed treatment of these dimensions. Tafsir al-Jalalayn's brevity means that theological questions are typically resolved with a single phrase, and legal questions receive similarly brief treatment. Al-Jamal adds the fuller discussion that students and scholars need.

For theological verses, al-Jamal's expansions reflect the mainstream Ash'ari theology of the Azhari scholarly tradition in which he was formed. On the divine attribute verses, he explains the Ash'ari position on ta'wil, noting where al-Jalalayn's brief formulations require expansion to clarify the mainstream Sunni position fully. His additions in this area serve an important pedagogical function: students learning tafsir from al-Jalalayn need to understand the theological framework within which its interpretations operate.

His treatment of eschatological verses adds hadith evidence and scholarly commentary that the parent text omits. The Quranic descriptions of the Day of Judgment, paradise, and hell — treated briefly in al-Jalalayn — receive more detailed treatment in al-Jamal's hashiyah, with relevant hadith cited and the positions of different scholars on disputed details of eschatology noted.

For legal verses, al-Jamal's expansions add the Shafi'i jurisprudential framework that al-Jalalayn assumes without fully explicating. Both al-Mahalli and as-Suyuti were Shafi'i scholars, and their treatment of legal verses reflects Shafi'i positions without always explaining the reasoning. Al-Jamal adds this reasoning, citing relevant hadith and explaining the Shafi'i analysis, making the legal dimension of the commentary accessible to students beginning to understand how Quranic text and legal reasoning interact.

His additions on occasions of revelation (asbab an-nuzul) supplement al-Jalalayn's selective inclusion of this material. Al-Jamal drew on the established asbab an-nuzul collections to provide the relevant historical context where al-Jalalayn had omitted it, enriching students' understanding of the specific circumstances that specific verses addressed. The theological, legal, and contextual additions in Al-Futuhat al-Ilahiyyah work together to transform Tafsir al-Jalalayn's concise grammatical commentary into a fully rounded engagement with the Quran — one that addresses the historical circumstances of revelation, the theological implications of specific passages, and the legal consequences of Quranic commands. This comprehensiveness within a single hashiya is what distinguished al-Jamal's contribution from the more specialized commentary works that addressed only one dimension of the parent text.