Al-Jalalayn in Islamic Education: The Madrasa Tradition

In the traditional Islamic educational system — the madrasa — there is a concept known as the standard curriculum (al-durus al-nizamiyyah): a set of texts that every student must master on the path from beginner to scholar. Different scholarly traditions in different regions have their own specific lists, but across the Arabic-speaking world, South Asia, Southeast Asia, West Africa, and Central Asia, one text appears with remarkable consistency in the intermediate level of Quranic sciences study: Tafsir al-Jalalayn.

The madrasa places al-Jalalayn at a specific point in the student's journey. The student has already learned to read Arabic, memorized the Quran, studied basic Arabic grammar and morphology (typically through Ajurrumiyyah and Alfiyya ibn Malik), and begun introductory fiqh. They are now ready to engage with the Quran's meaning systematically, verse by verse, guided by a text that requires Arabic competence but does not presuppose advanced scholarly training. Al-Jalalayn fills this role precisely. It can be taught through from cover to cover in a single academic year, providing a comprehensive first pass through the Quranic text at the level of meaning.

The teaching of al-Jalalayn in traditional madrasas follows a characteristic format. The teacher reads the Quranic verse, then reads the corresponding passage of al-Jalalayn, pausing to elaborate on grammatical points, expand briefly on theological issues, and sometimes note where larger tafsir works develop the discussion further. Students follow along in their own copies — al-Jalalayn is one of the most printed Arabic texts in history, available in dozens of editions and formats — and take notes in the margins, a practice that has itself created a body of marginal scholarship over the centuries.

The commentary tradition on al-Jalalayn is itself a measure of the text's centrality. Dozens of hashiyas (marginal commentaries) have been written on al-Jalalayn across the centuries, explaining its compressed phrases, expanding its brief grammatical notes, and providing the scholarly context that al-Jalalayn's brevity presupposes. Among the most widely used are the hashiya of as-Sawi (Ahmad ibn Muhammad as-Sawi al-Maliki, d. 1825 CE) and the hashiya of al-Jamal (Sulayman ibn Umar al-Jamal, d. 1790 CE), both Azhar scholars whose commentaries are printed alongside al-Jalalayn in many standard editions. These hashiyas effectively transform al-Jalalayn from a brief text into a medium-depth tafsir — the student reads al-Jalalayn, the teacher expands through the hashiya, and the combination covers much of what a student needs at the intermediate level.

Al-Azhar in Cairo — the oldest continuously operating university in the world and the most influential center of Sunni scholarship for a thousand years — has kept al-Jalalayn in its curriculum through every century since as-Suyuti's death. Students from Nigeria to Malaysia who come to al-Azhar for advanced study have typically already encountered al-Jalalayn in their home countries, making it a shared reference point across the global Sunni scholarly community.

The persistence of al-Jalalayn across five centuries of changing educational contexts — through the decline and reform of madrasa systems, through colonialism and its disruptions, through the emergence of modern universities alongside traditional institutions — testifies to the enduring value of what the two Jalals created: a text that is not the deepest tafsir ever written, not the most comprehensive, not the most theologically sophisticated, but the most useful for its specific purpose. It equips students to understand the Quran's meaning with clarity, precision, and appropriate brevity, and it does this better than anything else ever has.