The chief patron of Jewish commentators was Ibn Abbâs, son of the Prophet's uncle. Born while Mahomet and his kinsmen were shut up under the ban of the Coreish in the Hâshimite quarter of Mecca, he was yet a boy when the Prophet died. Powerful in make, he was clear in intellect, energetic, arrogant, but crafty and variable. Like his father Abbâs; he followed wind and tide; and, at first attached to the side of Aly, went over, on Aly's death, to the Omeyyad dynasty. In politics a cypher, he ruled with despotic power in matters spiritual. 

Ibn Abbâs revised his own edition of the Coran with the aid of Zeid (editor of the recognised version), and collated it with the recensions of Ibn Masûd and others. He numbered its verses, its words, and even its letters. Profoundly versed not only in tradition, but in the poetry and dialects of Arabia, he found little trouble in mastering his difficulties by construing this word in its Himyarite, and that in its Ethiopic sense. Jewish legend he borrowed from Kab the Rabbin, a Himyarite of Jewish parentage, who was converted to Islam on the reconquest of Yemen under Abu Bekr, and afterwards settled at Medina. From him, and from another converted Jew named Wahb, also from Yemen, Jewish legend was thus copiously drawn, and became embodied in the stream of Mahometan tradition. 

Ibn Abbâs himself was called the "Arab Rabbi." It is related that Mujâhid went three times over the Coran with him, dwelling upon each word. He appears to have held certain esoteric views which he communicated only to his most intimate friends, saying, -Were I to teach all, the people would stone me. His high social rank was not in those days inconsistent with his assumption of the office of teacher. He held public lectures on the Coran and, according to the custom of the time, was stormed by his auditors with questions and difficulties,—enigmas to them, but trifles to him. As we have seen, he left a mass of manuscript notes. Thus Ibn Abbâs acquired a prodigious influence in the development of theology: he is the father of exegesis, and his lectures form the mould in which all the Commentaries of the