01
The Editor
A blocks-based document with verse blocks, callouts, and a slash menu tuned for tafsir. Arabic and English flow side by side. Real-time multiplayer.
Open the editor →v0.4 — Public beta · ٢٠٢٦
The Book was sent down to be reflected upon. This is a desk for that work.
Sit with an āyah as long as it takes. Write down what you find in it, mark the Mushaf in ink that stays put, and open sixty-seven classical commentaries in the margin when you want to know how the scholars read it — on your own, or with your halaqa.
Al-Fātiḥa · Workspace
+2
SURAH AL-FĀTIḤA · 1:2
On praise as the opening posture of the believer
AL-FĀTIḤA · 1:2
⌘ Bookmark
↗ Open drawer
ٱلْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ رَبِّ ٱلْعَـٰلَمِينَ
Al-ḥamdu lillāhi rabbi'l-ʿālamīn.
2All praise is due to Allah, Lord of all the worlds.
The verse opens with al-ḥamd — definite, total — not merely thanks for what is given but praise for what He is. Al-Rāzī ties this directly to ↦ 1:1: the bismillāh names Him; al-ḥamd then renders Him His due.
A second reading places the lām of lillāh as the lām of istiḥqāq — entitlement — so the sentence does not describe a transaction but a fact of the universe.
✦
Linked commentary · Tafsīr Ibn Kathīr
“He is praised for His names and for His acts, before any servant praises Him, and after.”
Y
Yusuf · “connect this to 1:5?”
Yahya is editing
In study circles at
Youth Majlis
A short tour
Seventy-two seconds of someone actually using it.
Editor, scholar shortcuts, the 67-tafsīr library, ink on the Mushaf, live multiplayer, and workspaces — one continuous tour.
tafsirlab.app · feature trailer
1080p
A guided tour of the whole app — read, annotate, write, and study together.
What you get
Three surfaces, and none of them make you leave the page.
02
The Mushaf
Every page of the Madinah Mushaf, ink-annotatable. Circle a verse, tag a juzʾ, sketch a margin gloss. Your ink syncs across every device.
Open the mushaf →03
The Library
Sixty-seven classical tafāsīr — al-Ṭabarī, al-Qurṭubī, al-Rāzī, Ibn Kathīr, al-Saʿdī and more — in English and Arabic, indexed verse-by-verse. Pull commentary into the margin without breaking your reading flow.
Open the library →The editor
Writing should still feel like writing, even when four people are doing it at once.
A blocks editor where verses are first-class objects. Type / to insert a verse, a callout, a translation pair, or a Mushaf clip. Mention any āyah with @ and we resolve it to its canonical reference.
- ↳Multiplayer. Live cursors, presence pips, last-edit chips.
- ↳Verse blocks. Arabic, transliteration, and translation, locked together.
- ↳Cross-reference autocomplete. Type @2:255, get Āyat al-Kursī.
- ↳Markdown in, markdown out. Paste your old notes; export when you’re done.
Tafsir 101 / Al-Baqara / 2:255
Saved · 12s ago
SURAT AL-BAQARA · ĀYAT AL-KURSĪ · 2:255
The throne is the world that holds the worlds
AL-BAQARA · 2:255
وَسِعَ كُرْسِيُّهُ ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٰتِ وَٱلْأَرْضَ
255His Throne extends over the heavens and the earth.
Insert
⤓Verse block/v
✎Callout/c
⌘Mushaf clip/m
⌥Word-by-word/w
Slash menu
Eight blocks. None invented for the sake of it.
The Mushaf
Ink that doesn’t
belong to the device.
The full Madinah Mushaf, page-faithful and zoomable. Annotate with pressure-sensitive ink, tag āyāt with juzʾ markers, drop sticky notes in the margin. Your ink is bound to the verse, not the page — it follows you to every reader who opens the same workspace.
- ↳Pen, highlighter, and stamp tools.
- ↳Layered annotations — toggle teacher’s ink on or off.
- ↳Stylus-grade input — Apple Pencil, S-Pen, Wacom.
- ↳Print-perfect export. Send a marked-up juzʾ to your students.
Workspaces
A workspace can be yours alone, or it can belong to your whole halaqa.
Every workspace is a folder of surahs, pages, and notes — owned by one person, by a class, or by a community. Invite by link, by domain, or keep a workspace strictly between you and the page.
- ↳Three permission tiers — owner, editor, reader.
- ↳Per-surah branching — each surah is its own document.
- ↳Live cursors across editor, mushaf, and drawer.
- ↳Read-only publish — share a finished tafsir as a public page.
Y
Yahya · Personal
Private · 1 member
23 surahs · 412 notes
last touched · 2026-04-30
tafsir
draft
TH
Tuesday Halaqa
Shared · 14 members
Currently studying — Al-Mulk
3 collaborators online
+10
QS
Qalam Seminary 2026
Class · 87 members
Module 4 — Sūrat Yūsuf
teacher · ust. Musa
course
read-only
+
New workspace
Solo, halaqa, or class.
New — how a workspace opens
Begin at the Mushaf, at a blank board, or inside a book.
☾
Qurʾān study
All 114 sūrahs, the Madinah Mushaf, verse-linked tafsir, and word-level notes — the full study desk you already know.
◇
Blank boards
Infinite whiteboards for a weekly halaqa or loose ideas. Drop note cards anywhere, pull in any verse or tafsir with /ayah and /tabari, and annotate freely with the pen. Spin up a fresh board each week under one class.
📚
Book study new
Open a PDF and annotate over and around it — pen, highlighter, and rich note cards on an infinite canvas. Upload your own, or start from our shelf of classical mutūn:
Al-ʿAqīdah al-Wāsiṭiyyah
The Forty Ḥadīth
Al-Ājurrūmiyyah
Al-Waraqāt
Al-Bayqūniyyah
Matn Abī Shujāʿ
Thalāthat al-Uṣūl
Shamāʾil
+ 5 more
The margin
Sixty-seven commentaries, and not one of them further than a keystroke from the āyah.
Open the drawer on any verse and read al-Ṭabarī, al-Qurṭubī, al-Rāzī, Ibn Kathīr, al-Saʿdī, al-Baghawī, the Jalālayn — 12 English and 55 Arabic tafāsīr, every one indexed verse-by-verse, filterable by language with one tap. Word-by-word morphology beneath every āyah.
SURAT AL-IKHLĀṢ · 112:1–4
A four-verse statement of pure tawḥīd
The chapter is short enough to memorise in a breath, and dense enough that ten centuries of commentary haven’t exhausted it. Tap any verse below to open the drawer →
AL-IKHLĀṢ · 112:1
قُلْ هُوَ ٱللَّهُ أَحَدٌ
1Say: He is Allah, the One.
AL-IKHLĀṢ · 112:2
↗ Drawer open
ٱللَّهُ ٱلصَّمَدُ
2Allah, the Eternal, the Absolute.
67 tafāsīr on the shelf
12 English · 55 Arabic — every one indexed to the āyah
ARTafsīr al-Ṭabarī
ARTafsīr al-Qurṭubī
ENTafsīr Ibn Kathīr
ARTafsīr Ibn Kathīr
ARTafsīr al-Rāzī
ARTafsīr al-Saʿdī
ARTafsīr al-Baghawī
ENAl-Jalālayn
ARTafsīr al-Jalālayn
ARal-Taḥrīr wa-l-Tanwīr · Ibn ʿĀshūr
ARFatḥ al-Qadīr · al-Shawkānī
ARal-Kashshāf · al-Zamakhsharī
ARTafsīr al-Bayḍāwī
ARRūḥ al-Maʿānī · al-Ālūsī
ARTafsīr Ibn al-Qayyim
ARTafsīr Ibn ʿUthaymīn
ARal-Muyassar
ENAl-Mukhtaṣar
ENMaʿārif al-Qurʾān
ENAsbāb al-Nuzūl · al-Wāḥidī
ENTanwīr al-Miqbās
ENTafsīr al-Tustarī
ENal-Qushayrī
ARal-Nukat wa-l-ʿUyūn · al-Māwardī
ARZād al-Masīr · Ibn al-Jawzī
ARTafsīr al-Nasafī
ARal-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ · Abū Ḥayyān
+ 40 more
— Word-by-word · 112:2
ٱللَّهُ
Allāhu
Allah
PN · NOM
ٱلصَّمَدُ
aṣ-ṣamad
the Eternal
N · NOM · DEF
root
ص م د
to repair to
8 occurrences
ٱقْرَأْ وَرَبُّكَ ٱلْأَكْرَمُ ۙ ٱلَّذِى عَلَّمَ بِٱلْقَلَمِ
Read, and your Lord is the Most Generous — who taught by the pen.
— Al-ʿAlaq · 96:3–4
What it costs
It costs nothing, and it is going to stay that way.
Nobody should have to pay to sit with the Qurʾān. Everything is unlocked for everyone — whether you read on your own, run a weekly halaqa, or teach a class of eighty.
For everyone
Tafsir Lab
$0/forever · for everyone
- Unlimited personal workspaces
- Full Mushaf annotation
- All 67 tafāsīr — English & Arabic
- Word-by-word for every verse
- Live cursors + presence
- Shared halaqa workspaces
- Lesson plans + assignments
- Read-only public publishing
Institution
Talk to us
- Everything in Tafsir Lab
- SAML SSO + domain capture
- Org-wide library + branding
- Audit log + retention controls
- White-glove onboarding
No card required. No paid tier. Donations toward server costs are welcome but never asked for.
Questions
The things people actually ask us.
Is the Arabic text verified?
Yes. Our base text is the Madinah Mushaf, cross-checked against tanzil.net. We do not edit the rasm or the diacritical marks under any circumstance.
Which tafāsīr do you ship?
Sixty-seven — twelve in English and fifty-five in Arabic. Al-Ṭabarī, al-Qurṭubī, al-Rāzī, Ibn Kathīr, al-Saʿdī, al-Baghawī, the Jalālayn, Ibn ʿĀshūr, al-Shawkānī, and many more — each indexed verse-by-verse and filterable by language in the drawer.
Who owns the notes I write?
You do. Export everything as Markdown + PNG at any time. We don’t train models on your study notes.
How is multiplayer different from a Google Doc?
Verse blocks are atomic. You can’t accidentally chop an āyah in half mid-merge. Comments anchor to verse references, not to character offsets, so they survive any rewrite.
بِسْمِ ٱللَّهِ ٱلرَّحْمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ
Somewhere to put
what you notice.
A workspace takes about ten seconds to make. Bring a friend, bring a class, or bring nobody at all.