Despite the fact that the four Rightly-Guided Caliphs and the other six Companions who were given the glad tidings of entering Paradise were the nearest people to the Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, they did not have many narrated Hadeeths in terms of interpreting the verses of the Quran in books like Tafseer by Ibn Katheer and the like. However, most of the Hadeeths were narrated by Ibn ‘Abbaas and Ibn Mas‘ood... Why is that? Were they not concerned with Tafseer?May Allaah Reward you.

All perfect praise be to Allaah, The Lord of the Worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allaah, and that Muhammad, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, is His Slave and Messenger.

 The four Rightly-Guided Caliphs and other Companions who were given the glad tidings of entering Paradise used to be near to the Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, and learned a lot from him. They witnessed the revelation in the eras of Makkah and Madeenah and were more knowledgeable about such matters than others. They were also more occupied with the Quran, contemplated and taught it more. However, the reason behind their few narrations of Hadeeth is that most of those who learned from them were Companions. For example, Ibn ‘Abbaas used to take much of his knowledge from ‘Umar ibn Al-Khattaab . It is a well-known by scholars of Hadeeth methodology that all the Companions are trustworthy and that they used to narrate on the authority of each other and that their Hadeeths have the same ruling of Hadeeths which are traced back to the Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam. Anas said, “We did not hear everything that we narrate to you from the Messenger of Allaah, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, from him; but we used to narrate to each other.” [Al-Haakim]

This is why most of the narrations were on the authority of Ibn ‘Abbaas because he lived for more than fifty years after the death of the Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, and many of his students from the Taabi‘is transmitted these narrations on his authority. The same goes for Ibn Mas‘ood who lived in Iraq and his students learned from him in Iraq during the caliphate of ‘Uthmaan .

Allaah Knows best.