TRADITIONS OF ESOTERIC AND SAPIENTIAL QURANIC COMMENTARY
By Toby Mayer
A paradox of fundamentalism is that it sacrifices what it champions. If it restricts by scripture (as voiced by such slogans as al-ʿawdah ila’l-Qurʾān, “Back to the Quran!”), then it does so only by a restriction of scripture. The textual material must be controlled, its vital semantic range lost in enlisting it as a utopian template, namely, for al-niẓām al-islāmī, the Islamic “system.” By a suppressed premise equating multivalence with doubt, Muslim fundamentalist exegesis founds univalence on texts such as, This is the Book in which there is no doubt (dhālika al-kitāb lā rayba fīhi, 2:2), that is, in which there is no plurality of sense, no mystery beyond the plain text. A corollary is the trend to shun the traditions that reflect multivalence—of which the mystical and sapiential commentaries introduced in this essay are surely most characteristic. These long-running traditions in fact show that, historically, deep faith in the text was seldom grounds to restrict its semantic range. On the contrary, the sense that the Quran was of Divine origin implied that its meanings were fathomless. It was actively experienced as a portal within the finite into a transfinite, Divine dimension. The self-description of the Divine Speech as intrinsically transfinite is clear in verses such as 31:27: If all the trees on earth were pens, and if the sea and seven more added to it [were ink], the Words of God would not be exhausted (mā nafidat kalimāt Allāh). Celebrating the scripture’s boundless meaningfulness typifies Islamic mysticism.
For example, the great Sufi visionary, Quran commentator, and love theorist Rūzbihān al-Baqlī al-Shīrāzī (d. 606/1209) presents the verse just quoted in association with the following statement:
I found that the pre-eternal Word had no limit in the outer and the inner (lā nihāyah lahu fi’l-ẓāhir wa’l-bāṭin), and that none of God’s creation had reached Its perfection and the ultimate degree of Its meanings—because underlying every one of Its letters is an ocean of secrets and a river of lights (taḥta kull ḥarf min ḥurūfihi baḥr min biḥār al-asrār wa-nahr min anhār al-anwār), which [in turn] is because It is the description of uncreatedness; and just as there is no limit to His Essence, there is no limit to His Attributes.
ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Kāshānī (d. 736/1336), one of the greatest Sufi hermeneuts, expresses the same sense of semantic boundlessness when he speaks of the first onset of his insights (futūḥ) into the Quran:
It was as though perpetually, at the time of the evening draught (ghabūq) and the morning draught (ṣabūḥ), meanings were being unveiled to me beneath every verse, in describing which my tongue would get tired. There is neither power enough to grasp them and number them (la’l-qudrah tafī bi-ḍabṭihā wa-iḥṣāʾihā), nor the strength to hold back from making them known and disseminating them
Levels of Meaning
It moreover emerges that a variety of aḥādīth clearly present the Quran as enshrining a semantic continuum from the most immediate and exterior to higher and higher levels of inner meaning. This ladder is ascended by the hermeneut, for as the Quran states: Thou wilt surely journey from stage to stage (la-tarkabunna ṭabaq ʿan ṭabaq, 84:19). The hermeneutic ascent is ultimately to the Word’s Divine Promulgator Himself, in an unending, because asymptotic, trajectory. Such is implicit in the regular Arabic term for spiritual hermeneutics, al-taʾwīl. The verbal noun of the second form of the triliteral root ʾ-w-l (“to derive from,” “to return”), taʾwīl, literally means “causing (something) to return (to its origin)”; hence we have the related word al-awwal, meaning “the first” or “the first part”—which is not accidentally one of the Most Beautiful Names (al-asmāʾ alḥusnā) of God in Islam (al-Awwal). Al-taʾwīl complements the regular Arabic term for revelation, al-tanzīl, literally “causing (something) to descend.” Hermeneutics thus involves taking the Quran back up through the levels through which it descended to its very origin in the Divine.
Possibly the most important ḥadīth indicating that the Quran has intrinsic levels or tiered dimensions of meaning is the following, which is found in various traditional sources in slightly different forms: “No verse of the Quran has been revealed without its having (1) a back (ẓahr) and (2) a belly (baṭn). Every letter (ḥarf) has (3) a bound (ḥadd) and (4) a point of ascent (muṭṭalaʿ/maṭlaʿ).” Notwithstanding the difficulty of the terminology—whose translation could be argued over—the saying has traditionally been taken to establish the scripture’s multivalence and the gradation of readings as relatively outward, inward, lower, and higher. The four key terms were in fact interpreted in rather specific ways from an early period, for example, by the major early Sufi Sahl al-Tustarī (d. 283/896). Rendering the terms ẓahr (“back”) and baṭn (“belly”) by their clearer cognates ẓāhir (“outward/exoteric”) and bāṭin (“inward/esoteric”), al-Tustarī explains that (1) the outward aspect of a given verse is its oral articulation (altilāwah), (2) its inward aspect is the understanding of it (al-fahm), (3) its bound (al-ḥadd, a word with a strong legal resonance) is the ruling in it on what is licit and illicit (al-ḥalāl wa’l-ḥarām), and (4) the point of ascent is the looking down (ishrāf) by the heart upon the verse’s intentionality, as comprehended by God Himself (fiqh min Allāh).
The striking resemblance of these ideas to Christian Scholastic and late medieval Jewish schemes has been noted by a number of researchers, specifically, the similarly fourfold hermeneutical frameworks respectively known as the Quadriga and Pardes. In the case of the Quadriga, for example, it seems straightforward to match the sensus historicus (i.e., the literal, narrative aspect of the Bible) with the level called al-ẓāhir in our Islamic scheme; then to match the sensus allegoricus (i.e., the symbolic or typological understanding of the Old Testament in terms of the New) with the level called al-bāṭin; next to match the sensus tropologicus (i.e., the application of the Biblical text to the sphere of morality) with the moral/legal level called al-ḥadd; and finally to match the sensus anagogicus (i.e., the most arcane and exalted meaning) with the highest level, called al-muṭṭalaʿ/al-maṭlaʿ.
Perhaps this last equation is the most thought provoking of the four. Anagoge, a Greek term that, like taʾwīl in Arabic, suggests conducting something upward, not only betokened the highest, most radically esoteric of the Bible’s senses, but in particular the full elevation of its meaning into the terms of the realities of the Afterlife. In this light it is extremely interesting to note that, alongside its role in hermeneutics, the Arabic term muṭṭalaʿ is also used in Islam for a definitive episode of the Resurrection. It is a literal “high point” in the course of the Resurrection at which the soul undergoing judgment is elevated to witness the unfolding events from a transcendental perspective. This is the sense of muṭṭalaʿ, for instance, implicit in the saying of the “righteous Caliph” ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb (d. 22/644): “Even if everything in the world belonged to me, I would ransom myself with it from the terror of the muṭṭalaʿ.” So it turns out that this key hermeneutical term involves a combination of ideas not so far from anagoge: ultimate scriptural mysteries and the perspective of the eschaton (the end times).
Those Firmly Rooted in Knowledge The report quoted from ʿUmar conveys a further noteworthy element: the sense that reaching the muṭṭalaʿ is an awesome affair. This awe applies as much to the hermeneutical muṭṭalaʿ as to the eschatological one to which ʿUmar prima facie refers, and this is reflected in mystical commentaries. Although the existence of unsearchable depths of meaning in the revelation was not questioned in the environment of early Islam, inquiring into them was a fearful matter. The arcanal dimension was sacrosanct and treated with dread—an attitude enjoined by the Quran itself. At issue here is primarily the momentous 3:7:
He (God) it is Who has sent down the Book upon thee (i.e., the Prophet); therein are signs determined; they are the Mother of the Book, and others symbolic. As for those whose hearts are given to swerving, they follow that of it which is symbolic, seeking temptation and seeking its interpretation (taʾwīl). And none know its interpretation save God and those firmly rooted in knowledge. They say, “We believe in it; all is from our Lord.” And none remember, save those who possess intellect.
In this verse, one of the most vital in the Quran relating to its own hermeneutic, the very pursuit of taʾwīl by human individuals is seemingly condemned outright. The understanding of the higher significance of the revelations lies with God, not humanity. Yet if the Quran here sets up the idea that its interior is an inviolable dimension, it does not quite close the door to it, albeit for an elite. This possibility depends on the details of the verse’s punctuation. The shift from the original scriptio defectiva (Semitic script without voweling and other markings) to the scriptio plena (script with such markings) took time, and indeed the former still leaves its trace in the distinctive orthography of the Quran. Voweling and pointing are recorded as being formalized on the initiative of the unlikely figure al-Ḥajjāj ibn Yūsuf al-Thaqafī (d. 95/714), the notorious Umayyad authoritarian and military leader, during his governorship of Iraq between 694 and 714. The introduction of the various signs of pause may have taken yet longer
At any rate it is momentous that some authorities have always disregarded the obligatory pause (al-waqf al-lāzim), marked by a small superscript mīm (m) in most copies of the Quran and represented by the period in the following rendering: And none know its interpretation save God. And those firmly rooted in knowledge say, “We believe in it . . .” Suspending the waqf lāzim actually places this enigmatic elite, those firmly rooted in knowledge (al-rāsikhūna fi’lʿilm), together with God as comprehending the hermeneutic of the revelation, for the sentence now reads: And none know its interpretation save God and those firmly rooted in knowledge. They say, “We believe in it . . .” On this reading, though the Quran surely disqualifies the group whose hearts are given to swerving for hermeneutics, it affirms that an elite is qualified.
Careful scrutiny of commentary traditions suggests that this reading was acceptable in the earliest period. For example, Mujāhid ibn Jabr al-Makhzūmī (d. ca. 104/722), one of the earliest authorities in exegesis, according to some reports did not observe any pause in the syntax between God and those firmly rooted in knowledge: “Those who are firmly rooted in knowledge know its interpretation, and they [also] say, ‘We believe in it’” (wa’l-rāsikhūna fi’l-ʿilm yaʿlamūna taʾwīlahu wa-yaqūlūna āmannā bihi). Mujāhid’s great teacher was Ibn ʿAbbās ibn ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib (d. 68/687), considered second only to ʿAlī as the preeminent exegete among the Companions of the Prophet. He famously asserted, “I am among those who know [the scripture’s] hermeneutic” (anā mimmā yaʿlamu taʾwīlahu), and fully implicit in this claim is that he too observed no necessary break at this point in the verse’s syntax. Moreover, what are we to make of the venerable traditions in which the Prophet himself prays over Ibn ʿAbbās for God to teach him the knowledge of the Quran’s hermeneutic? All such traditions suggest that the now standard, stricter punctuation of the codex here was primarily precautionary in motive.
At any rate, though the mainstream observed this more circumspect punctuation (which prevails in the Ḥafṣ and Warsh transmissions of the text, including all modern printed editions), nevertheless three major historical trends within Islam have maintained its suspension in the case of an elite as they have separately defined it. The trends in question are the Shiites, the Sufis, and the falāsifah (i.e., those representing the Graeco-Arabic, or properly speaking Islamic, philosophical tradition). In a Shiite context the firmly rooted in knowledge are of course the Imams, the lineal descendants of the Prophet via his daughter Fāṭimah through her marriage to ʿAlī. Scriptural hermeneutics is the preserve and primary function of the imamate, and in consequence it is normal in Shiite references to disregard the waqf lāzim here in 3:7. Thus Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq (d. 148/765), common to both the Twelver and Ismāʿīlī lines of Imams, is reported to have commented on this verse with the statement: “We [the Imams] are those who are firm-rooted in knowledge; so we understand [the Quran’s] hermeneutic.”
Next, in a Sufi context the firmly rooted in knowledge are identified with the saints or spiritual adepts—whether or not they are lineal descendants of the Prophet. For instance, the aforementioned Rūzbihān al-Baqlī al-Shīrāzī says:
The commonality recite the verse, [They] would say, “Our Lord! We believe” (23:109). In the same way they have no share in the symbolism of Ḥadīth except [simple] faith. But the saints are referred to by the verse, And none know its interpretation save God and those firmly rooted in knowledge (3:7). For others there is faith, but for them there is gnosis in the problems of symbolism
Rūzbihān al-Baqlī’s disregard for the waqf lāzim is quite clear in this reference.
Finally, a noteworthy defense of philosophy by Abu’l-Walīd Muḥammad ibn Rushd (d. 595/1198), one of the greatest Aristotelian thinkers in both Islam and medieval Europe (through Latin translations), contains a similarly telling reference to the verse. In his Decisive Treatise (Faṣl al-maqāl) he argues for the legitimacy, indeed the obligation, of philosophy in Islam, equating the philosophers with the firmly rooted in knowledge. Here he here states explicitly his preferred punctuation of 3:7:
We prefer to place the pause after the words of God the Exalted and those firmly rooted in knowledge, because if the learned did not understand hermeneutics, there would be no superiority in their assent, which results for them in a faith in it which is not found among the unlearned. God has described them as those who believe in it, and this can only be taken to refer to the [special] faith which is based on [philosophical] demonstration (al-burhān).
In this instance, Ibn Rushd, who was a great jurist as well as a major Aristotelian philosopher and commentator, is ingeniously using the dynamics of the verse itself to justify his interpretation of the punctuation. The verse states that the firmly rooted in knowledge say of the Quran, We believe in it; all is from our Lord. But our philosopher points out that any pious Muslim would say as much. Therefore, there must be some extra factor that explains why God honors them as being firmly rooted in knowledge. This factor is only provided by linking the previous words to them; that is, it lies in their possessing the Quran’s hermeneutic—for Ibn Rushd, a rational, demonstrative hermeneutic. And of course, this dictates disregarding the waqf lāzim
But, to repeat, all such currents are marked by a strong distinction between the spiritual/intellectual elite and common believers. All these hermeneutic trends accepted the premise that it was right to shield the Quran from idle interpretation. For the unqualified the waqf lāzim of 3:7 was considered wholly apt. Qualification was moreover based on two criteria: they had to be not only members of the relevant hermeneutic elite, but also grounded in the scriptural sciences (ʿulūm al-Qurʾān). Initiation is a paradigm for many forms of knowledge in Islam, not least knowledge of the Word. The scriptural sciences were thus not only a scholarly propaedeutic, but also an initiation for would-be hermeneuts—an intellectual catharsis that tested and refined their inner receptivity to the Word.
Approaches of Mystical Commentaries Echoing Biblical traditions of Sophianism, the Quran was sometimes tellingly personified in Sufism as a feminine entity, to be wooed, indeed, to be engaged with on her terms or not at all. For example, in his famous collection of discourses, Fīhi mā fīhi (In It Is What Is in It), the great Sufi mystic and Persian poet Jalāl al-Dīn al-Rūmī (d. 672/1273) describes the scripture as follows:
The Quran is as a bride (ʿarūs) who does not disclose her face to you, for all that you draw aside the veil. That you should examine it, and yet not attain happiness and unveiling (kashf) is due to the fact that the act of drawing aside the veil has itself repulsed and tricked you, so that the bride has shown herself to you as ugly, as if to say, “I am not that beauty.” The Quran is able to show itself in whatever form it pleases. But if you do not draw aside the veil and seek only its good pleasure, watering its sown field and attending on it from afar, toiling upon that which pleases it best, it will show its face to you without your drawing aside the veil.
The passage plays with the concept of kashf, a Persian/Arabic term that acquires the technical sense of mystical insight, but that literally means “unveiling,” as when a Muslim woman uncovers her face and head. We have here a basic reflex of Sufi epistemology: the perception that insight is received spontaneously through catharsis and humility, not self-aggrandizement.
A practical impact of this is that hermeneutic insight into the Quran assumes the traditional disciplines of conventional exegesis. In a surprising number of cases these disciplines are explicitly included in the structure of mystical commentaries. The mystical interpreter here synopsizes, combining discussions of the literal sense and the spiritual sense. Examples, to a greater or lesser extent, of this approach are the commentaries of Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Thaʿlabī (d. 427/1035), Abu’l-Qāsim al-Qushayrī (d. 465/1072), Abū Ḥafṣ ʿUmar alSuhrawardī (d. 632/1234), Rashīd al-Dīn al-Maybudī (d. 520/1126), Najm al-Dīn Kubrā (d. 618/1221), Niẓām al-Dīn Ḥasan al-Nīsābūrī (d. 728/1328), and later Niʿmat Allah ibn Maḥmūd al-Nakhjawānī (d. 920/1514), Maḥmūd ibn Faḍl Allāh al-Hudāyī (d. 1038/1628), Aḥmad ibn ʿAjībah (d. 1224/1809), Qāḍī Thanāʾ Allāh al-Pānīpatī (d. 1225/1810), Shihāb al-Dīn al-Ālūsī (d. 1270/1854), Sulṭān ʿAlī Shāh al-Gunābādī (d. 1327/1909), and al-ʿĀnī “Mullā Ḥuwaysh” (d. 1384/1964).
However, in contrast to this approach, is an enduring class of mystical commentary that is nonsynoptic, omitting all exoteric matter. The main original exemplar of this group of commentaries, heavily drawn on by later authors, is that ofʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī (d. 412/1021). Although significantly later than the aforementioned al-Tustarī, whose commentary is extant and has been studied in some depth, al-Sulamī nevertheless records a precious body of early mystical exegesis of the Quran in his Ḥaqāʾiq al-tafsīr (Truths of Commentary) and Ziyādāt ḥaqāʾiq al-tafsīr (Addenda to Truths of Commentary), and some of this material purports to be even earlier than al-Tustarī’s. Above all, al-Sulamī’s text preserves an apparent Sunni recension of the mystical exegesis of the Imam Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq. Attention has admittedly been drawn to problems with the transmission stemma for this text. Yet if the Jaʿfarite material in the Ḥaqāʾiq is even partially authentic, it momentously demonstrates that the mystical stream of Islam has a fountainhead in the esoteric teachings of the Prophet’s Household (ahl al-bayt). Though the commentary has elements that seem too Sunni for it to be genuine, these may be no more than evidence of an attempt to normalize the material for a Sunni Sufi audience. Such elements are anyway surprisingly few. They are balanced by features fully expected in a Shiite context
Issues of authenticity aside, al-Sulamī’s Jaʿfarite material constitutes a matchless example of mystical or “allusive” Quran commentary (al-tafsīr bi’lishārah) from early Islam, worthy of intensive study. Epitomic doctrines of the classical Sufi tradition are exhibited with great concision and power, and many later hermeneutical themes of Islamic mysticism appear here in their earliest form. The commentary begins and ends, for example, with a highly esoteric form of Sufi interpretation in which the interpreter acronymizes. Such acronymic letter mysticism is normal in the case of the mysterious “separated letters” (almuqaṭṭaʿāt) at the beginning of various sūrahs of the Quran, but the Jaʿfarite material opens with such an analysis of the consecratory formula itself, In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful (bi’smi’Llāh al-Raḥmān alRaḥīm). In the first unit of this formula, bi’sm, the entirety of reality is said to be alluded to in hierarchy. For the bāʾ stands for God’s timeless mode of being (baqāʾ Allāh), the sīn stands for God’s Name/Attributes (asmāʾ Allāh), and the mīm stands for the whole dominion of God (al-mulk). In this way, in some sense comprised within bi’sm is God qua God, God’s interface with the world, and finally the world itself. Perhaps more mysteriously, the commentary proposes here that God actively bestows His Mercy (al-raḥmah) through the yāʾ and the mīm of the word al-Raḥīm. It may be that the Arabic word for “sea,” yamm, is implicit in this comment. More likely however, it combines—highly intuitively—a sense of the actual auditory impact of the sound īm, with its tender, elongated quality, and the belief that the Quran, as Logos, is in some sense instrumental in the Divine creative activity itself.
There is an unspoken but palpable link between this kind of letter mysticism, so often employed in Sufi interpretation, and the premises of al-sīmīyāʾ, a theurgic science associated with certain dimensions of Sufism. Central to this science is the so-called science of letters (ʿilm al-ḥurūf), which analyzes Arabic (also Persian) letters through intuitions of their intrinsic potencies (ʿilm alkhawāṣṣ). This insight into the letters from which words and names are made is then put to use in onomantic divination (as per the principle Nomen omen est, “The name is a sign”), or, more controversially, for actively affecting external reality in its course of unfolding (al-taṣarruf). A basic assumption here is that in the case of a sacred language such as Arabic, words and their referents are intimately connected and even that they are mysteriously identical—“The name is the named” (al-ism huwa al-musammā), as Islamic scholastic theology (ʿilm alkalām) usually formulated this principle. Therefore, to penetrate the structure of words through resolving them into their component letters and the letters’ properties is a general form of gnoseological empowerment.
Let us move on to other themes of Sufi hermeneutics typified by al-Sulamī’s Jaʿfarite material. The commentary recurrently analyzes the Quranic text in terms of the primary Sufi concept of a series of stations (maqām, pl. maqāmāt), which are traversed on the mystical path (al-ṭarīqah). One such comment is on 7:160, where we find the famous Biblical story (Exodus 17) of the waters that erupted from a rock at the touch of Moses’ staff in the wilderness at Horeb. The Quran includes here the Mishnaic detail that there were twelve springs that gushed forth, one for each of the Israelite tribes. This is the occasion in the commentary for a concise but incredibly evocative presentation of the maqāmāt. Each spring at Horeb is a station in the ascent in the realization of God, in which the highest station is represented by the very highest spring, “intimacy” (al-uns) with the Divine. The mystic ascends through fountains of (1) professing Divine Unity, (2) joy in servanthood, (3) faithfulness, (4) sincerity, (5) humility, (6) contentment in God, (7) peace and dignity, (8) generosity and confidence, (9) certainty, (10) intellect, (11) love, and finally (12) intimacy and solitude with God. The comment states: “Whoever drinks from any one of these springs discovers its sweetness and hopefully strives for the spring that is higher up than it (arfaʿ minhā)—from spring to spring until he reaches the origin. When he reaches the origin, he realizes God (taḥaqqaqa bi’l-Ḥaqq).”
From the interplay of the scriptural imagery of springs and the mystical doctrine of a ladder of stations, we are thus given an idea of great spiritual potency: the mystical path not as the traversal of a set of static placements or milestones on a route, but something more mysterious, an ascent through a stairway of sources of “living water,” conducted down from ever higher, more transcendental, planes. The mystical adept aims to climb to the ultimate fountainhead in the Unseen, the real source from which perpetually emerge all of the waters flowing on each level below. It is impossible to read this text without thinking of the actual hydraulic technology to be found in Muslim agriculture, the ancient systems of channels (qanāh, pl. aqniyah) that distribute water to fields and homes, sometimes from remote sources at much higher elevations. More particularly, Persian and Mughal garden design harbors a seemingly exact historical concretization of the comment’s imagery. The beautiful Mughal terraced gardens, for example, to be found in the hills above Dal Lake in Kashmir, embody precisely this concept of a descending set of pools and channels, through which the water cascades (Persian, chādurān) down from ever higher levels, till we reach the source pool, where the water originally bubbles out of the mountainside.
Another example of a noumenal concept of Sufi thought used to understand the Revealed Text is the key doctrine of the mystic’s successive passing away from contingent existence and then subsistence in and through God (al-fanāʾ wa’lbaqāʾ). This teaching is typically disclosed in the commentary by a verse that is prima facie about creation and resurrection, reconfigured here in terms of the individual mystic’s internal experience. So it is that 85:13, It is He Who originates (yubdiʾu) and brings back (yuʿīdu), is commented on as follows: “He Who originates: that is, He causes [you] to pass away from everything other than Him (fa-yufnī ʿammā siwāhu); then He brings back: that is, He causes [you] to subsist through His Subsistence (fa-yubqī bi-ibqāʾihi).” 26 Another comment with this theme is on 8:17 (ostensibly about victory against the odds at the Battle of Badr): that He might try the believers with a beautiful trial: “That He might cause them to pass away from their own souls (an yufnīhim ʿan nufūsihim), and when He has caused them to pass away from their own souls, He Himself becomes the substitute (ʿiwaḍ) for them in place of their souls.” 27 The transfer of the verse’s meaning from a Divine ordeal of a military kind to one pertaining to spiritual realization is unexpected but potent.
Transformative Inner Experiences
Understanding the Quranic text in terms of the transformative inner experiences undergone on the mystical journey is a feature of all Sufi commentary. This “experiential concretion” of the revelation marks many of al-Sulamī’s Jaʿfarite sayings. The verses are richly interpreted in terms of active spiritual experience, albeit of an order at the outer limit of the expressible. For example, 27:88, And thou seest the mountains that thou dost suppose are solid pass away like clouds, is explained in terms of the absolute quiescence of the mystic’s soul on the occasion of the ecstatic projection of the mystic’s spirit into the sphere of the Divine: “You see the soul motionless when the spirit goes forth, the spirit penetrating deep into Paradise, betaking itself to its place beneath the Throne [of God].” In a similar vein, there are intermittent references to the photic phenomena of mystical experience (referred to, for instance, as the “effects of the lights of realization,” āthār anwār al-taḥqīq) and to the spiritual heart as an active point of contact with transcendental realities
The heart (al-qalb) is alluded to in extraordinary terms, for instance, in a comment on 25:61, Blessed is He Who placed constellations in the sky. After alluding to the lexically objective point that al-samāʾ (“the sky” or “Heaven”) derives from a verbal root (i.e., s-m-w) meaning “to be raised high” or “to be elevated,” the commentary states that the spiritual heart also “is a sky, since through faith and gnosis it is elevated (yasmū) to infinity (bi-lā ḥadd wa-lā nihāyah). [For] just as the divine object of gnosis (al-maʿrūf) is infinite, likewise the gnosis of Him is infinite.” In this comment, an image of striking power—that of the mystic’s heart as a vast sky—gains in force exponentially through its conversion from tropal to literal status. What at first seems metaphorical becomes factual through the detail that God Himself is the object of the heart’s knowledge. Since God is boundless, the heart is indeed discovered to be an interior unbounded heaven, given that it is the locus for the dawn of His Gnosis. Following through the implications of this idea, the commentary next coordinates the twelve zodiacal mansions of the macrocosmic sky with their microcosmic analogues, twelve “cardiac mansions” (burūj al-qalb), consisting of yet another list of maqāmāt, the last of which is said to be “amorous passion” or “rapture” (al-walah). We discover that, whereas the welfare (al-ṣalāḥ) of the transient sphere (al-dār al-fāniyyah) and of ordinary human beings is transmitted through the zodiac, the welfare of the spiritual heart (and its elite folk) instead flows into it through the said cardiac mansions. Coordinating the universal macrocosm and human microcosm is a typical trait of Sufi exegesis.
The intensely experiential flavor of such comments is, however, combined with a deanthropomorphic trend. Though God is presented as an actual datum of mystical experience, the theology of Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq’s sayings is radically transcendental. For example, the gloss on 57:3, He is the First (al-Awwal), and the Last (al-Ākhir), and the Outward (al-ẓāhir), and the Inward (al-Bāṭin), states with cryptic succinctness that God is apparent in the sense that “the He is is clear to us” (bāna lanā al-kān), and God is hidden in the sense that “the true nature of the He is is concealed from us” (wa’ḥtajaba ʿannā kunhu al-kān). This is evidently an early and highly expressive way of putting the vital point presently made in Avicennan metaphysics: that the quoddity (al-anniyyah) of the Necessary Being, that is, the fact that It exists, is certain, but Its quiddity (almāhiyyah), that is, Its intrinsic identity, is unknowable, because It is wholly transcendent. In line with this stance, the Jaʿfarite sayings sublate scriptural imagery, especially pertaining to God, and construe it “philosophically” and allegorically. The concretion is thus counterpoised with abstraction—producing a spiritually overwhelming tension in readers.
Divine Symbolism Al-Sulamī’s Jaʿfarite material heralds much Sufi commentary in this allegorism— a term used here in view of the method’s clear comparison with the sensus allegoricus in the Quadriga of the Christian Scholastics. Allegory reads the sacred text as symbolic, but more than this, as systematically so—not simply a set of discrete, uncoordinated symbols. To uninitiates what is in question is not strictly allegory, but allegoresis, that is, “the interpretation of already existing texts according to extrinsic philosophical or dogmatic criteria.” However, to Sufis, such readings need not imply subjecting the Word to extrinsic, random criteria, but rather involve deciphering the symbols of a true Divine allegory, that is, a Divinely intended system of symbols, by clues transmitted either in the Revealed Text itself, in tradition, in lexicography, or through private inspiration (al-kashf). Doubtless, the allegory will have great strata of possible meaning. The interpretations are unenclosed. But the Quran is self-defined as in its entirety a book of indicative symbols (“signs,” āyāt) and states explicitly that God figurates (ḍaraba al-amthāl) in His Self-Expression. In line with this premise, the angelic legions (junūd) at Badr mentioned in 9:40, for example, are interpreted in the Jaʿfarite material to mean the virtues on the mystical path, such as certainty (al-yaqīn), trust in God, and wholesale dependence on Him (althiqah wa’l-tawakkul). The broad thrust of this interpretation is certainly supported by the Prophet’s own designation of spirituality as a kind of warfare, indeed, “the greater holy war” (al-jihād al-akbar).
In this kind of hermeneutic many—in principle all—Quranic verses become symbolic. To use terms from rhetorical theory, the revelations are viewed as metaphors that use either a natural, historical, or perhaps apocalyptical vehicle, but have a strictly spiritual tenor. Historical and other contextual concerns are muted, and the revelations become immediately and deeply connected to the mystic’s interior life—a manner of interacting with the text that has been called eisegesis instead of exegesis. The traditional Arabic term for this kind of hermeneutics is al-taṭbīq, “application” or “adaptation.” All verses, even legal ones, are freely treated in this manner in Sufi commentary. For example, 4:29 gives the following statute: O you who believe! Consume not each other’s wealth (amwāl) falsely, but trade by mutual consent, and slay not yourselves. Truly God is Merciful unto you. In a typical example of this Sufi approach, Rūzbihān al-Baqlī interprets the ban on homicide here, Slay not yourselves (lā taqtulū anfusakum), to mean that the higher, spiritual “self” should not be deprived of life through indulgence of the demands of the sensual ego, known as “the soul that commands to evil” (al-nafs al-ammārah bi’l-sūʾ). As he puts it:
Slay not yourselves that derive from spiritual and suprasensible realms (anfusakum al-rūḥāniyyat al-malakūtiyyah), by following the desires of [your] satanic commanding selves (bi-mutābaʿah hawa’l-nufūs al-ammārat al-shayṭāniyyah). Indeed, the self that derives from the spiritual realm becomes distressed, and dies (tamūtu) when in proximity to the commanding self, when the commanding self, by means of its desires, gains ascendancy over the self that derives from the spiritual realm and darkens it with the clouds of disobedience.
One of the most highly reputed Sufi commentaries, attributed to the Andalusian “Supreme Master” (al-shaykh al-akbar) Ibn ʿArabī (d. 638/1240), but in fact by the member of his school ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Kāshānī, has many such cases of altaṭbīq. For example, the entire story of Joseph as narrated in Sūrah 12 (and familiar from the Bible, Genesis 37–50) is analyzed by al-Kāshānī as an allegory of the soul, in which Joseph himself is a metaphor (mathal) for the heart, extremely beautiful in its spiritual preparedness (al-qalb al-mustaʿidd alladhī huwa fī ghāyat al-ḥusn) and regarded lovingly by his father, Jacob, who symbolizes the intellect (al-maḥbūb al-marmūq ilā abīhi Yaʿqūb al-ʿaql). Joseph’s eleven brothers, for their part, represent the inner and outer sense faculties, and their hostility toward Joseph expresses the senses’ tendency to draw the heart away from the intellect. The analysis is elaborately systematic, so that, for example, Jacob’s wife Rachel—as mother of the beloved sons Joseph and Benjamin—stands for the soul’s “upbraiding” aspect or the moral conscience (alnafs al-lawwāmah), while Jacob’s wife Leah stands for the lower soul, which commands to evil (al-nafs al-ammārah bi’l-sūʾ).
Al-Kāshānī similarly explores that key episode for mysticism throughout the Semitic monotheisms, Moses and the Burning Bush, as referred to, among others, in 20:9–16 (cf. Exodus 3:1–12). Each tiny detail is again treated according to the premise that the narrative is, in some sense, an extended metaphor in absentia —that is, one with a wholly inexplicit tenor. The location of the miracle, the mysterious holy valley of Ṭuwā (al-wādi’l-muqaddas Ṭuwā), is identified as a signifier of the spiritual world (ʿālam al-rūḥ). The Divine Commandment to Moses to shed his sandals in the environs of the Burning Bush represents the catharsis (al-tajarrud) necessary for contact with the Holy Spirit (al-ittiṣāl bi’lrūḥ al-qudus). In particular, shedding two sandals signifies a double catharsis, that of the soul (nafsuka) and that of the body (badanuka), and thus of the two worlds related to them (al-kawnayn), the psychic and the corporeal. In 20:17– 18 Moses is asked by God what is in his right hand and replies that it is the staff he leans on and uses to gather fodder for his flocks. Moses is taken here as a symbol for the intellect and the staff as one for the soul. Its being useful lies in the soul’s instrumentality in acquiring perfection and, ultimately, assimilating the Divine Attributes themselves. Moses’ statement I . . . beat down leaves of fodder with it (ahushshu bihā ʿalā ghanamī) is taken to mean, “I pore over (lit., I rap on) the pages (or leaves) of beneficial sciences” (akhbiṭu awrāq al-ʿulūm alnāfiʿah). When he is then bidden in 20:19 to cast down his staff, this represents freeing the soul from constraint by the intellect (khallihā ʿan ḍabṭ al-ʿaql). The Quran next speaks of the staff as miraculously transformed into a serpent, moving swiftly (ḥayyah tasʿā), signifying the animation of Moses’soul, now unfettered by reason, by Divine Wrath (al-ghaḍab). In its writhing, the very power of the Lord (al-qahr al-rabbānī) is epiphanized through it.
Although not the sole approach found in Sufi commentaries like al-Kāshānī’s, such symbolism is a basic trait of them. Crucially, it also marks the stance on the Quran found in Islamic philosophy and features, for instance, in the Epistles of the Brethren of Purity (Rasāʾil Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ), Ibn Sīnā’s Directives and Remarks (al-Ishārāt wa’l-tanbīhāt), and numerous other such texts. But motives may be differentiated. Where philosophical allegorism is abstractive and is part of a “rhetoric of harmonization,” aiming to conceptualize scripture in terms of Islamic Peripatetic and Neoplatonic philosophy, the impulse of Sufi allegorism—despite appearances—is perhaps the very opposite. It is, in other words, concretive and reflects a concern with the actual realization (al-taḥqīq) of the Quran or with a translation of it into tridimensional experience, which is typical of Sufism. This realizing attitude toward the Revealed Text cuts both ways—the relationship is chiastic. Entextualization of the soul goes with internalization of the Quran: the internal life becomes purely textual and the text becomes purely internal. In other words, if the soul is to be read in terms of the Quran, then the Quran is to be read in terms of the soul—and this last would seem to be the real significance of the Sufi version of this symbolic method. Rendering one’s identity Quranic is a primary objective in Sufism and stands firmly on the Prophet’s precedent, since a well-attested ḥadīth states that when his widow ʿĀʾishah was asked after his death what he had been like, she made the simple but profound observation, “His nature was the Quran (kāna khuluquhu al-Qurʾān).”
Probably the most radical case of a Sufi hermeneutic that reads the Quran in these internalized terms was developed in the Kubrawī tradition, initiated by Najm al-Dīn al-Khīwaqī (d. 618/1221), known as Najm al-Dīn Kubrā in view of his ironic nickname al-Tāmmat al-Kubrā (“the Greatest Calamity”). The Kubrawī tradition gives formal voice to a deep undercurrent of Sufi thought tending to give primacy to consciousness. In the final instance, in this perspective everything is within; external reality is included in internal consciousness. This is captured in a counterintuitive formulation of the great Kubrawī master and Quran commentator ʿAlāʾ al-Dawlah al-Simnānī (d. 736/1336). Al-Simnānī takes over the Sufi commonplace that coordinates the greater universe with the human being, as declared in the dictum, “The world is a great human being (macrocosm), while the human being is a little world (microcosm; al-kawn insān kabīr wa’l-insān kawn ṣaghīr).” However, in al-Simnānī’s formulation the expected proportion is reversed, the macrocosm and microcosm inverted. For him, the true microcosm is the world and the true macrocosm is the human being; that is, metaphysically, in contrast with materially, human consciousness contains the world, not vice versa. Moreover, this reversal of the relation of the outward and the inward continues, so that from the spiritual point of view the more external element within the human person is actually contained by the more internal. The doctrine is supported by, among others, the much-cited ḥadīth qudsī: “My earth and My Heaven contain Me not, but the heart of My believing slave does contain Me.”
From this perspective, the whole of reality, from top to bottom, is within, such that the rites of worship with their prescribed orientation in external space (i.e., al-qiblah)—to take one example—are in the final analysis concerned with cultivating the proper orientation between one lower aspect of our “internal space” and another, higher one. The path that leads from creation to Godhead is wholly located inside the mystic. In Kubrawī theory this concept becomes elaborated into a complex hierarchy of seven subtle centers (laṭāʾif, sing. laṭīfah), which are ascended in the path of realization. There is an obvious parallel between this mystical system and Laya Yoga in the Indic world, with its similarly sevenfold system of subtle centers (cakras/padmas), which are penetrated in succession by the kunḍalinī, defined as the “power of consciousness” (cit-sakti). Where God realization is taken in the Yogic theory as the final ascent of consciousness to a purely transcendental center (the supreme point, or mahābindu) beyond the seven and above the head, in this Sufi theory realization also occurs in the mysterious “center of Selfhood” (al-laṭīfah al-anāʾiyyah), again beyond the seven subtle centers and above the head. Just as Yogic theory identifies each cakra by inwardly perceived lights or “photisms” of different colors and by a succession of divine epiphanies (devas), in the Kubrawī theory each laṭīfah has its distinctly colored photism and its presiding Quranic prophet.
It is in this very last aspect that the radical implications of the theory for Quranic hermeneutics emerges. From Adam at the basal center, through Noah at the abdominal center, through Abraham, Moses, and David at centers from right to left in the chest region, to Jesus Christ at the center of the frontal cortex, and finally to the Prophet Muhammad atop the cranium—in principle all references to these prophets within Quranic narratives may be deciphered in terms of the relevant laṭāʾif. Such, at least, is al-Simnānī’s daring hermeneutical agenda as he presents it in the introduction to his Tafsīr najm al-Qurʾān (The Commentary Star of the Quran). Indeed, given a ḥadīth stating that the Quran has seven interior levels of meaning, it is theoretically possible for al-Simnānī to interpret every verse of the scripture in relation to each of the seven laṭāʾif.
A primary genre of Sufi literature is the spiritual manual, in which the path in all its details, etiquettes, and terminology is mapped out for aspirants. A series of such manuals were produced between the third/ninth and the fifth/eleventh centuries, seminal works such as al-Makkī’s Qūt al-qulūb (The Nourishment of Hearts), al-Kalābādhī’s Kitāb al-taʿarruf (The Doctrine of the Sufis), and alHujwīrī’s Kashf al-maḥjūb (Unveiling of the Veiled). There is a clear sense in which, through this Kubrawī system of interpretation, the Quran itself—if properly deciphered—is fully instated as the ultimate “manual” for mystical adepts in their spiritual quest
The Sapiential Tradition
The perils of generalization notwithstanding, such a practical concept of the Quran may be contrasted with that emerging from the non-Sufi currents covered by the term “sapiential,” that is, rooted in wisdom, or “sapience” (al-ḥikmah, a Quranic term extended to philosophy as pursued in the Islamic tradition). Islamicized Aristotelian and Neoplatonic traditions of philosophy within the Persianate world are sometimes referred to as “ḥikmat philosophy.” Distinctions become complex post-seventh/thirteenth century due to the suffusion of Sufism in the wake of Ibn ʿArabī by terms and concepts from philosophy, especially the philosophy of the “Chief Shaykh” (al-shaykh al-raʾīs) Abū ʿAlī ibn Sīnā (d. 428/1037). The convergent trend bears ultimate fruit in a hermeneutic in which the approaches of Sufism and ḥikmat philosophy merge—as is the case with The Keys of the Unseen (Mafātīḥ al-ghayb), by Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī (Mullā Ṣadrā, d. 1050/1640). But this work is rather late and unusually synthetic. Piety generally demanded that systematic works of scriptural commentary were unharnessed from philosophy, even when composed by philosophers. An example of this is the voluminous Triumph of the All-Bountiful in the Exegesis of the Quran (Fatḥ al-mannān fī tafsīr al-Qurʾān) by the noted Illuminationist philosopher Quṭb al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī (d. 710/1311), which seemingly steers quite clear of philosophical principles.
However, in one particular Islamic community there was already, significantly earlier, a thoroughgoing scriptural hermeneutic that can be viewed as fully sapiential—a system of higher interpretation (al-taʾwīl) understood to be grounded in a form of ḥikmah. A clue lies in an unexpected quarter. The historian and scholarly biographer Ẓahīr al-Dīn al-Bayhaqī (d. 565/1169) says of his contemporary and acquaintance Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Shahrastānī (d. 548/1153): “[Al-Shahrastānī] was composing a Quran commentary, interpreting the verses according to the canons of both the law (al-sharīʿah) and wisdom (alḥikmah), and other things too. So I said to him, ‘This is to give up what is right! The Quran is not to be commented on except by the reports of the pious ancestors (al-salaf), consisting of the Companions and the Followers. Wisdom is something quite separate from the exegesis of the Quran.’” A precious unicum manuscript of this commentary, The Keys of the Arcana (Mafātīḥ al-asrār), exists in Tehran and is gradually being brought out in an Iranian edition. 54 Though it is sadly truncated—ending before Sūrah 3—it has an extensive introduction in which al-Shahrastānī presents his hermeneutical system in satisfying detail. There is a body of scholarly opinion now that the basis of this framework lies in Ismāʿīlism, and that the commentary is strong evidence for the truth of the claim by some of alShahrastānī’s contemporaries that this apparent paragon of the Shāfiʿī-Ashʿarī Sunni hierarchy was in reality secretly aligned with this form of esoteric Shiism— then widely feared in the form of the new Nizārī movement.
Be that as it may, the hermeneutical system in question is very profound and also is to be distinguished from that of Sufism. Al-Shahrastānī presents a great lattice of complementary concepts underlying the Quran, and with these interpretive keys he claims to penetrate the arcane dimension of the scripture, scrupulously applying them to every verse in succession. The complementarities include creation (al-khalq) and the Command (al-amr), hierarchy (al-tarattub) and contrariety (al-taḍādd), the inchoative (al-mustaʾnaf) and the accomplished (al-mafrūgh), generality (al-ʿumūm) and specificity (al-khuṣūṣ), the abrogating (al-nāsikh) and the abrogated (al-mansūkh), the clear (al-muḥkam) and the ambiguous (al-mutashābih), and exegesis (al-tafsīr) and hermeneutics (altaʾwīl). Although some of these pairs are of course familiar from the wider commentary tradition, al-Shahrastānī’s use and elaboration of them is strikingly ingenious. For example, he distinguishes at least four grades of generality operating within Quranic concepts.
A detailed discussion of his system is beyond the scope of this essay, but it unveils a breathtaking degree of intelligibility within the text—a kind of semantic logic of the revelation. But crucial to understanding the significance of alShahrastānī’s overall project is the primary distinction between creation and the Command. The two are clearly distinguished in 7:54, Do not creation and Command belong to Him?, and for our thinker these constitute the prime orders of reality distinctly dependent on God. The Command has a certain paramountcy insofar as it is ultimately reducible to the Divine creative fiat Be! (kun), through which the data of creation enter existence in the first place—comparable with the Logos of John 1:3, through which “all things came into being” and without which “not one thing came into being.” Creation is thus premised on the Command. Now, for this hermeneut, the Quran in its entirety is mysteriously identical with the latter reality. We might say that for al-Shahrastānī, reality is being channeled through the Quran. It follows that the authentic hermeneutic of the Quran, deriving (he claims) from the teaching of the Household of the Prophet (ahl al-bayt) and made up of the mentioned complementarities, ipso facto amounts to a penetration of the veil of created existence and an ascent to the transcendental roots of manifestation, which are known as the Command. What results is a strikingly “positivistic” form of taʾwīl distinct from mystical allegorism. Attention is paid to every minute detail of the scripture in view of its ongoing cosmic function. In this example of sapiential commentary—whose quality makes its recent reclamation from the brink of oblivion all the more poignant—the Quran amounts to the active presence of the Transcendent in our midst, which if properly grasped in its interior, raises us beyond our existential confinement by space and time.
(Source: ‘The study Quran’ by Seyyed Hossein Nasr)
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