Shi'i Ismaili Approaches to the Qur'an: From Revelation to Exegesis ~ The Routledge Companion to the Qur'an

28 SHIʿI ISMAILI APPROACHES TO THE QUR’AN From Revelation to Exegesis Khalil Andani Introduction This chapter is an introductory account of Shiʿi Ismaili Muslim engagements with the Qur’an dur- ing the fourth/tenth and fifth/eleventh centuries.1 While these examples are drawn from premod- ern sources, the overarching principles of Ismaili hermeneutics continue to play a major role within contemporary Ismaili communities. The Ismailis maintain that the Prophet Muhammad vested his divinely inspired knowledge and authority in his family, the Ahl al-Bayt and that Muhammad explic- itly designated his cousin and son-in-law, ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, as his successor, inheritor, and the lord- guardian (mawlā) of the believers after him. Accordingly, the Ismailis revere a specific lineage of ʿAlid Imams in the descent of Ismāʿīl ibn Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq (d. 148/765) as the successors of ʿAlī and the hold- ers of a divinely ordained leadership office called the Imamate. Amidst heavy persecution during the early Abbasid period, the Ismailis organized a highly successful daʿwa (“missionary summons”) that functioned both as an underground revolutionary movement and an esoteric brotherhood. The efforts of the Ismaili daʿwa resulted in the establishment of the Fatimid Caliphate (303–567/909–1171) in North Africa and later Egypt, during which time the Ismaili Imams ruled as Caliphs and the Ismaili daʿwa expanded throughout the Muslim world. Following the defeat of the Fatimid Empire, Ismaili communities survived as persecuted minorities in the Middle East, Persia, Central Asia, and South Asia and developed their own distinct intellectual, literary, and devotional traditions within their local cultures. The two largest Ismaili communities in modern times are the Dāʾūdī Bohras and the Nizārī Ismailis, each of whom follow a different lineage of Ismaili Imams. The lineage of Imams recognized by the Bohras has been in “hiding” (satr) since the sixth/twelfth century, and the Bohra community follows the leadership of a dāʿi muṭlaq (“chief missionary”), who serves as the deputy of these concealed Imams. For the Nizārī Ismailis, the series of Imams has continued in an uninterrupted lineage through many periods of concealment and manifestation; today the community recognizes His Highness Prince Shāh Karīm al-Ḥusaynī Aga Khan IV (b. 1936) as their 49th hereditary Imam, whom they refer to as “Mawlana Hazar Imam” (“our guardian-lord the present Imam”) or the “Imam-of-the-time.”2 Ismaili engagements with the Qur’an over the centuries comprise a diversity of interpretations and expressions. However, several theological premises and exegetical principles remain common to various forms of Ismaili Qur’anic hermeneutics. The first premise is the divine authority of the Ismaili Imams as the rightful interpreters of God’s guidance, which is manifested in the Qur’an, the prophetic legacy, and the divine inspiration that continues through the Ismaili Imamate. The teach- ing function of the Ismaili Imam includes interpreting and contextualizing the spirit and essence of 303 10.4324/9781315885360-28  Khalil Andani the Qur’an for his community through changing circumstances with respect to legal, ethical, and spiritual matters. The second premise is the trademark Ismaili understanding of Qur’anic revelation and inspira- tion. According to Ismaili teachings, the Prophet Muhammad was the recipient of a nonverbal spiritual form of divine inspiration. He, in turn, translated this divine inspiration into the Arabic expressions, verses, and suras that constitute the Qur’an. Thus the Ismailis do not regard the Arabic words of the Qur’an as the direct verbatim speech of God; rather, they understand the Arabic Qur’an to be a divinely inspired discourse of Muhammad that verbally and symbolically expresses God’s inspiration and guidance to his community. Thirdly, Ismaili thinkers engaged with the Qur’an through two modes of exegesis: (1) an “exo- teric” exegesis comparable to Sunni and Twelver tafsīr, kalām, and fiqh methods by which the Ismailis legitimized and demonstrated the divine authority of the hereditary Imamate and refuted non- Ismaili legal interpretations and (2) an “esoteric” exegesis called taʾwīl, a trademark feature of Ismaili hermeneutics best conceived as a “revelatory exegesis” that entails interpreting numerous Qur’anic and extra-Qur’anic elements as symbols for high-ranking persons in the Ismaili religious hierarchy and the metaphysical realities of the spiritual cosmos. Despite the fact that Ismaili doctrine has always regarded the Imams as the possessors of the taʾwīl of the Qur’an, the actual authors or composers of Ismaili Qur’anic exegesis throughout history have been high-ranking Ismaili “missionary-scholars” (dāʿīs). Ismaili taʾwīl is never presented in the tafsīr format of commenting on the Qur’an from its beginning to its end. Instead, Ismaili commentaries are mostly embedded within broader philo- sophical and theological treatises where a Qur’anic verse(s) is quoted as part of a larger argument or to show the agreement between cosmological doctrines and scripture. The present chapter surveys Ismaili views of Qur’anic revelation, exoteric Qur’anic hermeneu- tics employed by Ismaili jurists, and esoteric Qur’anic hermeneutics or taʾwīl from several Ismaili scholars. The latter pertains to Ismaili interpretations of the five daily ritual prayers, Qur’anic natural phenomena like the sun and moon, and the famous Qur’anic “Verse of Light” (Q 24:35). While many Ismaili exegetes purported to be conveying taʾwīl under the divine guidance and inspiration of the Imams, their interpretations of the Qur’an happen to diverge in several respects. This suggests that Ismaili taʾwīl, while presented as an authoritative revelatory exegesis derived from the knowl- edge of the Imam, was also a creative product of each Ismaili exegete’s encounter with the Qur’an. The diverse expressions of Ismaili taʾwīl indicate that Ismaili hermeneutics was not necessarily aimed at developing a stable canon of Qur’anic commentary; rather, taʾwīl primarily functions as a spiritual practice by which the Ismaili aspirant integrates his or her soul into the higher spiritual cosmos and continues to find expression in modern times. The Qur’an as Prophetic Composition: Ismaili Visions of Revelation Ismaili thinkers formulated distinct theories of Qur’anic revelation in comparison to the theologians and exegetes operating within the Sunni and Twelver Shiʿi traditions of Islamic thought. While Sunni and Twelver theologians mutually disagreed about the nature of God’s Speech – whether it is created sounds/letters or an eternal divine attribute – they still agreed that the Arabic verses of the Qur’an were verbally dictated to Muhammad by the Angel Gabriel and applied this thinking to other prophetic revelations like the Torah and the Gospel. One of the most common claims found in many Sunni and certain Twelver tafsīr literature is that God inscribed a preexistent Arabic Qur’an as a complete text in a heavenly guarded tablet prior to the creation of the world and its revelatory descent (nuzūl) to the Prophet Muhammad. According to one such framework, which was voiced in early tafsīr and subsisted in the Sunni tradition, the preexistent Qur’an was sent down to earth in various stages. An early proto-Sunni exegete, Muqātil ibn Sulaymān (d. 150/767), described this process as follows: “The entire Qur’an descended from the Guarded Tablet to the scribe-angels 304  Shiʿi Ismaili Approaches to the Qur’an in one night, the Night of Destiny. Gabriel took it from the scribe-angels in twenty months and conveyed it to the Prophet over twenty years.”3 In the final stage, Gabriel orally recited the Qur’an to Muhammad in a piecemeal fashion over 20 years and Muhammad recited it verbatim to his fol- lowers. According to this popular Muslim theory of verbatim inspiration, which remains widespread today and is often taken as wholly represented of Muslim belief in academic literature, the Prophet had no creative influence over the contents of the Qur’an, which were already determined by God in its heavenly transcript. However, all major Ismaili thinkers wholly rejected this model and pro- posed a radically alternative account of prophetic revelation. One reason for this divergence is that Ismaili views are rooted in a theology, metaphysics, and cos- mology that vastly differ from the worldview of Sunni and Twelver kalām. Up to the end of the fifth/ eleventh century, Sunni and Twelver theologians subscribed to a somewhat binary theology: God is the sole incorporeal and eternal existent; He possesses a number of essential and active attributes (whose precise number and modality were debated among theologians); all created existents, includ- ing angels, jinn, human souls, and the sensory universe, are corporeal and temporal entities com- posed of atoms and accidents.4 In the kalām framework, the Angel Gabriel – a corporeal being who occupies a spatial position – recites Qur’anic verses as audible utterances to the Prophet. Meanwhile, the Ismaili worldview envisioned a created order comprising both an incorporeal spiritual realm and a corporeal physical realm, both of which are created and sustained by God (see Figure 28.1). Figure 28.1 Ismaili Neoplatonic Worldview 305  Khalil Andani According to Ismaili teachings, God is the absolute, ineffable, and utterly transcendent uncondi- tioned Reality whose pure oneness eludes all attributes and multiplicity including the categories of existence and nonexistence. He is the “Originator” (al-mubdiʿ) of all existents, including the popular divine names and qualities that Ismaili thinkers properly ascribed to the highest level of created being instead of God. The spiritual realm consists of a hierarchy of incorporeal cosmic intellects, souls, and angels – the specifics of which differed from one Ismaili thinker to the next. The most popular Ismaili account of the spiritual world envisioned the Neoplatonic Universal Intellect and the Universal Soul – which are celestial archetypes for the essences and the goal-directed activities of the Cosmos – as the two highest ranks of the cosmic order. Meanwhile, the corporeal world is com- posed of form and matter and includes various natural phenomena as well as human beings – who are composites of body and soul. The spiritual and corporeal worlds are intertwined – the former continuously emanates existence, qualities, and divine inspiration upon the latter which is akin to a dim reflection of the former. In the Ismaili theological framework, “God’s Speech” (kalām Allāh) or “God’s Word” (kalimat Allāh) is God’s eternal creative command that sustains all things and unitarily encompasses the “essences” of everything that exists: “The Pearl of Intellect is the Word of God, which subsumes all spiritual and physical existents.”5 God’s Speech initially “flows” through the grades of the spiritual world and manifests as divine guidance within the world of nature (as displayed in the regular orderly behaviors of natural things) and the revelatory guidance brought by the Prophets and the Imams, who establish and govern the “world of religion.” This Ismaili teaching stands in direct contrast to the Ḥanbali view that the kalām Allāh is eternal sounds and letters; it likewise clashes with the Muʿtazilī position that God’s Speech is a temporally created arrangement of sounds; and it also contradicts the Ashʿarī and Māturīdī views that God’s Speech is an eternal nonverbal attribute subsisting in God’s essence. Furthermore, Ismaili thinkers regard “God’s Writing” (kitāb Allāh), first and foremost, to be the intelligible essences that originate from God’s creative word within the Universal Intellect, which the Universal Soul then inscribes throughout the Cosmos; the Arabic Qur’an is only a “Book of God” in a secondary and derivative sense insofar as it orally expresses the “signs” (āyāt) of God’s cosmic writ. In the view of most Ismaili scholars, God’s Speech emanates or flows to the Prophets through a spiritual hierarchy – consisting of the Universal Intellect and Universal Soul and lower levels of angelic intermediaries called Jadd, Fatḥ, and Khayāl. The prophets perceive God’s Speech and God’s Book as divine “inspiration” (waḥy) and “support” (taʾyīd) that is spiritual and nonverbal through the medium of a celestial power called the Holy Spirit, which constantly illuminates their souls akin to the radiance of light and its reflection in a mirror. One of the more succinct Ismaili accounts of Qur’anic revelation comes from the 14th Ismaili Imam and fourth Fatimid Caliph, al-Muʿizz li-Dīn Allāh (r. 341–365/952–975), as reported in the Taʾwīl al-sharīʿa of the Fatimid Ismaili jurist and dāʿī Abū Ḥanīfa al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān (d. 363/974): Verily, God sent down the light [nūr] which He mentioned in the Qur’an upon the heart of Muhammad. The Prophet did not send down that divine lordly light upon the hearts of the believers because they lacked the capacity to bear it, due to the disparity between the Prophet and the believers among the common people. He only conveyed the mean- ings of the inspiration [waḥy] and the light  – its obligations, rulings and allusions  – by means of utterances composed with arranged, combined, intelligible, and audible letters. When the Prophet constructed these utterances and letters and enclosed the meanings that the inspiration contained within them, the recitation [al-qurʾān] constructed according to the light – which is the inspiration [al-waḥy] sent down [to him] – became the word of the Messenger [qawl al-rasūl]. Thus, the construction, the expressions, and the composition are due to the Prophet. Thus, it [the Qur’an] is the Speech of God [kalām Allāh] and the word of the Messenger of God [qawl rasūl Allāh].6 306  Shiʿi Ismaili Approaches to the Qur’an According to this quotation from the Ismaili Imam, which was authoritative for all of his Ismaili fol- lowers, God inspired Muhammad with an immaterial divine “light” (nūr), identified with revelatory inspiration, and the Prophet then encoded the truth contents of this nonverbal inspiration within the Arabic utterances that constitute the Qur’an. Thus, according to the Imam, the Qur’an is the “Speech of God” in its spiritual essence and the “word of the Messenger of God” in its outward linguistic form. Other Ismaili dāʿīs like Jaʿfar ibn Manṣūr al-Yaman (d. 349/960), Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī (d. after 361/971), Ḥamīd al-Dīn al-Kirmānī (d. circa 411/1020), al-Muʾayyad al-Shīrāzī (d. 470/1077), and Nāṣir-i Khusraw (d. circa 481/1088) presented more intricate theories of revelation using Neopla- tonic concepts but retained the general ideas taught by the Imam-Caliph al-Muʿizz.7 The common idea among these Ismaili accounts of revelation is the emphasis on the person and agency of the Prophet Muhammad in the revelatory process. For example, al-Sijistānī described the flow of divine support (taʾyīd) from God’s command through the Universal Intellect and Soul to the soul of the Prophet as “spiritual colors” (aṣbāgh rūḥāniyya), “intellectual forms” (ashkāl ʿaqlīyya), or pure mean- ings transcending sounds and letters, which the Prophet then rendered into a symbol-filled discourse called tanzīl that comprises the Arabic Qur’an, and the commands and prohibitions of his sharia.8 In composing both the tanzīl and the sharia, the Prophet acts within the circumstances of his own historical context, responds to his community’s needs, and employs the idioms, symbols, and well- known conventions of his culture. Even while affirming the Qur’an as something composed by the Prophet, the Ismailis affirmed and passionately argued that the Qur’an was miraculously “inimitable” (muʿjiz) due to its literary form surpassing the limits and excellence of Arabic poetry, prose, and rhyming speech, as well as its signification of spiritual meanings.9 Nāṣir-i Khusraw believed that the Prophet’s divinely supported soul fashioned the contents of God’s nonverbal inspiration in two symbolic oral discourses – the inimitable Qur’an and his prophetic guidance – which are analogous to the poetry and prose produced by the human rational soul.10 Not only was Muhammad personally responsible for constructing the verbal content of the Arabic Qur’an, but he himself was the living and speaking embodiment of God’s Word: “The cause of all existents [ʿillat al-aysiyyāt] is only the Word of God, . . . [T]he Speaker Prophet is found to be a receptacle [mahāll] for the Word of God in the corporeal world and is designated by its names.”11 In other words, the Prophet first and foremost is the locus of the manifestation (maẓhar) of God’s Word – in the manner of a reflective mirror – while the Qur’an and the prophetic teaching and example are verbal expressions of God’s Word by virtue of being reflections and compositions of the person of Muhammad.12 This Ismaili vision of revelation entails that the Qur’an and the prophetic teachings are perme- ated with symbols and parables that partially reveal and conceal a higher level of meaning. The literal meaning of the Qur’an and the sharia comprises the “outward dimension” (ẓāhir) of religious truth while the original spiritual meanings that Muhammad initially perceived through divine inspira- tion constitute the “real-truths” (ḥaqāʾiq) of religion; whatever lies beyond the zāḥir is part of the “esoteric dimension” (bāṭin) of religion. Most people must begin at the ẓāhir level of the Qur’an and seek an esoteric “path” (ṭarīqa) toward its real-truths. This necessitates another medium of divine guidance in the world after the Prophet. Following the Prophet Muhammad, the Ismailis hold that divine guidance continues through the Imams, beginning with ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib and enduring down to the Imam of the present time – who would be Imam Shāh Karīm al-Ḥusaynī Aga Khan for the Nizārī Ismailis and the hidden Imam of the Bohras. God’s command or speech continues to emanate, by means of the Holy Spirit, into the souls of the Imams by virtue of which they con- tinue many of the Prophet’s spiritual functions. This continuous divine inspiration also renders the Imams incorruptible and immune from sins and spiritually distinguishes them from other human beings. As explained by the senior Ismaili dāʿī al-Muʾayyad al-Shīrāzī, “the spiritual faculty [al-quwwa al-nafsāniyya] called the Holy Spirit is that by which he [the Imam] speaks, intellects, and hears from the Abode of the Hereafter while the leaders of misguidance and those who follow them are unlike 307  Khalil Andani that.”13 Unlike the Prophets, the Imams neither compose a new tanzīl nor legislate a new sharia; they interpret the tanzīl and sharia of Muhammad by recontextualizing them to new circumstances, preserving their underlying ethical spirit, and guide spiritual adepts to the real-truths by disclosing their inner meanings through the hermeneutics known as taʾwīl. Every Imam in his own time con- veys an authoritative “teaching” (taʿlīm) to his community, which includes his exoteric and esoteric interpretations of the Qur’anic revelation. At the theological level, the Ismaili Imam functions as the “speaking Qur’an” or the “speaking Book of God” while the Arabic Qur’an in the form of a recited or written text is relegated to the status of the “silent Qur’an” or the “silent Book of God.” This doctrine means that the spiritual substance of the Qur’an is embodied in the living Imam, whose words and deeds serve as the per- sonification of the Qur’an’s underlying principles regardless of whether the Imam recites or quotes from the text of the Qur’an.14 In the words of the Fatimid dāʿī and jurist Abū l-Qāṣim al-Malījī (fl. fifth/eleventh century), “the Speaking Book [al-kitāb al-nāṭiq] who is the Imam and the Silent Book [al-kitāb al-ṣāmit] that is the Qur’an are in the position of the potter and the clay, the blacksmith and the iron, or the carpenter and the wood.”15 The Imam as the speaking Book of God actually holds greater authority than the Arabic Qur’an; the latter is like passive raw material before the Imam to be molded according to his teaching. This general point has been argued by numerous Ismaili think- ers. Aziz Qutbuddin eloquently summarizes one rendition of this argument put forth by the Ismaili jurist al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān: Al-Nuʿmān asserts that the Prophet in his time recited the Book of God and used it to guide, give knowledge, establish proofs, explicate, and warn. He brought the risāla [“mes- sage”], and he was the rasūl [“messenger”]; he brought the hudā, and he was the hādī. If the Qurʾān could perform these actions on its own, he asserts, even the Prophet as a hādī and explicator would not have been required. To continue this mission, to definitively and unequivocally convey the information which God has deposited in the Qurʾān for each period, the Qurʾān needs, al-Nuʿmān argues, an accompanying living interpreter, a person who is designated and taught by the Prophet. This person would know the interpretation of the Qurʾān and Sunna, and would not need to take recourse to indeterminate formalised techniques to estimate their meaning. This interpreter is . . . none other than the Prophet’s cousin and legatee [waṣī], ʿAlī, and after him, the successive line of designated Imāms in their progeny, each of whom is the dalīl and hādī for his time.16 In actual practice, this means that the Ismailis look to the Imam of the time for day-to-day reli- gious guidance in legal or ethical matters and do not directly consult the Qur’an or the hadiths of the Prophet for such a purpose unless the Imam directs them to. In modern times, the living Nizārī Ismaili Imam (Mawlānā Shāḥ Karīm al-Ḥusaynī) and the incumbent Dāʾūdī Bohra dāʿī muṭlaq (Sayyidnā Mufaḍḍal Sayf al-Dīn) respectively serve as the primary authorities for the temporal and spiritual guidance within their respective communities. All of this raises the question as to what kind of Qur’anic exegesis the Ismailis undertook historically and in contemporary times. Exoteric Exegesis: Ismaili Imamological and Legal Hermeneutics When taking Ismaili intellectual history into account, the Ismailis generally engaged in two types of Qur’anic exegesis: exoteric exegesis and esoteric exegesis. Exoteric exegesis was generally avail- able to all Muslims, Sunni and Shiʿi, and largely consisted of “imamological” readings of the Qur’an and legal hermeneutics. The esoteric exegesis, branded as taʾwīl, was reserved for initiated members of the Ismaili community and was taught in private settings; Ismaili taʾwīl was often articulated as theological or exegetical prose, but it has also found expression through the centuries in the form of 308  Shiʿi Ismaili Approaches to the Qur’an devotional poetry and ritual practice. We can find examples of Ismaili exoteric interpretations of the Qur’an in works produced by Ismaili dāʿīs during the reign of the Fatimid Caliphs. Among these, the legal writings of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān and the theological works of Ḥamīd al-Dīn al-Kirmānī are the most eminent examples. Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān composed The Pillars of Islam (Dāʿāʾim al-Islam) as the official Fatimid manual of law at the request of the Fatimid Imam-Caliph al-Muʿizz.17 The Pillars of Islam summarized many of al-Nuʿman’s earlier legal writings, which were part of a broader Fatimid project to establish a public facing Shiʿi Ismaili discourse of Islamic law, to articulate the role of the Ismaili Imam as the ultimate authority in religious matters, and to challenge the positions of emerging Sunni legal schools. Unlike the Five Pillars of Sunnism (arkān al-islām), the Ismaili legal framework constructed by al-Nuʿmān was based on Seven Pillars. The most important of these was walāya – defined as obedi- ence and devotion to the Imam as the representative of God and the Prophet. The Pillars of Islam includes an early chapter on walāya in which the author furnishes various Qur’anic verses and prophetic reports to argue that ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib and the Imams of his progeny are the divinely ordained successors of the Prophet Muhammad and the bearers of God’s authority on earth. This set of arguments effectively presents an imamological exegesis of the Qur’an that focuses on the literal meaning of select verses as proof-texts for the Imamate. For example, al-Nuʿmān explains that Q 5:55 refers to ʿAlī as the “guardian-lord” (walī) of the believers by reading the verse as: “Your guardian-lord can only be God, and His Messenger and those who have faith, who establish prayer and give the zakat while bowing down (in prayer).”18 He goes on to mention that this verse was revealed when ʿAlī was bowing down in prayer and gave his ring to a beggar, thus indicating that ʿAlī is the guardian-lord of the believers after the Prophet.19 The author identifies “the possessors of authority” in the Qur’anic command to “obey God and obey the Messenger and the possessors of authority among you” (Q 4:59) as the Shiʿi Imams. He rejects the Sunni view that the possessors of authority are the scholars of the Sunni community on the grounds that the Sunni scholars differ among themselves in their legal opinion; obeying one group among the scholars means disobeying another group of them, and this makes command to “obey the possessors of authority among you” impossible to follow.20 In one section of The Pillars, al-Nuʿmān applies many verses in the Qur’an about God’s favors upon the progeny of Abraham to the Shiʿi Imams. The Imams are said to be those among the house of Abraham to whom God gave the Book, the wisdom, and the great kingdom (Q 4:54), those who judge humankind with justice (Q 4:58). The Imams are the special descendants of Abraham and Ish- mael who constitute “a nation submitting [umma muslima] to God” that God promised to them (Q 2:127–128); they are those whom Abraham called muslims (“submitters”) in ancient times who bear witness over humankind (Q 22:77–78). They are likewise the “middle nation” bearing witness over the people and over whom the Messenger bears witness (Q 2:143). The Imams are those intended by Abraham’s prayer for God to “preserve me and my sons from serving idols” (Q 14:35), and they are Abraham’s progeny to whom God made the hearts of men incline (Q 14:37). The Imams are the “nation who invite to goodness and enjoin right conduct” (Q 3:104) and “the best nation that has been raised up for humankind” (Q 3:110). In general, the Ismaili imamological exegetical strategy consists of restricting the meaning of otherwise general Qur’anic language based on the fact that only the Shiʿi Imams, as a group of individuals appointed and inspired by God, actually meet these descriptions.21 As for Ismaili legal exegesis, al-Nuʿmān often resorted to rather simple strategies like invoking lexicographical meanings of words, analyzing the meaning of a given Qur’anic term in other parts of the Qur’an, referring to the word order in a legal verse, or citing an occasion of revelation in order to buttress Fatimid Ismaili legal positions. But one notable feature of exoteric Ismaili Qur’anic exegesis is the complete lack of formal categories of interpretation prevalent in Sunni fiqh and tafsīr, such as analogical reasoning, consensus, deduction, ijtihād (“independent reasoning”), juristic 309  Khalil Andani preference, and the distinctions between general/specific, clear/ambiguous, certain/presumptive, abrogating/abrogated, etc.22 Al-Nuʿmān rejected stock Sunni hermeneutical methods because he deemed them as insufficient for arriving at clear certain meanings, and, ultimately, such fallible techniques infringed on the authority of the Ismaili Imam to interpret the Qur’an. Thus when it comes to Qur’anic exegesis for legal purposes, the Ismailis wholly reject the permissibility of legal divergence (ikhtilāf) and statements like “every mujtahid is correct.” In the face of divergent inter- pretations and uncertainty over the Qur’an’s meaning, one should consult the living Imam of the time for guidance. Esoteric Exegesis: Ismaili Taʾwīl as Revelatory Hermeneutics In the discourses of Sunni and Twelver Qur’an commentators (mufassirūn) and the Islamic theolo- gians (mutakallimūn), the term taʾwīl denotes a kind of allegorical interpretation or speculative eso- teric exegesis of scriptural passages whose surface meaning is unclear, multivalent, or problematic. For example, theologians in the Muʿtazilī, Ashʿarī, and Māturīdī traditions allegorically interpreted the anthropomorphic verses about God possessing a face, hands, or a side in the Qur’an and this was called taʾwīl.23 Ismaili taʾwīl differs from the aforementioned forms of hermeneutics in several respects. At first glance, it is easy to prejudge Ismaili taʾwīl as a textbook case of eisegesis over exege- sis. It may appear strange that Ismaili exegetes interpreted a host of Qur’anic symbols – including Noah’s ark, the sun and moon, or the Night of Destiny – as esoteric references to the person of the Ismaili Imam. These examples show that Ismaili taʾwīl presupposes and builds upon a number of Ismaili beliefs and commitments; accordingly, taʾwīl was only taught to initiated Ismailis in private settings. For these reasons, modern scholars have labeled Ismaili taʾwīl as a selective and sectarian method of exegesis in the service of a sectarian communal ethos.24 In contrast to these approaches, I  would classify Ismaili taʾwīl as “revelatory hermeneutics” featuring an interplay of four dimen- sions – the revelatory, the rational, the esoteric, and the soteriological. First, taʾwīl in the Ismaili context should be conceived as a revelatory exegesis of the Qur’an and other hermeneutical objects beyond the Qur’an. The Ismaili practice of taʾwīl “reveals” or “unveils” an anagogic correspondence between the Qur’an’s contents (rituals, stories, laws, symbols), the structure of the physical cosmos, and the real-truths of the higher domains of reality that include the Ismaili hierarchy of daʿwa teachers and the spiritual world that culminates in the Universal Intellect and Soul. An early Ismaili treatise from the pre-Fatimid era called The Master and the Disciple by Jaʿfar ibn Manṣūr al-Yaman (d. circa 347/958) places both the prophetic revelatory discourse called tanzīl and the Imam’s exegesis called taʾwīl on the same level in terms of being divinely inspired: “Both the tanzīl and the taʾwīl are from what is with God [min ʿinda Allāh], and no one can attain what is with God except through waḥy” (Q 42:51, 53:4, etc.).25 This statement clearly shows that the taʾwīl of the Imams is the product of divine inspiration or waḥy – which other Sunni and Shiʿi thinkers associated with the Prophets only. Another text by the same author called The Book of Unveiling also situates taʾwīl as an expression of waḥy and goes even further by saying that the taʾwīl taught by ʿAlī (called the Legatee of the Prophet) and the Imams who succeeded him is likewise a manifestation of God’s Speech in the same way that the Qur’an enunciated by the Prophet Muhammad is an expres- sion of God’s Speech. The text explains that God speaking to human beings by sending a messenger to convey His Speech to them (described in Q 42:51) refers to the Imam’s function of teaching the taʾwīl of the Qur’an to his community: “The tanzīl is the Speech of God and its taʾwīl is the Speech of God . . . His saying, ‘or He sends a messenger to indicate by His permission what He wills’ (Q 42:51) means “what the Legatee [ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib] conveys of the taʾwīl to human beings by the permission of God and the permission of His Messenger, and it [the taʾwīl] is the Speech of God [kalām Allāh].”26 310  Shiʿi Ismaili Approaches to the Qur’an The chief purpose of taʾwīl, according to several Ismaili scholars, is to reconcile the meaning of the Qur’an with the truths known to and demonstrated by the human intellect. As al-Sijistānī once explained: [T]he discourse of taʾwil from the direction of the Founder [Imam ʿAlī] is the placement of speech in a position verifying what is known through the intellect without removing the speech from its outward aspect. . . . This [taʾwīl] is the act of divine support [taʾyīd] bring- ing together the exoteric words employed in the ambiguous verses; this is the Speech of God from the direction of the Founder.27 Al-Sijistānī argued that many Qur’anic verses, including “the ambiguous verses” (al-mutashābihāt), the stories of the Prophets, and verses mentioning physical objects like the earth, mountains, light, heaven, water, days, trees, etc. fail to accord with logic and reason when understood at face value. These verses need to be decoded through taʾwīl. For example, the word “earth” (arḍ) in many verses, when interpreted through taʾwīl, means “knowledge” or “possessor of knowledge” according to al-Sijistānī. This is because the Qur’anic descriptions of God stretching, reviving, and quaking the earth, or granting it as an inheritance to His servants only accord with the intellect when “earth” is taken to mean “knowledge” or its possessors.28 The fifth-/eleventh-century Ismaili thinkers Ḥamīd al-Dīn al-Kirmānī and Nāṣir-i Khusraw argued for the necessity of taʾwīl along similar lines: “Only through taʾwīl can the differences of opinion as well as the ambiguities which are in the Book be reconciled.”29 In other words, one of the underlying goals of taʾwīl is to reconcile the conclusions established by the intellectual investigation of religious truth and the outward meaning of scripture. Thus Ismaili taʾwīl is animated by a rational approach to the content of revelation. The rationalist spirit of Ismaili taʾwīl is coupled with another dimension that is esoteric and expressive of the spiritual authority of the Ismaili Imam and his dāʿīs. On one hand, Ismaili scholars are very clear that the authority to determine and dispense the taʾwīl of the Qur’an lies exclusively with the Imams. According to al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, “no one other than Muhammad the Messenger of God is able to bring the exoteric aspect of the Book and no one can bring forth its esoteric aspect except the Imams of his progeny.”30 On the other hand, the history of Ismaili thought demonstrates that, by and large, the exponents of taʾwīl have been Ismaili dāʿīs and not the Imams.31 For the most part, these Ismaili scholars did not even source their interpretations to any verbal teaching of the Ismaili Imams. But they held to a theoretical understanding that what the Ismaili dāʿīs conveyed to the community as taʾwīl was spiritually inspired by the Imam’s divinely supported knowledge. According to al-Kirmānī, “the Imam divinely supported from heaven expounds the religion and the explanation of its symbols [al-rumūz] for you through his hierarchy of dignitaries [ḥudūd].”32 He further explains that the highest-ranking Ismaili daʿīs known as the “Gate” (bāb) and the “Proof ” (ḥujja) – who rank just under the Imam in the religious hierarchy – receive divine inspiration from the Imam: “The ḥujja participates with the bāb in accessing the inspiration which derives from the radiance of the imamate.”33 Along these lines, several Ismaili dāʿīs of high rank prefaced or concluded their treatises by claiming that their expositions were rooted in the spiritual guidance of the Imam. Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān began his account of taʾwīl by declaring that “we now commence with the assistance and support [taʾyīd] of God.”34 Nāṣir-i Khusraw concluded his treatise on taʾwīl by saying that “whatever good we have shown in this book is through the divine support [taʾyīd] of the Lord of the Time, peace be upon him.”35 ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Shahrastānī (d. 548/1153), who was likely a crypto-Ismaili dāʿī, warned in the introduction to his Qur’an commentary that no one can compre- hend the secrets of the Qur’an without the guidance of the Prophet’s family. But he went on to claim that he possessed an internal spiritual power allowing him to correctly interpret the Qur’an through the guidance of the Prophet’s family: “I found in myself the faculty of guidance unto the word of 311  Khalil Andani prophecy and I understood the language of the divine message, so I was thereby rightly guided to the arcana of the words in the glorious Qurʾān without my doing exegesis of the Qurʾān by mere personal opinion.”36 Thus, while Ismaili exegetes anchored their interpretations in the Imam’s guid- ance and authority, they operated with a high degree of intellectual autonomy and this becomes apparent in the ways their taʾwīls diverge. Turning now to the actual practice of taʾwīl by Ismaili exegetes, a good case study that illustrates both the underlying consistency and diversity of Ismaili taʾwīl is the esoteric exegesis of the five daily prayers. According to al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, the taʾwīl or esoteric meaning of performing Islamic ritual prayer is the establishment and execution of the daʿwa of the Ismaili Imams: “The ritual prayer (al-ṣalāt) in each day and night in the sharia of Muhammad was established as five prayers as a like- ness (mathal) for the daʿwa of truth.”37 According to this taʾwīl, the frequent Qur’anic command to “establish the prayer” means “establish the daʿwa.” This means that the bodily gestures of ritual prayer constitute the exoteric prayer (al-ṣalāṭ al-ẓāhir) while the believer’s initiation and instruction through the Ismaili daʿwa is the esoteric prayer (al-ṣalāt al-bāṭin). Al-Nuʿmān went on to argue that the five ritual prayers required by the sharīʿa symbolize the “five daʿwas” undertaken by the five major prophets known as the “possessors of resolution” (ulū l-ʿaẓm) – Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad: “The first prayer [the noon prayer] is the likeness for the daʿwa of Noah because it is the first daʿwa and he is the first of the possessors of resolution among the messengers. The afternoon [ʿaṣr] prayer is a likeness for the daʿwa of Abraham because he is the second of the posses- sors of resolution and it is the second prayer.”38 According to rest of this taʾwīl, the evening maghrib (“sunset”), ʿishāʾ(“night”), and fajr (“morning”) prayers respectively symbolize the daʿwas of Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad. One of the contemporaries of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, Jaʿfar ibn Manṣūr al-Yaman, offered a similar taʾwīl of the five daily ritual prayers but with a minor difference. In this view, the taʾwīl of the five prayers refers to the five daʿwas of the five great prophets who preceded Muhammad: The five [Prophets] establish the daʿwa for the sixth Speaker Prophet, the seal of the mes- sengers, the last of the prophets, because after him there will not arise a prophet or mes- senger . . . so they allude to him and spread the good news about him and therefore the obligation of prayer was prescribed five times every day and night. In its true reality, prayer is the daʿwa.39 Writing a century after both of these authors, Nāṣir-i Khusraw elucidated his own taʾwīl of the five ritual prayers. In his interpretation, which agrees with his predecessors, the ritual prayer in general is a symbol of the daʿwa: “We say by the help of God that the prayer [namāz] indicates to the daʿwa [summons] toward the absolute oneness of God and becoming connected to the Friends of God.”40 However, Nāṣir-i Khusraw explained that the five ritual prayers according to taʾwīl stand for the Universal Intellect, the Prophet (Muhammad), the Legatee (ʿAlī), the Universal Soul, and the Imam. The rationale behind his exegesis is the idea that sunlight symbolizes God’s command – which ema- nates and flows down through the ranks of the spiritual world and the religious hierarchy. For exam- ple, the morning prayer symbolizes the Universal Intellect because “the first light that appeared from the Creator’s command was the First, which is called the Pen and the Intellect.”41 Naṣir-i Khusraw further explained that the taʾwīl of the evening prayer is the Universal Soul (called the “Second”) because the Soul’s reception of God’s light from the Intellect is analogous to sunset: “The evening prayer indicates the Second [Universal Soul]. . . . The light of the sun alludes to the light of God’s oneness.”42 What we see in these examples is that al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, Jaʿfar ibn Manṣūr, and Nāṣir-i Khusraw each gave a different taʾwīl of the five ritual prayers. While they all agreed that the general taʾwīl of ritual prayer is the establishment of the daʿwa, they interpreted the symbolic referents of the five daily prayers differently: for al-Nuʿmān, the five prayers symbolize the five Prophets from 312  Shiʿi Ismaili Approaches to the Qur’an Noah to Muhammad; for Jaʿfar ibn Manṣūr, the five prayers symbolize the five Prophets from Adam to Jesus; and for Nāṣir-i Khusraw, the five prayers represent the two highest ranks of the spiritual world – the Universal Intellect and Soul – and the three highest ranks of the religious hierarchy – the Prophet, the Legatee, and the Imam. Another example of the unity and diversity of taʾwīl is the Ismaili exegesis of natural phenomena like the sun and the moon. What we find in multiple Ismaili texts is that there are multiple taʾwīls of the sun and moon that Ismaili authors affirm simultaneously and sometimes within the same text. One recurring Ismaili taʾwīl is that the sun and moon in the physical world are symbols for the Imam and his supreme deputy: the “Gate” (bāb) or “Supreme Proof ” (al-ḥujja al-ʿaẓam) – an interpretation found in pre-Fatimid works.43 The basis of this exegesis is that there exists a likeness (mathal) between the physical sun sustaining all physical life in the natural world and the Imam enlivening the world of religion: “The Imam is the sun of the religion through which insight is enlightened and souls are illumined from the light of guidance and wisdom.”44 According to the Ismaili dāʿī Abū Ḥāṭim al-Rāzī (d. 322/943), the Qur’anic story of Abraham worshipping the moon and the sun means that Abraham was spiritually guided by the Gate and the Imam before he ascended to the rank of prophet.45 At the same time, many Ismaili exegetes offered a second taʾwīl of the sun and the moon according to which these two celestial bodies symbolize the Universal Intellect and Universal Soul of the spiritual world. Nāṣir-i Khusraw once quoted Q 41:37, which states “do not prostrate yourself to the sun, nor to the moon, prostrate yourself to Him who has created them.” He then interpreted the verse through taʾwīl as follows: By the “Sun,” He [God] means the [Universal] Intellect and by the “Moon,” the [Univer- sal] Soul, because the Intellect gives benefit to the Soul as the Sun gives light to the Moon. When He says “do not prostrate to the sun and the moon, prostrate to God Who has cre- ated them,” He means “do not ascribe the attributes of the Intellect and the Soul to God.”46 Yet elsewhere in the same treatise, Nāṣir-i Khusraw exegeted Q 91:1–2 – “By the sun and its morn- ing brightness, and the moon when she follows it” – in a different manner. According to his taʾwīl of this verse, “by the Sun, God intends the Prophet in religion and by its brightness, God intends his luminosity in religion. By the Moon, God means the Legatee (ʿAlī) in religion, and by the Moon following after the Sun, He means that his Legatee follows after [the Prophet] in religion.”47 Thus, within Ismaili writings of the classical period, we easily find three concurrent taʾwīls for the sun and moon: the Intellect and the Soul in the spiritual world, the Prophet, and his Legatee at the com- mencement of a new revelation, and the Imam and his Gate in the world of religion. A final example displaying the variability of taʾwīl presented by Ismaili thinkers is found in various Ismaili readings of Q 24:35 – the famous “Verse of Light” (āyat al-nūr) – whose rich symbolism has inspired a whole range of commentary among all Muslims.48 A translation of the verse is as follows: God is the light of the heavens and the earth; the likeness of His light is like a niche in which there is a lamp; the lamp is in a glass; the glass is like a glittering star kindled from a Blessed Tree – an olive that is neither of the East nor of the West whose oil would almost glow even if fire had not touched it. Light upon Light. God guides to His light whom He wills and God strikes forth likenesses for humankind. And God knows all things. Table  28.1 summarizes the taʾwīl of this verse as explained by five major Ismaili daʿīs: Jaʿfar ibn Manṣūr al-Yaman,49 al-Sijistānī,50 the Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ,51 al-Kirmānī,52 and al-Shīrāzī.53 The preceding examples show that Ismaili exegetes presented different taʾwīls of the same Qur’anic elements. The Ismailis apparently accepted that a single Qur’anic motif – like the five prayers, the sun and moon, and the symbolic structure of the Verse of Light  – could have a multiplicity of 313  Khalil Andani Table 28.1 Symbol Jaʿfar b. Manṣūr al-Sijistānī Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ al-Kirmānī al-Shīrāzī Light of the The Light is God’s Intellectual Light of the Light of divine Light of divine Heavens guidance in the and Gnostic Universal support support (taʾyīd) and the heavens and the Light shining Intellect (taʾyīd) within from the Earth imam in the forth from manifest in the spiritual First Intellect earth God’s Word, existents and corporeal flowing from Universal hierarchies spiritual ranks Intellect and to corporeal Universal Soul ranks Niche Fāṭima, daughter Prophet Universal Soul Prophet Prophet of Prophet Muhammad Muhammad Muhammad Muhammad Lamp Imam al-Ḥusayn Legatee (ʿAlī) Universal Divine sciences Legatee (ʿAlī) Intellect Glass Fāṭima Imam al-Ḥasan Prime Matter Imams Knowledge of the Hereafter Star Fāṭima Imam al-Ḥusayn Illumined Prime Legatee (ʿAlī) Imams Matter Blessed Olive Prophet Abraham Imam Zayn Universal Soul Prophet Imam al-Ḥusayn Tree as the progenitor al-ʿĀbidīn Muhammad of messengers and imams Neither of Neither Jewish nor Qualities of Imam Neither Neither exoteric the East Christian Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn constructed nor esoteric nor of the nor composed West but originated by God’s Command Oil Imam al-Ḥusayn Imam Universal Soul’s Benefits while in his Muḥammad tenuousness mother’s womb al-Bāqir Fire Appointment of Imam Jaʿfar Intellect’s Legatee Prophetic prior imam al-Ṣādiq benefits experience Light upon The Imam as The Qāʾim Light of Increase of lights Light of Prophet Light both a divinely (Lord of Universal and sciences Muhammad guided and the Resurrection) Intellect upon from the upon the light guide of others in whom the the Light of Imams of Imam Jaʿfar Light of God is the Universal al-Ṣādiq concealed Soul esoteric referents at one and the same time. The late Henry Corbin eloquently puts the matter: “The taʾwīl, without question, is a matter of harmonic perception, of hearing an identical sound (the same verse, the same hadith, even an entire text) on several levels simultaneously.”54 What the different Ismaili expressions of taʾwīl surveyed in this chapter have in common is that they were all argued on the basis of an anagogic “likeness” (mathal) between a Qur’anic symbol and its ultimate referent. For example, Ismaili exegetes typically explained that a Qur’anic symbol like light, a lamp, or the moon possessed certain features that symbolically pointed toward a higher level of reality – such as a rank of the Ismaili daʿwa or a metaphysical reality in the spiritual world. It is on the basis of this anagogic 314  Shiʿi Ismaili Approaches to the Qur’an correspondence that a given Ismaili scholar could interpret the “light” of Q 24:35 as the divine sup- port of the Universal Intellect, the lamp as Prophet Muhammad, or the five prayers as five particular Prophets. What complicates this is that a given symbol like the sun may have an anagogic likeness to several referents – the Prophet, the Imam, and the Universal Intellect. But the methodology of taʾwīl remains consistent even when the referents of a particular taʾwīl are different. This plurality suggests that the activity of taʾwīl incorporates the creative endeavor of each Ismaili thinker. A high- ranking Ismaili dāʿī who undertook Qur’anic exegesis would have been immersed in such taʾwīl and Ismaili cosmology for some time and cognitively trained in detecting these anagogic correspond- ences wherever they may be found. One must also keep in mind that Ismailis generally believed that the esoteric dimension of knowledge is multilayered: beyond one level of the bāṭin lies an even deeper level of bāṭin. To an outsider, a particular Ismaili taʾwīl may not resemble an open-ended inquiry into the meaning of the Qur’anic text as compared to what one sees in tafsīr literature where many exegetes remain cautious in presenting their personal interpretations. We never see Ismaili exegetes expressing uncertainty or doubts about the interpretations they present as the taʾwīl of a given Qur’anic verse. Nor do they provide us with a list of tentative or possible understandings of a verse. Rather, various Ismaili dāʿīs seem to be interpreting the Qur’an and other texts with a predetermined or preferred set of meanings already in mind. And yet, as we saw in the preceding examples, individual Ismaili thinkers did not subscribe to a uniform set of exegetical referents and did not merely reproduce a dogmatic set of doctrines. The lack of such dogmatic interpretation in Ismaili exegesis suggests that Ismaili taʾwīl is not exactly about arriving at the “true meaning” of the Qur’an in terms of its histori- cal, lexicographical, or legal meaning as a text. Rather, the entire Ismaili enterprise presupposes that the Qur’an is a divinely inspired expression of real-truths which have been coined by the Prophet Muhammad to aid his community in ultimately attaining a comprehension of the higher spiritual realms from which both divine inspiration and cosmic creation come forth. Along these lines, the Ismaili dāʿī al-Muʾayyad al-Shīrāzī defined taʾwīl in soteriological terms as follows: Since taʾwīl is to return affairs to their true reality, which is the origin of the existents [awwalī min al-mawjūdāt], and the origin [awwal] of existents from the Real is the originated beings, then he who learns the science of taʾwīl acquires the form [ṣūra] of the originated beings and joins the source from which the essence of life flows.55 Just as the word taʾwīl lexicographically means “to return something to its origin,” al-Shīrāzī under- stood taʾwīl in the Ismaili context as a spiritual practice that facilitates the cosmic return of the soul of the believer to its origin in the spiritual world – which he calls the “originated beings” (al-mubdaʿāt) – a reference to the Universal Intellect and Universal Soul. When Ismaili believers read or hear the taʾwīl of the symbols within the Qur’an and the Cosmos from the Imam and the Ismaili dāʿīs, they inevitably start learning more about the Ismaili religious hierarchy (of which they are members) and the celestial realm from which their souls were created: as they learn the taʾwīl of the sun, they better understand the spiritual functions of the Imam and the cosmic functions of the Universal Intellect and become more receptive to their spiritual emanations; as they understand the taʾwīl of the daily ritual prayers, they attain a deeper participation in the Ismaili daʿwa, which the daily prayer symbol- izes. To facilitate the spiritual adept’s assimilation of esoteric truths, Ismaili exegesis features a great deal of repetition: a myriad of Qur’anic and extra-Qur’anic symbols are interpreted as referring to a recurring number of referents in the daʿwa and the spiritual hierarchy.56 As the Ismaili practitioner engages the science of taʾwīl taught by the Ismaili Imams in its deeper dimensions, “he becomes illu- minated by the lights of their taʾwīl and, with respect to the dark shadows of similitudes and symbols, perceives their significances, their realities, and the aim in everything from them.”57 Accordingly, the science of taʾwīl “reveals” the real-truths of the higher realms of existence – the world of the Ismaili 315  Khalil Andani daʿwa hierarchy and the spiritual world – to the soul of the Ismaili aspirant. This, in turn, enables Ismaili practitioners to perfect their souls into a virtual image of the higher spiritual world as they combine ritual and ethical practice with the knowledge of taʾwīl. Within the contemporary Bohra and Nizārī Ismaili communities, the believer’s engagement with Ismaili taʾwīl in its varied expressions plays a major role in Ismaili religious life. Speaking to the con- tinued relevance of taʾwīl, the present Nizārī Ismaili Imam Aga Khan IV has urged his community to learn the “esoteric meaning” of the Qur’an and understand the esoteric “concepts” symbolized by specific Qur’anic words.58 The Imam more recently advised his Ismaili community to seek the “correct” interpretation of the Qur’an through the Imam’s guidance, read the works of Ismaili phi- losophers and poets, and study the ideas of prior Ismaili dāʿīs to find wisdom and understanding in their faith.59 Thanks to the contemporary academic translation efforts of the Institute of Ismaili Studies, a growing body of Ismaili taʾwīl literature is becoming available to Nizārī Ismailis and the general public for personal study and theological reflection. Certain members of the Dāʾūdī Bohra community, who have completed the requisite level of religious education, go on to study begin- ner and advanced Ismaili taʾwīl literature through seminary education. However, the access to such taʾwīl works is regulated and restricted by the Bohra leadership.60 Apart from theological texts, the ideas of Ismaili taʾwīl are embedded in contemporary Ismaili ritual praxis. The Ismaili exegesis of the exoteric ṣalāt as the daʿwa finds continued expression in the daily Nizārī Ismaili prayer known as Duʿāʾ, whose overall structure and content corresponds to the classical Ismaili understanding of the daʿwa (missionary summons).61 Both Ismaili communities also embody and experience the taʾwīl through the recitation of devotional literature such as spiritual and didactic poetry, maddoh, qaṣīda, and ginān. In the final analysis, Ismaili taʾwīl in its multifaceted manifestations is more than exegesis; it is a soteriological and transformative practice designed to facilitate the “return” of the human soul to its celestial “origin” (awwal) in the spiritual world. Notes 1 A good deal of the primary source quotations in this chapter are drawn from my doctoral thesis: Khalil Andani, “Revelation in Islam: Qur’ānic, Sunni, and Shiʿi Ismaili Perspectives” (PhD diss., Harvard Univer- sity, 2019). 2 The most authoritative and updated narrative of Ismaili history is Farhad Daftary, The Ismāʿīlīs: Their History and Doctrines, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). The following historical summary is drawn from my survey articles, see Khalil Andani, “A Survey of Ismaili Studies Part 1: Early Ismailism and Fatimid Ismailism,” Religion Compass 10, no. 8 (2016): 191–206; “A Survey of Ismaili Studies Part 2: Post- Fatimid Ismailism and Modern Ismailism,” Religion Compass 10, no. 11 (2016): 269–282. 3 Muqātil ibn Sulaymān, Tafsīr on Q 2:185. 4 See, for example, Aymen Shihadeh, “Classical Ashʿarī Anthropology: Body, Life and Spirit,” The Muslim World 102 (July/October 2012): 433–477. 5 Nāṣir-i Khusraw, Wajh-i Dīn, ed. and trans. Faquir Muḥammad Hunzai, in An Anthology of Ismaili Literature, ed. Hermann Landolt, Samira Sheikh, and Kutub Kassam (London and New York: I.B. Tauris in association with The Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2008), 199–200. 6 Abū Ḥanīfa al-Nuʿmān, Taʾwīl al-sharīʿa, chapter 5, section 49. Nadia E. Jamal graciously provided me with the Arabic text in a personal communication. The translation is my own. A different translation and discus- sion of this passage are provided in David Hollenberg, Beyond the Qurʾān: Early Ismāʿīlī Taʾwīl and the Secrets of the Prophets (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press), 81–82. 7 These viewpoints are studied in detail alongside non-Ismaili views in my doctoral thesis. See Andani, “Rev- elation in Islam.” 8 Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī, Ithbāt al-nubuwwāt, ed. Wilferd Madelung and Paul Walker (Tehran: Miras-e -Maktoob, 2016), 80, 213, 236. 9 Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī, Aʿlām al-nubuwwa, ed. and tr. Tarif Khalidi, Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī. The Proofs of Prophecy (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 2011), 174–175. 10 Nāṣir-i Khusraw, Khwān al-ikhwān, ed. Yaḥyā al-Kashshāb (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-Maʿhad al-ʿIlmī al-Firansī, 1940), 224–225. 316  Shiʿi Ismaili Approaches to the Qur’an 11 Al-Sijistānī, Ithbāt al-nubuwwāt, 101. 12 In later centuries, Sunni mystical thinkers like Ibn ʿArabī (d. 1240) also espoused the view that the Prophet Muhammad was the human locus of manifestation of God’s pre-eternal speech. 13 Al-Muʾayyad, al-Majālis al-muʾayyadiyya, ed. Hātim Ḥamīd al-Dīn, vol. 1–2 (Mumbai and Oxford: n.p., 1975–1986), vol. 2, 199. This is my own translation based on the transliteration found in Elizabeth R. Alexandrin, Walāyah in the Fāṭimid Ismāʿīlī Tradition (Albany: SUNY Press, 2017), 295. Alexandrin translates the passage into English on p. 170. 14 This is similar to the hadith where ʿĀʾisha stated about the Prophet that “his character was the Qurʾān.” For a discussion of this tradition and its meaning in the worldview of Ibn ʿArabi, see Robert J. Dobie, Logos and Revelation: Ibn ʿArabi, Meister Eckhart, and Mystical Hermeneutics (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2010), 55. 15 Abū l-Qāsim ʿAbd al-Ḥākim ibn Wahb al-Malījī, al-Majālis al-Mustanṣiriyya, ed. Muḥammad Kāmil Ḥusayn (Cairo: Dār al-Fikr al-ʿArabī, 1947), 175–176. 16 Husain K. Qutbuddin, “Fāṭimid Legal Exegesis of the Qurʾān: The Interpretive Strategies of Used by al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān (d. 363/974) in his Daʿāʾim al-Islam,” Journal of Qurʾanic Studies 12 (2010): 109–164, 124–125. 17 Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, The Pillars of Islam, trans. Asaf A.A. Fyzee, ed. Ismail K.H. Poonawala (New Delhi: Oxford University Press India, 2002). 18 All Qur’an translations are my own but based on the translations of A.J. Arberry and M. Pickthall. 19 Ibid., 21. 20 Ibid., 31–32. 21 Ibid., 28–45. 22 Qutbuddin, “Fāṭimid Legal Exegesis,” 123–124. 23 For a summary description of taʾwīl in Sunni tafsīr and kalām, see Hollenberg, Beyond the Qurʾān, 36–39. 24 This is the thesis in Hollenberg, Beyond the Qurʾān. 25 Jaʿfar ibn Manṣūr al-Yaman, The Master and the Disciple, trans. James W. Morris (London and New York: I.B. Tauris in association with The Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2001), para. 493, 155–156; Arabic text, 80. I have added transliterations and left the terms waḥy, tanzīl, and taʾwīl untranslated. The translator translated waḥy as “revealed inspiration,” taʾwīl as “inspired interpretation,” and tanzīl as “sending down.” 26 Jaʿfar ibn Manṣūr al-Yaman, Kitāb al-Kashf, ed. Muṣṭafā Ghālib (Beirut: Dār Andalus, 1984), 130. 27 Ibid., 237. 28 For a discussion of these examples, see Ismail K. Poonawala, “Ismāʿīlī taʾwīl of the Qurʾān,” in Andrew Rippin (ed.), Approaches to the History of the Interpretation of the Qurʾān (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 199–222: 210–219. 29 Nāṣir-i Khusraw, Between Reason and Revelation, tr. Eric Ormsby (London, New York: I.B. Tauris in associa- tion with The Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2012), 64. See also Ḥamīd al-Dīn al-Kirmānī, Master of the Age: An Islamic Treatise on the Necessity of the Imamate, ed. and trans. Paul E. Walker (London, New York: I.B. Tauris in association with The Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2007), 63–67. 30 Abū Ḥanīfa al-Nuʿmān, Asās al-taʾwīl, ed. ʿĀrif Tāmir (Beirut: Dār al-Thaqāfa, 1960), 31–32. 31 Some of the prosaic taʾwīl works composed by Ismaili dāʿīs include Sarāʾir wa-asrār al-nuṭuqāʾ, the Taʾwīl al-zakāt, and the Taʾwīl Sūrat al-Nisāʾ attributed to Jaʿfar ibn Manṣūr al-Yaman, the Kitāb al-iftikhār by al-Sijistānī, the Asās al-taʾwīl and Taʾwīl al-daʿāʾim al-islam by al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, al-Majālis al-muʾayyadiyya of al-Muʾayyad al-Shīrāzī, Wajh-i dīn, and Jāmiʿ al-ḥikmatayn by Nāṣir-i Khusraw, Rawḍā-yi taslīm by Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī (d. 672/1274), and the Haft bāb by Abū Isḥāq Qūhistānī (fl. ninth/fifteenth century). To these prosaic taʾwīl works, one could easily add many examples of Ismaili poetry and devotional literature produced through the centuries including the gināns of the Ismaili South Asian tradition and the qaṣāʾid of the Yemeni, Central Asian, Syrian, and Persian Ismailis. For an argument as to how such devotional litera- ture constitutes a form of taʾwīl, see Aziz Talbani and Parveen Hasanali, “Taʾwīl and Ginānic Literature: Knowledge Discourse and Spiritual Experience,” in Gināns: Texts and Contexts, Revised ed., ed. Tazim R. Kassam and Franscoise Mallison (New Delhi: Primus Books, 2010), 197–210. 32 Ḥamīd al-Dīn al-Kirmānī, Rāḥat al-ʿaql, ed. Muṣṭafā Ghālib (Beirut: Dār al-Andalus, 1983), 238. 33 Al-Kirmānī, quoted in Walker, Ḥamīd al-Dīn al-Kirmānī: Ismaili Thought in the Age of al-Ḥākim (London and New York: I.B. Tauris in association with The Institute of Ismaili Studies, 1999), 113. 34 Al-Nuʿmān, Asās al-taʾwīl, 32. 35 Nāṣir-i Khusraw, Wajh-i dīn, ed. Ghulām Reẓā Avānī, intro. by Seyyed Hossein Nasr (Tehran: Anjūman-i Shāhanshāhī-i Falsafah-i Iran, 1977), 341. 36 Al-Shahrastānī, as quoted in Toby Mayer, “Shahrastānī on the Arana of the Qurʾān: A Preliminary Evalua- tion.” Journal of Qurʾanic Studies 7 (2005): 61–100, 67. 317  Khalil Andani 37 Abū Ḥanīfa al-Nuʿmān, Taʾwīl al-daʿāʾim, 3 vols., ed. Muḥammad Ḥasan al-Aʿẓamī (Beirut: Muʾassasa al-Aʿlāmī li l-Maṭbūʿāt, 2006), vol. 1, 151. 38 Ibid. 39 Jaʿfar b. Manṣūr al-Yaman, Taʾwīl al-zakāt, as quoted in David Hollenberg, “Interpretation after the End of Days: The Fāṭimid Ismāʿīlī taʾwīl (Interpretation) of Jaʿfar ibn Manṣūr al-Yaman (d. circa 960)” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2006), 278. 40 Nāṣir-i Khusraw, Wajh-i dīn, 166. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid., 168. 43 The Master and the Disciple, para. 90–91, 82. 44 Aḥmad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Naysābūrī, Degrees of Excellence, tr. Arzina R. Lalani (London and New York: I.B. Tauris in association with The Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2010), 44. 45 Abū Ḥāṭim al-Rāzī, Kitāb al-iṣlāḥ, ed. Hasan Minuchihr and Mahdi Muhaqqiq (Tehran: University of Teh- ran and McGill University, 2004), 189–191. 46 Nāṣir-i Khusraw, Wajh-i dīn, 102. 47 Ibid., 75–76. 48 Poonawala in his “Ismāʿīlī taʾwīl of the Qurʾān” had compared two Ismaili interpretations of this verse. The idea of making this table was inspired by his work. 49 Jaʿfar ibn Manṣūr al-Yaman, Kitāb al-kashf, 35–36. 50 Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī, Kitāb al-maqālīd al-malakūtiyya, ed. Ismail K. Poonawala (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 2011), 236–242. 51 As documented and translated in Carmela Baffioni, “The Role of the Divine Imperative (amr) in the Ikh- wân al-Safâʾ and Related Works,” Ishraq 4 (2017): 46–70. I want to acknowledge my colleague Syed Zaidi for clarifying parts of the Ikhwān’s exegesis to me. 52 Al-Kirmānī, Rāḥat al-ʿaql, 576–577. 53 As summarized in Alexandrin, Walāyah in the Fāṭimid Ismāʿīlī Tradition, 102–106. I do not have access to the primary source for this taʾwīl as it is in manuscript form only. 54 Henry Corbin, Spiritual Body Celestial Earth (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977), 53–54. 55 Al-Muʾayyad al-Shīrāzī, al-Majālis al-muʾayyadiyya, ed. Hātim Ḥamīd al-Dīn (Mumbai and Oxford, 1975– 1986), vol. 2, 302. My thanks to Elizabeth R. Alexandrin for providing me with this source. 56 On repetition in taʾwīl, see Hollenberg, Beyond the Qurʾān, 62ff. 57 Al-Muʾayyad, al-Majālis (Ḥamīd al-Dīn Edition), vol. 2, 149–150, as translated in Alexandrin, Walāyah, 154. 58 This guidance is found in a religious pronouncement (farmān) of Aga Khan IV given in Bombay, India, on November  22, 1973, and published in an Ismaili farmān collection called Precious Gems (Vancouver: His Highness Prince Aga Khan Shia Imami Ismailia Association for Canada, n.d.). 59 This guidance is found in the religious “pronouncements” (farmān) of Aga Khan IV given in Dar es-Salam, Tanzania, on August 17, 2007; Karachi, October 25, 2000; and Lisbon, July 7, 2018. I consulted the texts of these farmāns, which are unpublished but retained in the private collections of some Nizārī Ismaili com- munity members. 60 Tahera Qutbuddin, “The Da’udi Bohra Tayyibis: Ideology, Literature, Learning and Social Practice,” in A Modern History of the Ismailis, ed. Farhad Daftary (London and New York: I.B. Tauris in Association The Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2011), 331–354. 61 For a summary and translation of the Nizārī Ismaili Duʿāʾ, see Tazim R. Kassam, “The Daily Prayer (Duʿa) of the Shiʿa Ismaʿili Muslims,” in The Columbia Sourcebook of Muslims in the United States, ed. Edward E. Curtis IV (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 358–368. 318