Arabic Philosophy? What's in a Name?

Whether we call it Arabic philosophy or Islamic philosophy or philosophy in the world of Islam (that seems more popular nowadays), there is little doubt that this philosophical tradition is significant for our understanding of human history and intellectual endeavour and indeed the world in which we live and deal with one other. Of course, at one level labels and names are important: naming is an act of defining, of making connections, and indeed of including. While one may debate whether Islamic as a label must necessarily entail a narrowly defined normative theological engagement, if we have learned anything from both Talal Asad's notion of Islam as a discursive tradition, and Shahab Ahmed's consideration of Islam as a rich tradition within the Balkans-to-Bengal complex, it is that Islamic can be used in a far broader sense. And it is also the case that even for a number of the thinkers engaged in this volume (Avicenna in particular), it seems rather presumptuous to deny that their theological commitments were genuine. But even further for the current debates on the identity of Europe and the wider question of the role of Islam in Europe which is strongly resisted by the nativist right, it does matter that we embrace a more expansive notion of 'Islamic philosophy' and its receptions and indeed continuing living engagement (not in the name of tradition as such but in terms of the life of the mind with its extensive forms of embodied experience). Academic scholarship matters; it informs and identifies who we are and helps us to make sense of our world. 

This rich collection of articles, La philosophie arabe à l'étude,  represents an excellent window into the state of research in European scholarship on the intellectual history of ‘Arabic philosophy’. The fact that this latter term is chosen is in itself indicative of a certain approach: Arabic and not Islamic with a focus on the language of philosophical expression and not the cultural context and theological and ethical commitment. In theory, one might even in that sense include works written in Turkish, Persian and other languages inflected by the Arabic debates – perhaps Islamicate philosophy or philosophy in the Islamic World (as is the term used by Peter Adamson whose approach through his popular podcast the History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps and his Very Short Introduction has become highly influential). 

But there is still a sense in which the term Islamic is too theologically compromised, too compromising to the analytic, precise and rational nature of philosophy. 

Of course, by that token there is a focus on Arabic as a conduit and transformation of the ancient traditions and their influence on medieval and early modern scholasticisms in Europe, but also by implication somewhat a cut off point for inquiry; ‘Arabic philosophy’ whether in the form of ‘Islamic philosophy’ with its theological commitments in the period say after the 13^th century, and in the form of contemporary debates, receptions of continental and analytic traditions in Arabic are both decidedly excluded (although there is some reference to the latter in one article). Nevertheless, given the focus on the question of method, this debate is engaged in the volume.

 

After a brief introduction by the editors in which the volume is said to evolve from a conference in 2013 and where a brief question is raised about method and labelling and where there is an explicit comparison to studies that attempt to gauge the state of research in medieval Latin philosophy, the articles are divided into five sections. All of the major figures of the European study of Arabic philosophy are included here. Fittingly the volume is dedicated to two major figures whom we now miss in the field: Marc Geoffroy (1965–2018) who was working closely with Jules Janssens and Meryem Sebti on Avicenna’s commentaries especially on Metaphysics Lambda and the so-called Theology Aristotelis/Uthūlūjiyā (and had previously worked on Averroes and Fārābī, translating al-Jamʿ bayna rayʾay al-ḥakīmayn - a work that most people now think is pseudo-Fārābī), and Mauro Zonta (1968–2017), one of the leading specialists on medieval Jewish philosophy. Both went far too early. Requiescant in pace.

 

The first (and longest) part comprises eleven chapters on method and the historiography of the study of Arabic philosophy and unsurprisingly Dimitri Gutas looms large. 

The first is a reprint of Dimitri Gutas’ classic study of the historiography of Arabic philosophy focusing on four approaches: Orientalism, mysticising, the conduit connecting ancient and medieval philosophy, and Straussianism or the political and esoteric reading of Arabic philosophy. The article was originally a lecture at the BRISMES conference in Cambridge in 2000 and has functioned as a defining text for the study of Arabic philosophy since. Orientalism accounts for the attitude that sharply divides philosophy and theology and religion, insists on its heterodoxy dealt a death blow by Ghazālī’s critique, identifies Averroes as a last hurrah for Aristotelianism, for philosophy to die away. In a sense a mysticising reading of philosophy is also Orientalist in that it objectifies and essentialises Arabic philosophy as the exotic other of analytic philosophy. The main extension of this – and Gutas’ favourite thinker to critique – is Henry Corbin and his ‘theosophical’ reading which allows his to establish his polemic against the use of the term ‘Islamic’ philosophy. The clash of orientalisms and essentialisms indeed. At stake of course is the very definition of philosophy: thought, explanation and analysis that includes the uses of poesis and myth, recourse to non-propositional thought and even mystical intuition allied with strong theological commitments takes the work into the realms of para-philosophy for Gutas. In a sense, the insistence on Avicenna as the Arabic philosopher begs the question of his own commitments: did Avicenna not have a sense of what philosophy was as a way of life, did the broader context of the assumption of Islam and the processes of divinity and prophecy not affect him? But then as a colleague recently commented why should we care about narrow definitions of philosophy, not least of what is analytic given the broad inability (the irony!) to establish a clear, coherent and explanatory definition of analytic philosophy. 

This piece is followed by Gutas’ postscript, a rather short note primarily concerned with critiquing the revival of Straussian approaches (represented in this volume by David Wirmer), and while broadly agreeing with his earlier piece also condemned some recent ‘fanciful’ and plainly bad histories of philosophy. Of course, more recently he has decried the problem of the eclipse of philosophy after the classical period and its dissolution into pseudo-philosophy (thought that has distinct theological and other commitments). At the end of the day, approaches and the way in which we seek to do the history of philosophy is directly related to how we define and understand philosophy and then locate that understanding in the texts that we study. If we define philosophy in Islam as Aristotelianism (somewhat influenced by but also suspicious of the excesses of Neoplatonism) and reject the possibility of distinct theological commitments and indeed any sorts of theological and ontological commitments that are extrinsic to the syllogistic substrate of argumentation, then one wonders what philosophy in Arabic, in the world of Islam can possibly be. 

Catherine König-Pralong’s study examines the development of the concept of Arabic philosophy in European thought from the time of Pierre Bayle in the 17^th century through to Ernest Renan in the 19^th century. What she shows rather interestingly is the eclipse of earlier usages of Arabic philosophy in the Enlightenment (Jonathan Israel has also commented on that) to a more orientalised and racialised notion of Arabic philosophy as medieval by the colonial period as an expression of colonialist epistemology. 

Chiara Adorisio looks at Strauss’ study of Maimonides and his Muslim interlocutors as a form of true rationalism in philosophy that neither gives up on religion or politics. Rüdiger Arnzen’s contribution is a highly useful typology of eight approaches to the study of the history of philosophy in the world of Islam that relates it to wider concerns in the study of the history of philosophy and intellectual history. He makes a strong case for a broader and theoretically more serious engagement with Arabic philosophy as part of the study of non-Western philosophies. The real conundrum is a perennial one: are students of Arabic philosophy primarily historian-philologists focusing on texts and contextualisation, philosophers excavating new ground or intercultural apologists fighting the prejudices of philosophy in the world of Islam. 

This is followed by Anke von Kügelgen’s interview to Adamson’s podcast. It is the one piece dedicated to a broad study of Arabic philosophy into the modern period not surprising given her own specialisation (and indeed she is the editor of volume four of the History of Philosophy in Islam from 1800 onwards, the Gundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie published by Schwabe Verlag). 

Not only does she discuss the reception of the classical traditions as well as Kant and Heidegger in the modern Muslim world (on which now there is quite a literature from Mohsen Jahangiri and Karim Mojtehedy to Roman Siedel, Urs Gösken and the Fardid crowd - and volumes published in Iran), she also touches on the history of the critique of philosophy. 

Damien Janos’ piece is the longest piece and theoretically sophisticated. It asks a very important question: to what extent does one find development of thought and position in the thinkers that we study and perhaps all too often we assume a holism of approach in their oeuvre. It is a contribution not just to the study of Arabic philosophy but in fact to how we study the history of philosophy. David Wirmer’s defense of the Straussian method of reading follows with an even longer article as well as an exemplification in his edition and translation of Ibn Bājja’s treatise On the Desiderative Faculty. 

The late Mauro Zonta’s brief over of Jewish Averroism follows and how it may be compared to Jewish Avicennism. He maps out a whole tradition and shows that Averroism in Jewish contexts still needs further work. One could certainly argue that many of the articles are responses and modifications of Gutas: Lizzini takes his work as her starting point and re-engages the values and approaches that we ascribe to the terms ‘Arabic’, ‘Islamic’, and ‘philosophy’; it is a useful recapitulation of the debate with the summary that she wishes to study philosophy in Islam and not philosophy of Islam (and indeed how in some circles the two are conflated). 

 

Part two considers the echoes and reception of ancient thought in Arabic philosophy. Ricardo Chiaradonna’s excavation of the existence-essence distinction in late antique thought and his critique of Hadot’s suggestion that one might find the notion of hyparxis and the activity of the One above substance in the anonymous commentary on the Parmenides is an excellent example of a clear and precise work of intellectual history. Might be useful to compare Michael Chase's recollection of Hadot here. 

The eminent Neoplatonism specialist Dominic O’Meara looks at the Arabic reception of the opposition of Alexandrian Aristotelianism to Athenian Neoplatonism and Karl Praechter’s historiographical model and the whole question of the transmission of late Neoplatonism to the Arabs. Part of this involves a critical take on Michel Tardieu's conjecture on the thinkers of Ḥarrān. Cristina Cerami looks at the reception of the Posterior Analytics on the organisation of the physics in Averroes; another excellent philologically careful study. David Twetten studies the ‘orthodoxy’ of the notion of the Aristotelian First Mover in the thought of Averroes alongside two modern specialists Sarah Broadie and Enrico Berti.

 

Part three comprises there chapters and considers an area of growing concern in recent times, namely, the connections between philosophy ‘proper’ and three areas of systematic theology (ʿilm al-kalām), mysticism, and law and legal theory. Again, with reference to Adamson, this would link to the ‘expansive’ sense of philosophy – looking for argumentation, analysis and explanation regardless of the generic self-label applied in the text. Hence, one can easily find serious philosophical analysis in works of kalām, in elements of Sufi metaphysics, in Qurʾanic and other scriptural exegesis, and especially in legal theory. Parallel to this is a new series published by de Gruyter on Philosophy in the Islamic World. Ulrich Rudolph’s short piece on the metaphysics of Jāmī (d. 1492) takes up the earlier work of Nicholas Heer and shows how especially the Precious Pearl (al-Durra al-fākhira) is such an important witness and indeed conduit for how later theologians, philosophers, and even Sufis made sense of metaphysics; at some point in the 18^th and 19^th centuries there is some evidence that it became a major school text across the Ottoman, post-Safavid and Mughal contexts. The reception of this text as a bridge between philosophy and these related areas deserves further consideration. 

Steffen Stelzer’s rather generic chapter studies how mystics viewed philosophers as inauthentic and insincere followers of the Prophet (and hence heretics). This is a rather disjointed piece and invokes Ibn ʿArabī and at times some modern Sufi polemics; but it fails to engage with the wider observation that in the later period there is a strong convergence of philosophy and mysticism, for example, in the thought of Mullā Ṣadrā (d. 1636). However, he does raise an interesting question about the nature of authority and precedence in philosophy - at least from ancient times, philosophers have not been immune to polemics, rhetoric, and indeed appeal to authority. 

Ziad Bou Akl completes this section with a study of the nature of divine volition in Averroes’ refutation of al-Ghazālī, specifically in the first discussion on whether God could choose a particular instant t at which to create (and the problem of indifference) and relates it to the famous medieval problem of Buridan’s ass, further taking the debate up to Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī. Certainly, the latter thinker is perhaps one of the most influential philosophers of the middle period and his al-Maṭālib al-ʿāliya that is studied here still deserves further recognition and engagement. 

 

The fourth part on the reception of Arabic philosophy considers four studies on Latin and early modern thought. Massimiliano Lenzi analyses Aquinas’ reception of both the Latin Aristotle and Averroes on the causes and essence of nature in Physics II. Roland Hissette takes up the translations of the middle commentaries of Averroes on logic, particularly on the Isagoge by the 13th century translator Wilhelmus de Luna. It constitutes a valuable study in Arabic-Latin translation and how terms draw upon both Averroes and Boethius. Jean-Baptiste Brenet’s own contribution is a fascinating study in Averroism in Descartes’ Utrecht debate of 1641 with Henrik de Roy on the nature of the human (especially the particular hylemorphic nature). It demonstrates an element of Descartes as not the first of the moderns but rather someone working within the universe of Aristotelianism and Averroism. A broader study is needed to consider further elements of Averroism and Avicennism in his thought. Remke Kruk’s contribution looks at the reception of Ibn Ṭufayl’s Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān in Dutch and its transmission to Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and other narratives; philosophy does have an influence further into literature and culture. Specialists have known for some time about Pococke’s Latin translation and its influence on Defoe (most exemplary in the study of Mahmoud Baroud that was originally an Exeter PhD, even if there is no direct textual transmission or evidence). 

However, there does seem to be evidence in a Dutch work published in 1752, De Walchersche Robinson of a relationship with the Arabic text. Kruk shows how literary and even philosophical influence can be present even in the face of antipathy to the religious context of Islam. 

 

The fifth and final part is a series of studies on particular texts and traditions and includes seven chapters. Philippe Vallat’s long article continues his rebuttal of Straussian readings of al-Fārābī in his contribution (explained in more detail in his book); for him, philosophy remains superior to religion and has a stronger claim to soteriology. 

He does affirm an esoteric reading but in a different sense to Leo Strauss (his main criticism is levelled at Charles Butterworth), and he repeats his reading of al-Fārābī as an anti-Qurʾanic and even anti-Islamic thinker. Certainly, it is fair to say that al-Fārābī’s conception of philosophy is far removed from the holistic commitments of Mullā Ṣadrā and Mīr Dāmād (and perhaps even Avicenna). For Vallat, the political theological concern for esotericism in al-Fārābī is only one of four possible functions. 

Meryem Sebti’s excellent edition and study of the Risāla fīʾl-kalām ʿalā al-nafs al-nāṭiqa places it within the pseudo-epigraphical works of Avicenna and suggests that it was written by an ishrāqī author in the later period (and her evidence certainly seems quite conclusive). Given the abundance of pseudo-epigraphica in Arabic and Islamic philosophy (often attributed to Avicenna, Ibn ʿArabī, Mullā Ṣadrā and so forth), this is a careful philological and philosophical model of how to establish an incorrect attribution. Yamina Adouhane studies the modal and causal distinction between the possible and the necessary in Avicenna and their reception in al-Ghazālī and Averroes. Significantly she points to the distinction between the notion of being necessary in itself and being without a cause. Jules Janssens takes up a wider task looking at the importance of Avicenna studies, the need for historical work and translation, of appropriate historical analysis, of not smoothing out the problems and tensions within Avicenna, of avoiding anachronistic readings. If one accepts that Avicenna is one of the greatest philosophers in history and a thinker with influence in the study of the sciences and medicine as well, he deserves a serious engagement not just in the world of Islam but beyond. This is very much an argument for the study of Avicenna within the history of global philosophy. Matteo di Giovanni considers an important polemical issue taken up historically but also in recent Arab intellectual history: how Islamic is Averroes’ philosophy?  The question speaks directly to this debate on Arabic versus Islamic philosophy. It provides evidence for the contestation of Islam and indeed philosophy in Averroes’ time. The final contribution by Fouad Ben Ahmed looks at Ibn Ṭumlūs’ logic and medicine and acts as a brief introduction to his editions and book published with Brill; it provides an account of an important student of Averroes and his tradition. In a sense the recovery of Ibn Ṭumlūs tells us something about the imagining of an Arab Averroist tradition. 

 

This is little doubt that this is a valuable collection of interventions, summaries and particular studies which tells us much about the field in its European manifestation: lots of Gutas, Avicenna, and Averroes. While there are hints that the editors and the volume want to go beyond that, the absences are notable: no real Suhrawardī (and this is a classic problem of distaste for Corbin and Nasr leading to the neglect of one of the more creative thinkers in the post-Avicennian period), no Mīr Dāmād (who is seriously neglected), no Mullā Ṣadrā, no Ottoman or Indian thinkers, no ethics. Of course, with any such volume, it is always churlish to expect it to conform to one’s own understanding of the field – and it is unreasonable for any volume not least one that emerged from a relatively small conference to be exhaustive. But then it is also the role of the reviewer to point students in the direction of other works: while a number of contributors warn against false leads and even fake friends and news (not least the works of Jackson and Campanini – I for one strongly disagree with that ascription of Jambet, which is a very serious philosophical engagement but as ever philosophical taste semper est disputandum), some indications of excellent recent work in Safavid and Qajar philosophy, the Oxford Handbook, studies of Ottoman philosophy and so forth are still important to make. 

The Shahrastānī Dossier: His Persian Ismailism

For some time, specialists have been aware that the famous theologian and heresiographer Abūʾl-Fatḥ Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Karīm Shahrastānī (1074–1153) was more than just the run of the mill Shāfiʿī trained jurist and Sunni Ashʿarī theologian. His Nihāyat al-aqdām fī ʿilm al-kalām was considered to be an Ashʿarī textbook of the seminary and acts as a supplement to his heresiography. 

This text begins with the classic problem of the eternity of the cosmos which he rejects citing Ashʿarī authorities such as Abūʾl-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī (874–936) himself, as well as Abū Isḥāq al-Isfarāyinī (and Imam al-Ḥaramayn al-Juwaynī (1028–1085).

And of course the work for which he was best known was al-Milal waʾl-niḥal, an extensive heresiography and doxography (first edited by Cureton in 1846) in which not only does one find one of the best accounts of Ismaili thought but also in which in the long discussion of the roots and reasons for dissension in the early Muslim community one finds a rather sympathetic (to say the least) presentation of the Shiʿi position. 

On the former, we have this distinction between the 'old' kerygma of the early Ismailis in the name of the messianic Imam Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl b. Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq and the new one of the Fatimids:

Then we have a bit further a more detailed examination of the Fatimids and after since Shahrastānī was active in Iran and familiar with the Nizārī mission that would make sense (and one finds reference to the Fuṣūl-e arbaʿa of Ḥasan-e Ṣabbāḥ):

Similarly in his presentation of the early dissension in Islam, one cannot help but feel an element of a philo-Shiʿi stance at the very least:

Anyway beyond these indicators, three further sources are well known for Shahrastānī's Shiʿi (Ismaili/Nizārī) inclinations. The first of these is his Qurʾan exegesis, Mafātīḥ al-asrār or Keys to the Arcana, a partial work mainly on sūrat al-Baqara with some important preliminary discussions on hermeneutics of which the first volume has been translated into English by Toby Mayer. 

The second is his critique of Avicennian philosophy, Muṣāraʿat al-falāsifa or Struggling with the Philosopher as translated by Wilferd Madelung and Toby Mayer that one ought to see alongside other critics of Avicennian metaphysics such as al-Ghazālī (1058–1111), Shihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī (1155–1191), Says al-Dīn al-Āmidī (1156–1233), and even ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī (1162–1251). 

While one would reconcile elements of the critique with Ashʿarism (even the critique of the notion of God as necessary existent which by the time of Shahrastānī was increasingly absorbed into Ashʿarī metaphysics and cosmology), there are also clear indications of an apophaticism and cosmology that are consistent with some Eastern Fatimid and Nizārī ideas. 

The third text that I want to discuss here has been recently edited and translated by Daryoush Mohammad Poor and published in the same series as the previous two by the Institute of Ismaili Studies. 

We have known about these two Persian sermons on cosmology since the appendix of Sayyid Muḥammad Riżā Jalālī Nāʾinī's appendix to Afżal al-Dīn Turka (d. 1446) and his Persian translation of al-Milal. ʿAbd al-Ḥusayn Zarrīnkūb, Guy Monnot and later Diane Steigerwald in her doctoral dissertation all discussed the Ismailism of Shahrastānī with respect to this work. Of course, the current edition is clearly an improvement: unlike Jalālī Nāʾinī's singular manuscript, it is based on three manuscripts: MS Marʿashī Qum 12868 dated 685/1286, MS Majlis-e Shūrā-ye Islāmī 10117, and finally MS Tehran University Central Library 643/24. The first is these is the only dated one, the earliest one and the basis for the edition. And of course a fluent English translation is presented along with appendices on terms and citations. One observation on the aesthetics of the Persian font - it strikes me as being rather clumsy and rounded. There are surely better Persian fonts to use out there. 

 
Mohammad Poor provides an excellent and rather full introduction that is actually longer then the text (almost double in length) that presents the author and his work, examines the question of his Ismailism, contextualises the text here and brings out key elements of why this text provides evidence for Shahrastānī's Ismailism: the Nizārī doctrine of the qiyāmat, the comparison with other important Nizārī works such as the Fuṣūl and others as well as (ps-)Ṭūsī's Rawżat al-taslīm which is often said to be influenced by Shahrastānī. 

There is little doubt that much of what Mohammad Poor presents here is rather convincing. In the Majlis, Shahrastānī clearly identifies himself with the new Nizārī mission and on the question of cosmogony critiques Ashʿarī, anthropomorphist, and Avicennian ideas among others in his quest to explain the nature of the divine command. There are clear echoes of the work of Ḥasan-e Sabbāḥ (in the Fuṣūl-e arbaʿa) and of Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī (perhaps through the prism of Nāṣir-e Khusraw). While we know that the genre of the majlis was well known in Iran at this time - especially among preachers such as the Karrāmīya as well as among Sufis (one thinks of the work of ʿAbdullāh Anṣārī and the later majālis that led to the redaction of the exegesis of Rashīd al-Dīn Maybudī) - Mohammad Poor links it here to the Ismaili genre of preaching sermons that one found at the Fatimid court (the works of al-Muʾayyad fīʾl-dīn al-Shīrāzī and even al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān come to mind) as well as later in the Nizārī tradition. He even speculates on a direct meeting and teacher-disciple relationship between Ḥasan-e Sabbāḥ and Shahrastānī. While some elements to the Shiʿi affiliation (for example, in the exegesis) might suggest that Shahrastānī was Twelver Shiʿi (and of course his patron for most of these works was the Twelver Shiʿi naqīb al-ashrāf of Tirmidh) and this is the argument that Mustafa Öztürk has made recently; Mohammad Poor is correct to designate this argument as weak - and we know that the middle period Imāmī tradition never claimed Shahrastānī and in fact Ibn al-Muṭahhar al-Ḥillī (1250–1325)  the famous student of Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī made it clear that Shahrastānī's positions were contrary to Imāmī theology. Perhaps the most convincing and interesting section is the discussion of the intertextuality of the text read alongside Nizārī works and intriguing (one wonders about this in the Mongol Persian context) of Shahrastānī's work as a modification of Ashʿarism, perhaps even a Ismaili evolved or supplemented Ashʿarism? Of course, if one were to bracket Imamology, there is an interesting line of inquiry to be pursued on the theological relationship of Ashʿarī and Nizārī Ismaili positions. 

Anyway, while Mohammad Poor is careful not to be too categorical in asserting Shahrastānī's Nizārism - he does say that he probably was. In the absence of clearer expressions in favour of the Imams of the time, this is understandable. Regardless, he is to be congratulated for producing this work as a intertextual intervention in the intellectual history of Persian theological writing in the pre-Mongol and early Mongol period. Certainly it is a further piece of evidence in the Shahrastānī dossier on his not-so-crypto-Ismailism. And one can imagine using the text fruitfully in classes on theology in Islam on the cusp of the Mongol invasions. 

 

Imāmī Qurʾān Exegesis in the Classical Period: The Case of al-ʿAyyāshī (d. c. 932)

Every Muslim confession from its earliest times tended to define itself with respect to its tradition through its hermeneutical engagement with scripture. While there are debates about the nature of the development of the genre of exegesis and the stages that it took, drawing upon not just aspects of the tradition in which the Prophet and his companions and family were said to have engaged the word of God, but also the development of certain disciplines of the humanities such as grammar and morphology, history, linguistics, logic, theology, and philosophy among others. Certainly we can say that features of early exegeses were the following: a concern to define how the language of the holy writ ought be be understood linguistically and the extent to which it ought be be read figuratively, the scope of meaning and cognitive content that was being conveyed in the texts, a recourse to the direct positions and readings of authorities from the time of the Prophet and his immediate circles and successors on the meaning of the text, and finally a desire to vindicate one's confessional position and assert its normatively as the tradition in the Qurʾan itself. 

Within the Imāmī (Twelver) Shiʿi tradition as it developed in the earliest period, most of the exegeses tended to identity the verses of the Qurʾan with the family of the prophet, their opponents, and their followers, reading the scripture as a revelation that mapped out the unfolding of divine providence. This remained the case even when there were disputes over what constituted a canonical 'reading', orthography and articulation of the language and especially when there were claims that what had by the 4th/10th century been defined as the canonical readings and orthography of the Qurʾan were not in conformity to the words conveyed by the Prophet and preserved faithfully by ʿAlī and his family - the Imams succeeding the Prophet. Already back in 1999, Meir Bar-Asher had published a study of classical Imāmī exegesis and its features.

With respect to that period we can point to the following extant exegeses:

1) The exegesis attributed to Abūʾl-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Ibrāhīm b. Hāshim al-Qummī (d. c. 307/920). He was an important source for the hadith compiler and narrator Abū Jaʿfar al-Kulaynī (d. 329/941). There is some debate on whether this text actually is the work of al-Qummī. al-Nadīm in his al-Fihrist mentions the following works of al-Qummī: Nawādir al-Qurʾan, Kitāb al-Manāqib, Kitāb Ikhtiyār al-Qurʾān (wa-riwāyatuhu), and Kitāb Qurb al-isnād. So no explicit mention of a tafsīr work. al-Shaykh Abū Jaʿfar al-Ṭūsī (d. 460/1067) does mention such a work. 

Majlisī also describes it as well known:

This is perhaps the best known of the classes Imāmī exegeses with a strong authorial voice that often comments on the reports; it is also uncompromisingly Shiʿi, condemning the opponents of the Prophet and the Imams (which has led to the self-censorship exercised by some of the editors of the text). The text is widely attested in the manuscript tradition; the best edition is that produced under the supervision of Sayyid Muḥammad Bāqir al-Muwaḥḥid al-Abṭaḥī in Muʾassasat al-Imām al-Mahdī and published in three volumes in Qum; this text is available here.

An important strand of the text is the exegesis on the authority of Abūʾl-Jārūd Ziyād b. Mundhir al-Hamadhānī (d. after 150/767), a Kufan companion of Imām al-Bāqir and later Zaydī authority. In the introduction, the author discusses the intimate relationship between the Qurʾan and the family of the Prophet as bearers and guarantors of the tradition. He then goes on to discuss various aspects of the verses: the clear and the figurative, the intertextuality, the apparent revealed words and their interpretation, the polemics (against dualists, polytheists, incomplete monotheists, anthropomorphists and others), the praise of the Imams and the rejection of their opponents, moral exhortations, and so forth arranged in 41 categories of verses. 

2) The exegesis of Furāt b. Furāt al-Kūfī (fl. 4th/10th century): little is known about him but he seems to have been a contemporary of the two Ṣadūqs, the father Abūʾl-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Bābawayh (d. 329/940), and his more famous son Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad b. ʿAlī Ibn Bābawayh (d. 381/991); Amir-Moezzi also says that he is presented as a student of the Zaydī exegete al-Ḥibarī whom we discuss a bit later. A number of the reports go through the chain of the Hāshimī family of reports as well as through key narrators from the time of the 'minor occultation' after the death of al-Imām al-Ḥāsan al-ʿAskarī in 874 which is often also described as the period of 'confusion' (ḥayra) in Shiʿi sources. Furāt does not seem to have been known to the classical biographical tradition but by the Safavid period become well-known. He is usually not cited as his exegesis is partial and most of the narrations on the meaning of verses cited from Imāms al-Bāqir and al-Ṣādiq are found in other sources; but still Muḥammad Bāqir Majlisī (d. 1110/1699) in his famous exposition of the Shiʿi tradition in the introduction to his mammoth Biḥār al-anwār (Seas of Light) describes it as trustworthy and important source for the tradition, from whom al-Ṣadūq narrated as well as the (probably Sunni) exegete al-Ḥākim al-Ḥaskānī (d. 490/1096), author of Shawāhid al-tanzīl.

This is very much a tradition based exegesis with reports and little by way of authorial commentary and intervention. While there are a few manuscripts of the text, mainly late, the standard edition by published in 1990 in Qum by Muḥammad al-Kāẓim in two volumes with the important editorial decision to change the order of the material to conform to the order of the Qurʾanic suras; but it is still partial missing at least 16 full suras as well as many verses within the remaining ones.

The text itself can be found here.

3) The exegesis of Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm al-Kātib al-Nuʿmānī (d. 360/971), a disciple of al-Kulaynī and author of a well known set of reports on the occultation (Kitāb al-Ghayba). This text is actually a set of reports from ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib extant in Biḥār al-anwār of Majlisī (90 odd pages in volume 90). 

4) The exegesis of Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥusayn b. al-Ḥakam al-Ḥibarī (d. 286/899) is the earliest extant one and the author was probably a Zaydī from Kufa. It was cited by Imāmī authors perhaps partly because its main transmitter was the Imāmī Abū ʿUbayd Allāh Muḥammad b. ʿImrān al-Marzubānī (d. 384/994). It is a broadly thematic work entitled Tanzīl al-āyāt al-munzala fī manāqib Ahl al-bayt or Mā nazala min al-Qurʾān fī Amīr al-muʾminīn. This latter title is also attested for a work by the Shiʿi narrator and historian Ibrāhīm b. Muḥammad al-Thaqafī (d. 382/896) but that work does not seem to be extant. The text is relatively short. Amir-Moezzi places it within the genre of what he considers to be a 'personalised commentary' or exegesis focused on particular individuals, and as such constitutes an early form of 'Shiʿi esotericism'. 

al-Ḥibarī explains this through recourse to the famous narration from ʿAlī on the four parts of the Qurʾan:

5) The partial exegesis attributed to al-Imām al-Ḥasan b. ʿAlī al-ʿAskarī (d. 260/874), the eleventh Imam. This 4th/10th century text only covers the first two suras of the Qurʾan. 

Like the other early exegeses it contains traditions and focuses very much on the importance of and love and devotion for (walāya) the family of the Prophet and dissociation (barāʾa) from their opponents. The two narrators of the exegesis - Abū Yaʿqūb Yūsuf b. Muḥammad b. Ziyād and Abūʾ-l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Muḥammad b. Sayyār - are reported to have been Shiʿi from the Zaydi area of Ṭabaristān and are unknown to the early Shiʿi biographical tradition; hence most scholars from Ibn al-Ghaḍāʾirī onwards (including al-ʿAllāma al-Ḥillī) reject its attribution to the eleventh Imam. Also while it is similar to other classical Imāmī exegeses it is not cited by any of them. Majlisī mentions the text as reflective of the tradition. 

6) The exegesis narrated from al-Imām Jaʿfar b. Muḥammad al-Ṣādiq (d. 148/765), the sixth Imam. Now there are two texts known by this name: one is a famed Sufi work edited by Paul Nwyia and cited by Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī (d. 412/1021) and translated by Farhana Mayer. 

And as Böwering has shown this work presents an impeccably Shiʿi chain of narration. However, there is another far more extensive work that is similar to al-Qummī and others and which survives in around seven codices mainly dating from the 15th century in India (with one copy in Istanbul as well). Often the text is given with a narration from al-Kātib al-Nuʿmānī. For example, one codex that I consulted some time ago is MS Būhār (now in the National Library in Kolkata) Arabic 13 with some 309 folios dated 15 Jumāda II, 1019/September 1610. This works extensive. Its incipit has the following:

حكي عن جعفر بن محمد أنه قال: كتاب الله على أربعة أشياء: العبارة والإشارة واللطائف والحقائق. فالعبارة للعوام والإشارة للخواص واللطائف للأولياء والحقائق للأنبياء.

<بسم> عن جعفر بن محمد قال: الباء بقاؤه والسين أسماؤه والميم ملكه...

and the explicit:

عن جعفر بن محمد في قوله: <قل هو الله أحد...> قال: يعني أظهر ما تريده النفوس بتأليف الحروف. فإنّ الحقائق مصونة عن أن يبلغه وهم أو فهم. وإظهار ذلك بالحروف ليهتدي بها من <القي السمع> وهو إشارة إلى غائب. والهاء هو تنبيه على معنى ثابت والواو إشارة إلى الغائب عن الحواس و<الأحد> الفرد الّذي لا نظير له لأنه هو الّذي أحدّ الآحاد.

Another copy is MS Khuda Bakhsh 1460 which is around 232 folios with more text on each and dating from the 18th century. 

7) Finally, we have the exegesis of Abūʾl-Naḍr Muḥammad b. Masʿūd al-ʿAyyāshī al-Samarqandī (d. 320/932) (according to Bar-Asher), which has recently been published in three volumes as a dual text edition, translated by Nazmina Dhanji and edited by Wahid Amin. It has been published by the Al-Mahdi Institute.

Wahid Amin presents the short preface that introduces the text and its significant as a Shiʿi tafsīr biʾl-maʾthūr and for its abiding importance, even cited in the major modern exegesis of ʿAllāma Ṭabāṭabāʾī (d. 1981), al-Mīzān fī tafsīr al-Qurʾān, perhaps the most widely used Shiʿi exegesis. He then tells us that they are using the Arabic text produced by the Muʾassasat al-Biʿtha that draws on the following MSS: Kitābkhāna-yi Dastghayb (not Dastghīb) in Shiraz copied in 1091/1681, MS Āstān-e Quds-e Rażavī Mashhad 180, 1490 and 7513 all copied much later in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. While one does not expect what is mainly a translation project to produce a new critical edition, some further consideration of the manuscript tradition would have been useful. According to the Fankha catalogue, the earliest extant manuscripts in Iran are MS Markaz-e Iḥyāʾ in Qum 2622 and 2623 both dating from the 11th/17th century; the Dastghayb manuscript is MS Kitābkhāna-ye Millī 567/tā52. Another acephalous manuscript from Āstān-e Quds (MS 1490) is dated as 1154/1741 and not 1348/1929 as cited in the edition. 

This preface is then followed by an introduction by the expert on classical commentary - Meir Bar-Asher. He presents the author and his exegesis as exemplifying what he describes as pre-Buwayhid Imāmī exegesis that is characterised by discussions on the reading and the question of the falsification of the text (on which ʿAyyāshī clearly rejects such a position), on the importance of the Imams in the scripture and as sources of its proper interpretation, and the importance of the exoteric as well as the esoteric. In many ways it represents a summary of the positions that he laid out in his classical study on Imāmī exegesis that I mentioned before. While he mentions that there are no dates given for ʿAyyāshī, I am somewhat confused about how he arrived at the death date that he chooses although it is plausible given what we know of the generations preceding and then succeeding him. 

Majlisī famously also described the text as one of the foundational works of the tradition and one that was well known to the classical tradition:

ʿAyyāshī was supposedly a Sunni narrator from Samarqand who then moved to Kufa and Baghdad where he trained with those narrating from al-Imām ʿAlī al-Riḍā. His exegesis only covers the first eighteen suras (up to sūrat al-Kahf); however, it is cited extensively by al-Ṭabrisī (d. 548/1154) in his Majmaʿ al-bayān and by Sayyid Ibn Ṭāwūs (d. 664/1266) which suggests that a full version was available. However, by the time of Majlisī it was curtailed as a partial commentary as attested in the extant manuscripts in Iran. The standard modern edition replicated the full version transmitted in manuscript with the additions reconstructed from the later exegetical citations. 

ʿAyyāshī's exegesis engages in a number of polemics: against Sunni detractors with the zeal of a convert, against the Muʿtazila especially on the question of the impeccability of the prophets (and there is some suggestion he may have been Muʿtazilī before), against the extremists on the integrity of the Qurʾanic text as it was with people (so against taḥrīf), and emphasising the importance of the central theme of the special knowledge of the Imams. It is also very clearly Shiʿi: the straight path to God mentioned in the first sura is ʿAlī.

The three volumes are beautifully produced: the Arabic text is on the right and the English translation on the left, and adequate annotation is provided on sources. 

The indices are also quite an excellent tool. One can imagine using the text used profitably for research as well as for teaching - the very absence of serious translations of Shiʿi materials makes it rather difficult to teach students more broadly in religious studies. And in that sense this is also the first major translation of a classical Shiʿi exegesis. If we want to be read Shiʿi texts and incorporating them into a more holistic study of the early and classical period, such works are essential. From my perusal, the translations are quite excellent, rigorous and careful, and the Qurʾan itself has been rendered (as far as it fits the exegesis) from the existing translations of Abdel-Haleem and ʿAli-quli Qara'i. 

Like the other early exegeses, ʿAyyāshī presents us with a series of narrations on the verses - and they are not exhaustive atomistic glosses on every single verse anyway. The introduction that precedes arranges narrations in a selective presentation of major themes: on the virtues of the Qurʾan (faḍāʾil al-Qurʾān), on the use of the Qurʾan as a standard to judge and verify hadith (tark al-riwāyāt allatī bi-khilāf al-Qurʾan), the famous idea of the four parts of the Qurʾan:

the Qurʾan being revealed in seven aḥruf, the importance of the Imams being mentioned in the Qurʾan and their knowledge of the proper (esoteric and exoteric) interpretation (taʾwīl) of it, and a final set of condemnations about the polemical use of the Qurʾan: against those who gloss the word of God according to their own whims and fancies and those who use it in vain disputation. 

The Imāmī exegetical tradition provides us with a number of insights about the nature of the text, its readings and its reception. As such better understanding of the tradition - and especially of this classical period that was later revived in the Safavid period excavation of narration based exegesis - is critical for a fuller intellectual history of the ways in which Muslim scholars over the centuries made sense of the text. Of course, there will always be the haters - for one I remember a review of the Anthology of Qurʾanic Commentaries volume I that was edited by Feras Hamza and myself that claimed the nefarious intention on our part to question and marginalise 'Sunni orthodoxy'; while such an intention would be an important element of decolonising the study of Islam, it was far from what we wanted to show. 

If anything tafsīr does indeed narrate a story of reception and understanding that existed on the horizons of each exegete's training and experience. The question of 'truth' is somewhat quite different; that does not mean that the exegetes did not think they were engaged in a quest for truth or that they did not believe that the narrations that they cited stemmed from the Imams. Furthermore, the plurality of readings are also retained from the earliest such exemplars. One is minded to think of the famous reports on the esoteric and exoteric aspects of the revelation, the scope of the verses and their 'points of rising' that are cited in the earliest Sufi and Shiʿi exegeses. For the serious scholar, the pseudo-scholarly gatekeepers of orthodoxy are really neither here nor there.