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.