Abstract
In Sunnism and Shiism alike the Quran enjoys an authority not fully comparable with that of the Bible in Judaism and Christianity. The latter religions ascribe the Bible to human authors (albeit divinely inspired) and consider the component texts comprising Scripture to be the product of human history, the record of the Creator’s interaction with His people. From a Muslim perspective the author of the Quran is not Muhammad nor any other human but rather God Himself; the sacred text predates human history and was revealed at the predestined moment in time to Muhammad through the agency of the angel Gabriel. Muhammad did no more than recite the words dictated to him by Gabriel (and “Quran” in fact is the Arabic term for “recitation”); hence the frequency throughout the text of the imperative “say (the following) …!”
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Notes
H.A.R. Gibb, Mohammedanism, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press, 1979), 50.
Moojan Momen, An Introduction to Shi’ i Islam (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 140, 289.
Recorded by al-Tanukhi, “The Table Talk of a Mesopotamian Judge,” D. S. Margoliouth, trans., and included in the anthology entitled Introduction to Classical Arabic Literature, Ilse Lichtenstadter, ed., (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1974), 345–346.
For the passage in Mas’udi and the Harun al-Rashid tales see David Pinault, Story-Telling Techniques in the Arabian Nights (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1992), 142–146.
Momen, op. cit., 148–153.
Muhammad Husain al-Tabataba’i, al-Mizan fi tafsir al-Qur ’an (Qum: Mu’assasah Matbu’ati Isma’iliyan, 1971–1974), vol. 13, p. 153; Mahmoud Ayoub, Redemptive Suffering in Islam (The Hague: Mouton Publishers, 1978), 235.
Ignaz Goldziher, “Neuplatonische und gnostische Elemente im Hadith,” Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 22 (1909), 326–328.
Louis Massignon, The Passion of al-Hallaj. Volume 1: The Life of al-Hallaj (Princeton University Press, 1982), 295–330.
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Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975), 25, 177; Gershom Scholem, s.v. “Kabbalah,” Encyclopaedia Judaica (Jerusalem: Macmillan, 1971), vol. 10, pp. 489–653.
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Wilfred Madelung, s.v. “Isma’iliyya,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1978), vol. 4, 203–206; Bruce Borthwick, “The Ismailis and Islamization in Pakistan,” American Council for the Study of Islamic Societies Newsletter 1 (Aug. 1990), 4–6; Sami Nasib Makarem, The Doctrine of the Ismailis (Beirut: Arab Institute for Research and Publishing, 1972), 35–47.
R. A. Nicholson, A Literary History of the Arabs (Cambridge University Press, 1977), 272–273; for the portrait of Jesus as an Ismaili da’i see David Pinault, “Images of Christ in Arabic Literature,” Die Welt des Islams 27 (1987), 110 n. 5 and the sources cited therein.
Bernard Lewis, The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam (Oxford University Press, 1967), 72–73.
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Muhammad Husain Tabataba’i, Shi’ite Islam (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1977), 83.
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Mustafa Ghalib, al-Harakat al-batiniyah fi al-Islam (Beirut: Dar al-Andalus, 1982), 273–274.
Muhammad Amin Ghalib al-Tawil, Ta’rikh al-alawiyin (Beirut: Dar al-Andalus, 1966), 535–537.
Fouad Ajami, The Vanished Imam: Musa al-Sadr and the Shia of Lebanon (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986), 174.
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© 1992 David Pinault
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Pinault, D. (1992). Shiite Ta’wil: The Esoteric Dimension of Quranic Scripture. In: The Shiites. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-06693-0_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-06693-0_3
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