Hermeneutic en

Mulla Sadra, Hermeneutics,
and Understanding God's

Words
By:
Prof. S. M. Khamenei
Content
Preface ..................................................................................................... 3
Introduction ............................................................................................ 7
Mullà Æadrà’s Principles of Hermeneutics ......................... 27
Mullà Æadrà’s interpretative method ...................................... 36

Hermeneutic interpretation of the Holy Qur’an ...................... 39
The role of reason in ta’wil ..................................................... 41
The role of the outward meaning of the word ......................... 42
Unveiling and intuition ........................................................... 42
Conditions of ta’wil ................................................................ 44
Conclusion .............................................................................. 45
Understanding God’s Word in Mullà Æadrà’s Philosophy ......... 49
Understanding God’s Word .................................................... 54

Revelation ............................................................................... 60
Human understanding and interpretation ................................ 60
Index .................................................................................................. 65
A Note on the Author ....................................................................... 71

Preface
In the Name of God, the Wise, the Knower
T
he interpretation of the Holy Qur’an began in
almost the early years of the descent of
revelation to the Prophet (æ) and then its
transmission was started to the people of Mecca and then
Medina. The first commentator and interpreter of the Qur’an
was the Prophet (æ) himself. His way was later followed by
Imàm ‘Alí (‘a), his cousin, son-in-law and successor. After
them, Imàm ‘Alí’s children and grandchildren continued their
work. The Prophet (æ) had predicted even their names and
birthdates two hundred years before. Imàm ‘Alí’s descendants
held the divine station of Imàmat or the political and religious
succession from the Prophet (æ) and were granted permission to
interpret the Qur’an.
Following the Prophet’s demise, over the centuries
Muslims were divided into various groups. From fiqhi point of
view, they had been divided into five religious branches,
including Shi‘ite, Åanafí, Shàfi‘í, Màlikí, and Åanbalí, and
concerning their theological ideas, they had been divided into
Shi‘ite, Mu‘tazilite, and Ash‘arite branches.1 These fell into two
big religious groups: Shi‘ite and Sunnite. The Shi‘ite believed
in the appointed succession of Imàm ‘Alí (‘a) and his
descendants (designated and appointed on the day of Ghadír)
1
. The chronological order of their development has been taken into
consideration here.
4 The Qur’anic Hermeneutics of Mulla Sadra
and were considered to be the Islamic orthodox. The Sunnites

believed in an elective vicegerency system and aristocracy1 and
considered Abê Bakr to be the first vicegerent (Caliph).
These two main branches of Islam employed different
methods in order to interpret the Qur’an. The Sunnites were
often interested in interpreting the outward meaning of this
Holy Book and seriously opposed esoteric exegesis. However,
the Shi‘ite leaders (Imàm ‘Alí (‘a) and the other Imàms, each in
his own time) sought for deeper meanings between the lines of
the Qur’an in addition to the interpretation of the outward
meaning of words. A group of Shi‘ite Muslims who were
known as Bàìiniyyun (esoterics) from the time of the 6th Imàm,
Imàm J‘afar Æàdiq (‘a), onwards emphasized on esoteric
interpretation of this Book.
The above-mentioned group, which was itself divided
into various sects, later started a secret struggle against
Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphs and provided the basis for the
establishment of certain governments in Iran (Ismà‘ílí) and in
the north of Africa and Egypt (Fàìimid). Their organization was
destroyed with the Mongol’s invasion of Iran and the downfall
of the Abbasid Caliphate.
The Shi‘ite Bàìiní disseminated hermeneutics in the sense
of accepting a free interpretation of the Qur’an among other
Muslims. Even the gnostic sects of ‘Sufism’, some of which
Sunnite and some Shi‘ite, all followed the Bàìiní school and
esoteric exegesis. We can say that the Bàìiníyyah were the very
guards of the science of the Qur’anic hermeneutics among
Muslims.
However, we should also emphasize that, every once in a
while, some Shi‘ite followers of certain Sunnite schools (such
as Åanbalí) opposed any kind of esoteric exegesis and forced
Muslims to limit themselves to the outward aspect of the words
1. The so-called prominent members of the community.

Preface 5
in the Qur’an. Some of them (Åanbalís), in the guise of

guarding the religion, wrote rebuttals and sometimes accused
Muslims of atheism.
Nevertheless, the task of interpretation, along with
esoteric exegesis or, in its modern sense, hermeneutics, was
always common among Muslims. In the time of Mullà Æadrà
and his master Mír Dàmàd, interpretation was officially
combined with philosophical hermeneutics.
Although Mullà Æadrà’s methodology is rooted in
Sufism, it enjoys the color and flavor of his own philosophy.
Not many books or essays were written on this issue in the past.
However, some essays have been written in this regard recently.
This treatise contains two papers by, each written on
different occasion and presented in different congress. They
have also been published in Kheradnameh Sadra Quarterly. It
is hoped that they provide interested readers with necessary
information concerning the above-mentioned topic.
S. M. Khamanei
Tehran
Safar 1427 A. H. (L)
Esfand 1384 A. H. (S)
March 2006 A.D.
Introduction
I n all societies the mutual relations of society and

family are naturally based on informing others
of our thoughts and intentions. On the other
hand, they also rely on the desire to understand others’ thoughts
and intentions. These are inherent in man like an ‘instinct’. This
instinct and the aforementioned relations, i.e. the desire to
understand other people’s thoughts, are obtained in the form of
questions, similar to expressing our intentions, by means of
words and through language.
This means that understanding others’ thoughts and
intentions, whether oral or written, has been important for man
to the same degree that he has attached importance to
expressing his own thoughts. This has been to such an extent
that man has taken on assisting in comprehending others’ words
as a divine mission and prophetic role. In addition, he used to
attribute myths and historical stories, rhetoric, and
understanding discourse and philosophy to a representative of
the God called Hermes in Greek mythology, or Idris (Enoch) in
Islamic culture, and Hushang or Hormus, the first man in the
mythology of ancient Iran. All of whom were famous in the
civilizations that existed at the time.
Later, this myth reached Athens and, in its atheistic
myths, Hermes was promoted to one of the gods of ancient
Greece. Some words are even derived from the name Hermes,
namely ‘herald’ and ‘hermeneutics’. Inspired by this name,

Aristotle called a chapter in his books on logic, Preherminas,
i.e. about hermeneutics, and Muslims have also used this title in
their works.
The reason for the chapter on Preherminas in books on
logic was the role of understanding in philosophy and
particularly in arguing with dialecticians and the Sophists and
due to this importance of which Socrates used to insist on exact
and technical definitions of words and terms in philosophical
arguments and scientific discussions and consequently, they
affected Aristotelian works on logic in the form of the
importance of ‘definition and description’ in logic.
In this process, understanding God’s word has had its due
significance among the followers of revealed religions. Experts
or those claiming to be familiar with and possessing knowledge
of these books, who have commonly been the clerics of that
religion, devised certain rules and regulations, different from
the Aristotelian logic, in order to better understand their own
revealed book.
Although technically correct, the claim that
comprehension revealed books is confined only to clerics
resulted in certain abuses. For example, Jewish scholars or,
according to Jews, the Jewish theosophers, altered the meaning
of the Torah under the pretext of interpreting it. The Holy
Qur’an has bluntly mentioned this issue.
Paying attention to the importance of understanding and
interpreting texts, particularly the Torah and the Bible, has
received renewed interest in our modern times. This can be
observed in Schleiermacher’s works in the form of traditional
hermeneutics. For the first time, perhaps, this scholar tried to
indicate that literary interpretation was a kind of discovering
rules (natural and innate) similar to natural sciences and to build
up a set of principles for it. After him, another philosopher
called Dilthey (1832-1911) expanded the scope of interpretation
Introduction 9
and paved the way for philosophical hermeneutics. The issue of

discovering the rules of interpretation and understanding texts
received a philosophical form, mainly on the centrality of
understanding the existence of the interpreter or observer or
something called ‘Dasein’, i.e. “being-in-the-world”, in the
philosophies of Heidegger and Gadamer.
These so-called discussions on interpretation
(hermeneutics), and in fact ontological matters, should be
separated from the science of interpretation in its traditional and
religious senses. Differences between traditional and literary
interpretation and the interpretation of the divine or revealed
books also exist and should not be intermixed with
hermeneutics as some European experts have done. Therefore,
it is better to divide hermeneutics into three parts: a)
interpretation or criticism of literary and historical works, b)
interpretation or understanding religious and revealed books,
and c) philosophical hermeneutics and the ontological
interpretation of human understanding.
Muslims paid great attention to the issue of tafsír, i.e.
interpreting revelation and God’s words, from the very advent
of Islam and the descent of the Glorious Qur’an, which was a
real and actual example of God’s words. Centuries before the
time when Westerners considered interpreting religious texts as
a distinct science or discipline, Muslims had perceived it as an
independent science which, although never formally announced,
was established in the form of a science. Among interpreters,
that is, experts in Qur’anic commentary, and in their books,
some methods of interpretation appeared. Certain schools were
started in the realm of sciences, of which the most renowned
was the school of ‘ahl al-bàìin’ (esoterists) or ‘ahl al-ta’wíl’,
(people of inner interpretation) which was established and
expanded in about the second century A.H. (8th century A.D.)
by Imàm J‘afar Æàdiq (‘a), the sixth holy leader of Shi‘ite
Muslims, who did this work alongside his public and secret
political and military struggles against the Abbasid Caliphs.

This school was soon able to bring all groups and well-known
sects of Sufis and all the Islamic lands, i.e. Iran, Turkey, the
sub-continent of India, north of Africa and even Andalusia in
Spain, China and the Far East under its influence.
It is important to pay attention to the following two
differences between tafsír in Islam and the relevant schools
which appeared in it and the schools which have emerged in
recent centuries under the title of hermeneutics, both in its
traditional and philosophical forms.
Firstly, the subject matter of hermeneutics, as can be
understood from its etymology, being, in fact, a reference to a
sacred and divine message, functioned as unveiling ‘a hidden
divine message’, or, in other words, ‘unveiling the veiled’. This
could be gained only from true texts which were sacred and had
a divine source and not from any religious text by a religious
preacher. A text which stems from revelation and has come
down from God, Who possesses the highest level of knowledge,
power and other attributes of perfection, entails meanings,
concepts and dimensions well beyond man’s power to
comprehend. Thus, perhaps this significant difference has
caused some contemporary scholars of hermeneutics to base
their interpretation on the understanding of the very text and
discovering its hidden secrets and not the discovery of the
writer’s intentions.
Secondly, there is a great difference, which, in turn,
completes the first difference, between the Qur’an and the
Scriptures of other religions. This is the certainty about the
Divine source of the Holy Qur’an, that is, the originality of the
text and its direct relation to God while neither the Torah nor
the Gospels can be considered as the original texts revealed by
God to the Prophets (Moses and Jesus) because the Gospels are
the accounts the disciples wrote about 100 years after Jesus
Christ. Moreover, their original Aramaic or Hebrew versions
Introduction 11
are not available and we have the Greek translation of them in

which it is quite probable that many mistakes were made while
translating them. In addition, for more than twenty centuries the
Torah has been altered by Jewish learned men and the Holy
Qur’an explicitly informs us of these alterations.
The science of interpreting the Qur’an, is based on the
fact that interpretation (or hermeneutic) cannot be anything but
understanding the narrator’s intentions, both according to
Bàìiníyyah (esoterists), who believed that divine Scriptures have
many layers or baìn (inner aspect) and we should move towards
the depth of the content of a text via its outward aspect, and the
rigid school of Îàhiriyyah (literalism or exoterists), who used to
rely on the outward aspect of a text.
It should be borne in mind that the Muslim interpreters of
the Holy Qur’an do not hold that we can perceive all the
intentions of its Revealer and the Author and reach the ultimate
depth of all the vast meanings which are hierarchical and
vertical (not parallel and cross-sectional) hidden in the Book.
By the same token, no scientist holds that it is possible to
understand and discover all the laws of this world. The reason
for this is another feature which exists in Islamic interpretation;
that is, the hidden adaptation of nature to the language and
literature of the Qur’an, requiring detailed exposition. There are
special characteristics and wonders in divine Words which will
be referred to generally in the following sections.
First, whatever can convey a mental and inner concept to
the audience is ‘exposition’. Human beings and, possibly, some
other rather perfect creatures can express their intentions and
express their states and passions. In other words, there are
certain phenomena in man and in the aforementioned creatures
which enable them to indicate the existence of states or the
intention to divulge their inner feelings.
Three methods for expressing man’s intentions exist. It is
done through either conventional codes, or signals; or natural
gestures and body movements; or the use of words and

sentences. No other creature, only man, can express his
intentions via the use of language which is one of his distinctive
features. Accuracy and clarity of expression via language are
much more than another means of communication, although it
is sometimes said that the natural signification of man’s
movements and behavior (called the non-verbal language) is
more expressive than language (verbal language). This is, of
course, a matter of taste.1
Second, nowadays there are many languages spoken in
various parts of the world and linguists usually relate them to
some ancient languages. However, the issue under discussion
regarding the genealogy of languages in the past and present is
whether language has been made arbitrarily through
conventions and man, due to his needs, invented it and it has
gradually become more complete. Or is language a natural
phenomenon, which, similar to other forces, God has put in
man’s nature innate-dispositional, a priori and has taken
various forms with many ups and downs.
In the first instance, it may seem that this problem does
not have much influence in transferring divine ords to mankind.
It means that whether language is a direst divine creation or a
man-made product is not important: God can convey His
intended concepts to man. However, despite this doubt, the
issue of natural language is of paramount importance and the
function of these two theories in various dimensions cannot be
negated. Language is one of the significant points in
1
. Logicians have divided significations into three types: a) natural
signification (such as signification of fever of illness), b)
conventional signification (such as the signification of traffic
signs), and c) rational signification (such as the signification of
effect of cause). These can also be classified into two categories:
conventional signification and non-conventional signification,
which includes rational and natural significations.
Introduction 13
interpreting revelation and the Divine Book and Western and

European philosophy has paid attention to this issue both in
previous centuries and in modern times.
Language, as a social and specifically human
phenomenon, can be viewed from two perspectives. The first
one is that language is a creation of human experience which
has come to exist gradually and through conventions. It has
developed in a similar way to that in which man invented
money for trade and economic transactions or created alphabets
and writing systems. That is why Semitic languages are
different from Aryan ones in many respects and the branches of
these two, with certain variations, have been created by people
in various periods of history. The variations are such that
usually people speaking one language cannot understand
another language.
The second point of view is that language is an
instinctive and innate phenomenon peculiar to human beings.
According to some Muslim theologians, jurisprudents, and legal
experts, who advocate this theory, language had a creational or
genetic base (that is, it is natural and non-conventional). In
other words, although man divided language into various
branches and dialects later on and separated the dialects from
one another, God created language with the first man and taught
it to him.
According to this theory, language, similar to other
natural and human phenomena, follows certain specific rules
and is naturally harmonious with its origin, i.e. the whole
universe. This issue was considered by ancient Iranian and
Greek philosophers. That is why Plato discussed it in his
treatise Crito in which there is a dialogue between Socrates and
two other people, one of whom believes in words and names
being conventional and the other holding that words and names
are natural and innate. After lengthy discussion, he concludes
that words and names have a fixed and natural origin (in Islamic
contexts, it is said that “the names have descended from the

heaven”). He proves that words and names are the actual
manifestations and real representatives of the quiddity of things.
In other words, there is a one-to-one correspondence between
the quiddity of the objects and the words representing them.
Among contemporary scholars, Chomsky and Pinker are
advocates of this theory and demonstrate that child language
acquisition is related to more innate aptitude and internal and
psychological background than external (and social) data,
because within the very short period of infancy (around two
years), despite its mental weaknesses, a child is capable of
learning grammatical rules many times more than the data it has
received and can use them according to its innate creativity.
This is nothing but the result of the naturalness and innateness
of language in mankind. Chomsky calls this phenomenon
‘universal grammar’.
Pinker’s theory holds that, without being taught, a child is
innately able to make names and verbs suitable for and
homogeneous with one another by using the raw data it
receives. It also can find the subject of a proposition and can
naturally distinguish subjects from predicates.
Many experiments have been conducted on the a priori
data given to children (human beings), all of which demonstrate
that some grammatical principles, as well as the aptitude to
process them, exist in man’s nature and are the basis on which
the posteriori teachings of the child (with the guidance of the
mother or school) is built up. This might be the reason why
many experiments have shown that the best natural, exact time
to learn a language is before the age of puberty. Children’s
creativity in acquiring language is another reason for its being
innate.1
1
. For example, regardless of the verb derivations people around them
make and use, children memorize the fixed rule.
Introduction 15
Third, as stated earlier, Muslim scholars have considered

the innateness of language and the unity of the origin of all
languages. For example, in ‘ilm al-uæêl, they have discussed
that the convener of words (language) is God. The initial
convention of words was carried out via revelation and
inspiration to the first man (Adam). Later, the separation among
tribes and geographical diversity caused the multiplicity in
languages.1
There is evidence in the Holy Qur’an to confirm this
viewpoint. For example, in Chapter al-Raåmàn (The
Beneficent) we read: “God created mankind. He taught him
bayàn (utterance)” (55: 3-4) these verses indicate that, firstly
bayàn is learnable and not something that should be given; God
has bestowed the power of language on man and, according to
the Qur’an, “God has taught man”. There are certain points in
the word ‘teaching’ that are worth paying attention to and which
are absent in bestowing and giving. This indicates man’s
awareness, aptitude, and intelligence. Secondly, it can be
inferred from the sentence “God created mankind and taught
him bayàn” that this teaching is different from training and
education after creation. However, it is of the same sort as
creation and is a part of it, that is, bayàn, the most sublime
example of which is language, is a natural and innate
phenomenon.
There is no consensus over the issue of how man has
acquired bayàn or language. Some consider it as creation and
the structure of mouth, tongue, and other vocal organs which
enable man to produce sounds, and combinations of sounds, for
making words thus creating the language. This interpretation is
not in line with the word ‘allamahê (taught him) because giving
pen, paper and writing facilities is very different from teaching
writing.
1
. According to Isutzu, language is formed by man’s world-view. In
other words, various world-views create different languages.
Experiments have shown that the power of sentence

construction using universal structures in various languages is
in human nature. The fact that children can achieve this without
being taught by their environment indicates that, besides the
power of talking and using compounds instead of words, man is
born with the natural power of sentence construction. That is
why we can infer that the first man was able to, more or less,
use the grammatical rules, which were approximately the same
as today’s ones.
Fourth, language is a deeper issue involving a
relationship between it, the totality of nature and the origin of
creation which can be investigated. As we know, a group of
scholars and philosophers – from Pythagoras to Mír Dàmàd –
believed that there is an intrinsic and ontological relationship
between letters and numbers with open and hidden rules of
physics, chemistry and natural sciences. This relationship has at
times been introduced as ‘the characteristics of letters’ in which
each letter is known to have some natural features as there are
certain chemical and physical features for any plant or any other
matter. This issue has sometimes gone beyond special books of
the so-called ‘Occult Sciences’ and discussion of it has been
deemed necessary in books on language. For example,
‘Allàmah Ibn Manîêr (630-711 A.H.) in the introduction of his
book entitled Lisàn al-‘arab (Arabic Language) writes:
As to the characteristics of these words and letters,
there are many things they can do. Some of them
are for curing diseases, some are for talismans
(natural magic) and they have close relations with
the celestial spheres (the universe). If it were not
for the fear of the criticisms which might be raised
by the stupid, I would mention some of the
relations between letters and the celestial spheres.
Introduction 17
Mír Dàmàd, the Iranian philosopher who is the heir to

both the sciences of the Holy Prophet’s Household (‘a) and
ancient Iranian, Greek, and Alexandrian philosophers tackled
these topics in his books. He even has a very interesting book
especially about these subjects entitled Jadhawàt wa mawàqít.
Concerning the scientific and philosophical relationship
between ‘letters and words’ and ‘physical laws in the world’, he
says letters and numbers (which are basically one single thing
and can be rendered into each other by the use of abjad
(arithmetical arrangement of the Arabic alphabet), are similar to
man’s mind and his imaginative faculty in the universe (or, in
other words, macrocosm). Just as a relationship between man’s
imagination and the real world exists, so there is a relationship
between the natural facts of the world (physics) and letters and
numbers. Mír Dàmàd explicitly states that numerical relations
within the system of numbers are proportional to the physical
and chemical forms of matters and are compatible with them.
Referring to the Pythagoreans, he says that we can find
the status of creatures in the real world (as well as that of the
incidents and phenomena) by the use of numbers and
geometrical compositions made of numbers. Approximately the
same ideas are to be found in Galileo. Collingwood (1889-
1943), the British philosopher, in his book The Idea of Nature
quotes from him: “Existence is a book in which philosophy has
been written, but reading it is only possible through learning its
language, i.e. mathematics and geometry”.
Historically speaking, this issue was stated before the
discovery of the relationship between geometry, algebra, and
Cartesian mathematics. Years later, Descartes explained that
any numerical relationship (algebraic and arithmetic) can be
shown by drawing a graph and a line using the relative
coordinates. The message of such a discovery is that in
advanced mathematics, which man has not yet fully
accomplished, it is possible to convert the geometrical form of
the world and its incidents into numbers and letters. For
example, in the mathematics of the future, instead of ordering
food and fruit, we will write a series of equations and hand
them to the authorities. The discovery of topological geometry
made the prospects of this event more probable.
This is not an exaggeration, because within the last
centuries some experts have used the relationships among
numbers called ‘the science of numbers’. They have also
combined and benefited from the transformations of letters in a
field called the ‘esoteric science of letters’. These are actually
some established phenomena, although in the West (possibly
from the time of Aristotle onwards) it has been confused with
magic because ordinary people have found it far-fetched and
very difficult to understand. That is why Western historians
sometimes call ancient Eastern and Iranian philosophy
preceding the Greek magic. These ideas, which are important in
their due turn, enlighten us with the fact that language (letters,
words, sentences, and structures) is not conventional.
Fifth, the other argument worth presenting here is the
status of the ‘divine Word’ or ‘Logos’, which can confirm that
language is not conventional and there is a close relationship
between language, nature and the whole universe. Philosophers
in the West have given various interpretations of ‘Logos’.
According to what we can understand from Muslim gnostics,
however, we come to know that it is exactly the prime
innovation and the first order of creation or/and innovation in
the form of creato ex nihilo done by God. In the Holy Qur’an,
the creation of Jesus Christ is said to be of this type. That is
why Jesus is called ‘Word’ in the Holy Qur’an. In some cases,
instead of ‘word’ the term ‘be’, in an imperative form, is used:
“But His command, when He intends a thing, is only that he
says unto it: Be! And it is”.1
1
. 36: 82; 2: 117; 8: 42 and some other verses
Introduction 19
Muslim gnostics say that man’s words are produced by

the breath we bring up from our chests. It reaches the larynx,
then the mouth, tongue and teeth in order to be articulated
sounds. We make words by using these sounds. In fact, we
create them and, by giving existence to them, manifest our
mental meanings, which are hidden in our inner self. The
creation of the whole universe happens in the same way. The
overflow of divine effusion, which is called the ‘Breath of the
All-Merciful’ by gnostics and which, at first, is in the form of
unfolded being and is comparable to man’s breath, manifests
itself.
The contact of this Breath of the All-Merciful and
unfolded being, generic existence, and divine will with those
liable to come into existence (immutable archetypes, according
to gnostics) present in Divine knowledge, and which are like
letter bases, creates letters and words because letters are the
building blocks of creatures and words are the first creatures
that have been created from absolute non-existence. According
to gnostic interpretation, the divine Word is the same as the
creatures of the world and divine speech in the imperative form
and when issuing amr ‘order’ means creation. Through this
gnostic perspective, the large gap that ordinary people think
exists between ‘Word’ and the existence (thingness) of things is
eliminated and the existential relation between utterance and
nature is discovered.
Sixth, interpreters of, and experts in, the Qur’an have
discussed the phrase Kitàb-i Mubín (the Clear Book, i.e. the
Qur’an). In Islamic philosophy and gnosticism, God’s
knowledge of the world, creatures, beings, and incidents has
been assumed to be like a fixed page on which, away from time
and the changes in the material world, everything is present for
God. This hypothetical page is called the Qur’an. Following
Mullà Æadrà and other interpreters, some experts have called it
the ‘Clear Book’. The Holy Qur’an says, “There is no small
particle in the heavens and on the earth, but it is (written) in the

Clear Book”. This ‘Clear Book’ is a phenomenon in which all
phenomena, incidents, and facts existing in the past, present and
future, as well as every small and big being in the world and the
whole universe (the heavens an the earth) are registered or, in a
sense, written. Using the word ‘book’ for such a thing is quite
suitable as there is registering and writing in it by the use of
letters, symbols or numbers. The word ‘clear’ has been chosen
for its clarity and its being unambiguous and doubtless.
The astonishing point here is the repetition of this name
for the Qur’an. Many believe that the ‘Clear Book’ is precisely
the Holy Qur’an which we have at our disposal (Referrences to
some verses from The Holy Qur’an).
From the reference of the phrase ‘Clear Book’ both to the
Qur’an and to the spiritual and celestial file in which all
incidents of the world are written, we can understand that the
Qur’an in which all incidents and all pre-destined happenings of
the world are registered, is a compact disk taken from the
celestial ‘Clear Book’. This belief gets closer to being
demonstrated when we read in Chapter 43, verses 2-4, “We
have appointed a lecture in Arabic that haply you may
understand. And lo! In the source of decrees, which We
possess, it is indeed sublime, decisive”.
What attracts a researcher is the aforementioned
indications in the Qur’anic verses regarding the correspondence
between the Holy Qur’an and the celestial and spiritual file
which is a mirror reflecting the whole universe including all
incidents and beings, whether big or small, and the trend of
their life and evolution. It is one of the manifestations of the
infinite knowledge of God. Understanding and interpreting the
Qur’an, in fact, equals understanding and interpreting the
Introduction 21
universe,1 and we know that the very words of the Qur’an were
revealed to the Prophet and that is not the case that the concepts
are from God and the words are made by the Prophet. In that
case the Qur’an cannot be considered a literary miracle.
In case we do not accept that the Qur’an is a name (Clear
Book) for two separate things (a tablet of the universe and the
existing Qur’an), we have to conceive of the Qur’an as one of
the levels and ranks (the utterance and linear level) of the
realities of the world (i.e. tablet disk of the pre-destined) and
these two have a specific mechanism and a clear method for
transforming into each other, exactly in the same way as the
Cartesian system of coordinates found a solution for
transforming geometry into numbers and vise versa. As the
result of Descartes’ innovation, we can show geometrical
figures in the form of numbers. It is also possible to transform
letters and numbers into each other by the use of abjad, i.e. the
arithmetical arrangement of the Arabic alphabet, or transform a
book into numbers and those numbers into geometrical figures.
It is even possible to assume that animations (e.g. movies) can
be rendered into numbers and letters by a highly qualified
mathematician or an advanced mathematical engine.
Seventh, here there is a question: based on this fixed
relation in the Qur’an, is there, or can there be, a direct
relationship between the words and lines of a revealed book and
the objective realities of the external world? This could be
philosophically demonstrated in Islamic gnosticism and,
probably, in ancient gnosticism because in their cosmology and
ontology, besides the original source of being, who is the
Necessary Being, i.e. Almighty God, from Whose Will all
creatures have been created in various forms and levels, other
beings have a number of levels and stages according to their
1
. This caused Mullà Æadrà and some others to change literary
interpretation and hermeneutics into philosophical and ontological
hermeneutics.
strength or weakness in existence. These stages are called

imaginal existence, sensory existence, verbal existence.
In this classification, sensory existence is the same as
material existence and all beings in this world. Imaginal
existence is the world in which existence is stronger and its
lacks the defects of the material world. Verbal existence (which
stems from the power and existence of the disengaged soul of
mankind) is at the lowest level of existence because realities are
expressed by the use of letters and words1 and no external
existence can be assumed for them.2 According to Islamic
gnosticism, these grades always exist alongside each other and
can be transformed into one another. That is why, instead of
grades for these stages, the gnostics use the terms ‘presences’.
Taking into account this accurate philosophical and
gnostic ‘ontological classification’, it is because of the wonders
existing in language and the process of revelation and issues
relevant to them that the relationship between nature, the
external word, and the Qur’an can be justified. There are some
points in the relationship between language and nature which
lead us to conclude that because there is a large difference
between the divine Word and man’s utterance, their issues are
separate from each other and should not be mixed together. For
example, having an infinite number of interpretations of the
1
. There is a kind of existence in man’s mind called mental existence.
This level of existence is the mediator between the external
existence and the verbal existence. Another grade is, therefore,
added to existence which absent is gnostics’ definitions.
2
. This classification is a scientific one unless there is a doubt on
generalizing the word existence to the mind and word and line,
which is a linguistic argument and not a philosophical one. Talking
is in fact giving existence to the concepts lying in the mind (called
discourse of the soul by Muslim theologians) which spreads in the
air in the form sounds and can be captured in written form. The
written form itself can be considered a kind of existence (written
existence).
Introduction 23
divine Word (the sublime and complete case of which is the

Holy Qur’an), provided that they do not contradict each other is
correct. While in normal texts and man’s utterances, this is not
correct because (regardless of the author’s intentions which
have risen from his limited and insignificant knowledge) man’s
utterances and phrases cannot bear infinite meanings so that
infinite understandings would be possible.
The scope of literary criticism and interpretation in any
language is very limited and practically neither words nor
rhetoric and semantics in each language allow us to consider
them as having infinite meanings. The reality of language, no
matter how vast it might be, is not unlimited; we can learn
exactly about the streets and lanes of a city, no matter how large
it is. However, even if the divine Word is in fact limited (as
nature is also limited), it lies in an infinitely large arena in
comparison to man’s power of comprehension and
interpretation, because it has come down from an Absolute
Being Who is the source of all utterances and concepts. Man’s
understanding is like a fly moving around in an infinite space.
As an example, the interpretation of the divine Word, which is
related and connected to the depth of nature, has a gift for any
miner and there is no end to it. The treasure of man’s properties,
no matter how deep and full it is, will finish sooner or later.
These reasons can be summarized as follows: language
has a natural origin and is not basically conventional and man-
made (although man changed it later).
a) Revelation is a natural phenomenon by which God,
using nature and the hierarchies of all forces
available in it, sends down His message in certain
periods to certain people who have specific
potentials. It has a structure compatible with other
structures in nature and is in harmony with the
general system of nature.
b) As revelation and the divine Word are natural

phenomena and one of the laws of the world,
logically they cannot be incompatible with natural
laws including the relationship between language and
nature. It should not be expected that the Creator of
nature and language would offer His address (called
revelation) if it did not harmonize with the total
system of the world and nature.
c) Since the divine Word has a natural origin, it can be
rendered and interpreted through other natural
various manifestations such as language,
mathematics, and physics. Nature can be extracted
from the language of revelation.
d) Just as nature in this world has hidden and far-fetched
depths, so it is normally impossible to obtain all the
meanings of the divine Word, too, if it is known to be
a written version of the world and nature and
although it is interpretable.
Contrary to the beliefs of some people such as Gadamer,
one of the points existing in the Qur’an (and real revealed
books) is that neither time nor history can be considered as
factors in its correct interpretation, because the text either,
similarly to the Qur’an, belongs to all periods and is for all
mankind and all understandings, or to a vast time, including
various and multiple periods, traditions, histories on which it is
not possible to rely in order to understand the divine Word. The
reason for this difference is that God’s address to mankind is
absolutely and equally for all people of all different intellectual,
traditional and historical perspectives and, therefore, it should
be comprehensible in all evolutional stages of societies.
According to Islamic philosophy, understanding the
content of the Qur’an depends more on the interpreter’s
luminosity and his power of intuition, rather than man’s
historical evolution and the correspondence between the
Introduction 25
horizons of an interpreter’s modern traditions and the horizon of

the relevant text. It is similar to the intrinsic power of a diver in
discovering and finding pearls in the sea. This does not depend
on his time and history; rather, it depends on his aptitude and
practice. It is even possible that interpretations by previous
interpreters are more profound than today’s.
Mullà Æadrà and some other experts have bluntly said
that there are certain conditions for interpreting the divine
Word. Among its major conditions is inward purification and
limpidness, i.e. the purification of the mind of wrong
presuppositions and backgrounds, so that the interpreter is able
to understand firstly the text and then interpret it. Interpretation
contaminated by mental deviations is not pure. Man’s
understanding is like a mirror through which others want to see
objects. The more contaminated it is, the more it decreases the
viewers accuracy.
Some of the hermeneutic philosophers have stated that
understanding a text requires empathy with its author and
cooperation in his intentions, feelings and beliefs. This is a
logical and correct point because empathy with the author
facilitates understanding his objectives and the real meanings of
the text and according to their well-known saying, the
interpreter and the author share the same horizon.
As to understanding the divine Word, empathy with God
should be defined. We have to create a method as to how it
becomes possible to extend man’s short and limited horizon to
horizons to which intellect can never reach. In Mullà Æadrà’s
transcendent philosophy and in Islamic gnosticism, this
empathy takes the form of a pure man’s focused spiritual and
intellectual harmony with the cosmos. In gnostic terms, this
harmony is known to be the correspondence of man (known as
microcosm) with the whole universe (macrocosm). Because
man is a small particle in the macrocosm and is related to it.
Thus, he can harmonize naturally with it and can hear its voice
and understand its purpose with his inner sense.
In the Islamic tradition, it is recommended that whoever
recites the Qur’an, has to awaken in himself the feeling that the
Qur’an has been directly revealed to him and he is the addressee
of the divine Word.
Mullà Æadrà’s Principles of
Hermeneutics ∗
W ith the descent of God’s revelation to the

Holy Prophet Moåammed (æ) and
immediately after some verses of the
Holy Qur’an were revealed to him, questions were raised by
some people with respect thereto. So the Holy Prophet (æ),
upon the call of God (as is cited in the Holy Qur’an)
expounded the holy verses, and thereby answered the
questions. As a result, this process was followed, and led to the
birth and development of aåàdíth, and to the interpretation of
the Holy Qur’an based on them. However, after the Prophet
(æ), those aåàdíth were transmitted to people in the following
two ways.
Firstly: by the Ahl al-bayt (the Prophet’s Household).
These aåàdíth were explained, mainly by Amír al-Mu’minín
(the Commander of the Faithful), ‘Alí (‘a) who was the
∗
Presented to the Conference on the Qur’an: Text & Interpretation,
held at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of
London, October 1999.
Prophet’s son-in-law, and by Fàìimah Zahrà (‘a) the Prophet’s

daughter and ‘Alí’s wife. These aåàdíth were passed onto ten
successive generations through the Shi‘ite Imàms (leaders).
Secondly: by the Prophet’s companions (Æaåàbah). At
that time, interpretation of the Holy Qur’an was limited to
quoting the Prophet’s exegetic aåàdíth.
In later centuries, technical, analytical or literary
genres of writing commentary became common. Three main
schools or methods of interpretation (theological
interpretations of Shi‘ites, Mu‘tazilites, and Ash‘arites)
appeared, including the well-known interpretative schools
of Medina, Mecca, Kufa and Basra, some of which paid
attention to creed and theological issues, some to
jurisprudential and legal matters, and others to rhetorical
and literary or gnostic issues.
In the contemporary period, some commentators have
even interpreted the Holy Qur’an from the point of view of new
experimental sciences and modern findings. Certainly the closer
a commentary is to the contemporary age, the more complete
the exegetic methods will be. An outstanding example of a
complete commentary on the Holy Qur’an is al-Mízàn fi tafsír
al-Qur’àn by the well-known contemporary philosopher and
commentator, ‘Allàmah Ìabàìabà’í who commented on the Holy
Qur’an with the aid of the Qur’an in a scientific and technical
way. His commentary, which consists of 20 volumes, contains
philosophical, social and narrative issues, in addition to literary
points.
An analysis of the different styles of Qur’anic
interpretation would, of course, be imperfect without
alluding to the great commentator of the Qur’an, Mullà
Æadrà. In fact, his method of interpretation is one of the
best interpretive methods of the Holy Qur’an.
Mullà Æadrà’s Principles of Hermeneutics 29
Æadr al-Dín Moåammed Shíràzí (979-1050/1571-1642),

entitled Æadr al-Muta‘allihín and known as Mullà Æadrà, is
one of the greatest Iranian Muslim philosophers, like Avicenna.
He lived in the Safavid era. He wrote nearly fifty books on
philosophy, interpretation and åadíth; the most famous among
them being al-Asfàr al-arba‘a (the Four Intellectual Journeys) –
a complete course in philosophy – consisting of 9 volumes,
which is considered as a standard textbook.
In philosophy, he founded a well-known school, called
the Transcendent Philosophy (åikmat al-muta‘alliyah), in which
he mixed important ideas from the Peripatetic and
Illuminationist schools, with ancient Iranian philosophy, Sufism
and Islamic philosophy to form a single school. At the same
time, inspired by the Holy Qur’an and åadíth, he brought
Islamic philosophy to its culmination.
Mullà Æadrà’s commentary consists of interpretive
segments. Starting from Àyat al-kursí (approximately 1025
A.H.) and the Light Verse (1030 A.H.) he continued by
commenting on Yàsín, al-Åadíd, al-Wàqi‘ah, al-A‘là, al-Ìàriq,
al-Zilzàl Chapters, and finally, late in his life, he decided to
make a complete commentary on the Holy Qur’an and
commented on some verses of al-Baqara. Death, however, did
not permit him to finish this book.
Mullà Æadrà does not follow one single method in his
commentary. In commentaries such as the ones on the Light
Verse (1030 A.H.) and Àyat al-kursí (1025 A.H.), he depends
mostly on gnostic and mystic points, and at the same time pays
attention to åadíth. Furthermore, he is not very interested in
literary and verbal points.
But, after settling completely in Shiraz, he decided to
write a comprehensive commentary on the Holy Qur’an, from
the beginning to the end, in which his slightly hasty method was
replaced by the usual methods of the Qur’an’s commentators.
That is, firstly, he discussed the word, its exterior, and its
derivatives. Being indifferent to the majority of issues common
among the commentators and theologians of that time and
before, he described gnostic and Qur’anic connotations, based
on his own special and personal intuitions.
To avoid repetition he wrote Mafàtíå al-ghayb (Keys to
the Unseen), before beginning to comment, so that he would
refer to it as an introduction to, or a philosophy for, his Qur’anic
interpretation, on which some of his more brief points were
based.
He seems to pay no attention to the majority of
commentaries on the Holy Qur’an, but he referes to certain
commentaries such as Ìabarsí’s Majma‘ al-bayàn and sometimes
refers to Fakhr al-Dín Ràzí, Níshàburí and Zamakhsharí’s
commentaries as free of prejudice, and quotes their views to
complete his own viewpoints (Mullà Æadrà, Tafsír, Vol.11, p.
176). In addition, he sometimes also disproves their views
(Ibid., p. 191).
Mullà Æadrà’s commentary is, basically, a gnostic one.
However, since he was an expert in all the sciences of his time,
he sometimes paid attention to some subjects that other
commentators had already investigated. In addition, as he was
well versed in Arabic literature, he occasionally discussed
literary points as well.
According to Mullà Æadrà, since the verse “Look at
every thing in the heavens and on the earth” is a command, then
observing that command is a religious duty. So cognizance of
cosmology and of the apparent and hidden realities of the world
is obligatory from a religious point of view. Therefore,
commentary of the Holy Qur’an must seek out the realities of
the world and the issues related to man’s spirit. Consequently,
commentators who merely look for literary and outward
meanings in the Holy Qur’an, in fact, lower the worth of their

work to the level of a purely literary one (Asràr al-àyàt, 6).
On the other hand, just as ignoring the realities of the
world means ignoring their creator, so ignorance of God is also
considered a cause of ignorance of all things, and a deviation
from human nature (Ibid., p. 1, p. 5).
In terms of the method of interpretation, Mullà Æadrà
divides commentaries on the Holy Qur’an, into the following
categories.
First: commentaries which discuss literary techniques,
verbal meanings, and rhetorical points of the Holy Qur’an.
Second: commentaries that derive jurisprudential and
ethical commands from the outward meanings of the words of
the Holy Qur’an and content themselves therewith.
Third: commentaries that turn away from the outward
meanings of the Holy Qur’an, impose wishful thinking on its
interpretation, and call the process ta’wíl (hermeneutic
interpretation) or gnostic commentaries.
Fourth: commentaries that accept the exterior meanings
of the words of the Holy Qur’an, but look for their underlying
mysteries and secrets with the help of reason, intuition and
divine illumination to discover the realities hidden thereunder.
Mullà Æadrà is among the fourth group, since he accepts only
this kind of commentary and considers it correct. Æadrà follows
certain rules and principles in his Qur’anic exegesis, which can
be designated as the principles of Sadrian exegesis. To arrive at
the depth of the thoughts of his interpretive school we must
analyze his definitions of the world, man revelation and the
Qur’an.
Firstly, the levels of the world. In order to be ordered
hierarchically, the world must be defined, Mullà Æadrà thus
divides the world of being into three worlds:
1. the material and the physical world
2. non-material and the imaginal world, and

3. intellectual or supra-imaginal world.
As we will discuss in this paper, all there is in the
material world is, in fact, an exemplification or manifestation of
non-material world which is the locus of the higher realities;
and such realities which are in the non-material world, have
manifestations in the world of matter. For example, the term
“pen”, mentioned in the verse “He taught by the pen” exists in
the material world in one form, and also in the world beyond
matter (i.e. the other world) in another form, while in both
worlds, the pen is one and the same reality (Mafàtíå al-ghayb,
p. 95).
Secondly, the levels of man: in addition to five senses,
man has other levels of being and worlds, too, which must be
divided into three groups: 1, the level of sense, i.e. sensing with
the instrument of the five senses; 2, the imaginative or ideal
level, in which the same senses do exist, but without material
instruments, and in which man can see without eyes and hear
without ears; 3, the intellectual or universal level (in its platonic
sense) in which the realities of objects continue to exist, but are
free of physical matter, time and imaginal matter. This is the
highest level of the human soul, which is next to the world of
heavenly intellects.
Thirdly, the levels of revelation. Since the Holy Qur’an is
revelation and God’s speech, the meaning of such revelation
must be known. According to the definition given in the Holy
Qur’an (verse 51: 42), revelation is the direct and unmolested
speech of Exalted God to the Prophet. Hence, revelation is
called God’s Speech. And according to the above-mentioned
verse, the speech is solely of three kinds. It must be known that
God’s Speech is not separate from its “understanding” and the
“speech” is in union with the Prophet’s spirit (Mullà Æadrà,
Asfàr 8/7). However, for people other than the Prophet, God’s
speech is always indirect and is transmitted to them only

through words and letters. Therefore, it can be said that ordinary
people can only deal with God’s book rather than His speech.
Mullà Æadrà says God’s speech is other than His book. It
seems that his intention is something other than what some
hermeneutic philosophers say these days and for a number of
reasons he makes a distinction between writing and God’s
speech.
In Mullà Æadrà’s opinion, God’s speech is simple and far
from and over and above word–combinations. It belongs to the
world of supreme command (a stage in which matter is
absolutely non-existent, and has no involvement). It is timeless,
instantaneous, and not gradual. On the contrary, writing or
divine scripture is a phenomenon of a lower material world,
which was issued and descended gradually and in a
combination of words. Therefore, what we can see in the Holy
Qur’an is the God’s book, and not the divine speech (Asfàr
10/7).10
Despite declaring this opinion, Mullà Æadrà finally
accepts the unity of writing and speech and says that this duality
is exoteric and mentally-posited as the result of our own mental
analysis. Consequently, it is not real and there is, therefore, no
distinction between the speech and the writing of man. His
explanation for the unity of speech and writing or their duality,
is as follows. At one end, writing always emanates from its
author and is not separate from him, nor is speech from its
speaker, and their relationship, in philosophical terms, is one of
necessity. At the other end, writing is connected with and
subject to things other than its author or speaker (i.e. paper,
book and its reader). It can, therefore, be considered separate
10
. Elsewhere, he says that the Holy Qur’an is God’s speech, but the
other divine books are only God’s books (Asràr al-àyàt, pp. 16-20).
from its author philosophically speaking it possesses the level

of possibility. He considers this phenomenon as true, both in
divine and human orders. Furthermore, he adds that the unity of
speech and writing, despite their apparent separation, are of the
author’s own unveilings.
The revelation is an intricate and non-material
phenomenon. It descends through certain stages until it appears
in the form of the Qur’an presentable to man. Mullà Æadrà
says: “When the Prophet (æ), given the levels of man’s soul and
the world, ascends from the material and sensible stage with his
spirit and heart, and, passes through and beyond the imaginal
world, and is being released from matter, and divests himself of
temporal and material dimensions, and observes and travels
through the signs of Exalted God’s heaven, a light of
knowledge which is incarnated in the form of the Holy Spirit
called Gabriel of religions illuminates his heart. And in al-Najm
(Chapter 53: verses 2 to 18) God describes and introduces
Gabriel and calls him Shadíd al-Quwà (prolific of much power)
and this is what in philosophy is called Active Intellect” (Asfàr,
Vol.7, pp. 24-25).
After observing the Holy Spirit named Gabriel (which in
philosophical terms means union with the Active Intellect) the
Prophets hears and receives the divine speech and revelation in
the form of words, which cannot be heard through external ears
and air waves. Then, in the same way that he ascended to the
world of the intellects, he would conversely descend to the
world of matter by passing through the imaginal world.
The words heard by the Prophet (æ), in each stage of the
world of imagination and the world of matter, come down in a
form suitable for that stage. And once arrived in the world of
senses and the physical world, revelation and the spiritual words
are transmuted into human words and writing so that people can
hear and see them.
As is mentioned in the Chapter al-Najm and as was seen

and heard by the Prophet (æ) with inner eyes and ears, Divine
Speech is pure reality, and above any suspicion of error.
Fourthly, the multiple levels of the Qur’an. According
to Æadrà’s definitions of the world, man and revelation, the
Qur’an (that is Divine Speech and writing) is not merely what
is seemingly seen or heard. Rather, according to the triple
stages of the world of being and man’s soul, the descent of the
revelation through the spiritual world into the physical world,
has levels and stages. As a man has a body and a spirit, so
does the Qur’an. In addition to its physical expression, paper
and cover, that can be said to be its outward aspect, the Qur’an
has at least seven inward layers of meaning (It is said in
prophetical åadíth, that the Qur’an has intricate layers, ranging
between seven and seventy in number (Mullà Æadrà, Mafàtíå
al-ghayb, p. 45)).
The outward aspect of the Holy Qur’an can be
understood by man’s outward being, but its inward aspect can
be understood only by the supra-sensual human senses or man’s
so-called inward being. Superficial attention to the words and
their outward meanings is the same outward aspect of the Holy
Qur’an. Of course, this assertion has legal and jurisprudential
validity and, in jurisprudential terms, constitutes external proof
(åujjat). However, beyond this outward aspect, there are
concepts in the Holy Qur’an which are not possible for
everyone conversant with the Arabic language, to understand,
because such understanding is reserved only for those who can
transcend the limit of words and their own exterior senses (five
senses).
Mullà Æadrà believes that as the worlds have three
physical, spiritual and supra-spiritual levels, the Qur’an, too,
has the same levels, and is the “locus of manifestation” of all
these three levels. Its first level is of verbal category, and all
those who are familiar with the Arabic language understand it.
But the other levels are spiritual, hidden and “esoteric” and
understanding them is possible only in a realm other than the
realm of words.
To demonstrate the spiritual levels of the Holy Qur’an,
Mullà Æadrà with reference to a Qur’anic verse likens it to
food, descended from Heaven, which he so describes:
“the Qur’an is like food, which has been descended from
Heaven, to nourish the soul. While this heavenly food is sought
and assimilated by the men who are capable of so doing,
donkeys and cows seek and assimilate only the straw; the oil
and the kernel of the seeds are for men, the straw and the shell
are for them”.
Mullà Æadrà calls the Holy Qur’an “the light”, so does
the Holy Qur’an itself, which is the detector and revealer of
hidden realities. This issue will be dealt with later in this
chapter.
Mullà Æadrà’s interpretative method

Having become acquainted with the four phenomena, the
world, man, revelation and the Holy Qur’an, it is now time to
turn to Mullà Æadrà’s interpretive method. He believes the
following to be the best method of commenting on the Holy
Qur’an. Just as the Holy Qur’an descended to the Prophet (æ) as
revelation, and in the process of descent went through different
stages (consisting of the world of the intellect, the world of the
souls and imaginal world, and the physical world) through
which heavenly meanings have changed their forms and taken
the shape of earthly words, so a commentator of the Holy
Qur’an has to follow the same path to understand its depths.
Firstly, he has to begin with the outward meanings and

understand them, and then take leave of the exterior senses,
delve into the inward ones with the help of the soul’s higher
faculties and in so doing go as far as to even take temporary
leave of his body (khal‘e badan) in order to be able to make full
use of his spirit’s power. Then he must journey to Heaven to
obtain the unveiled and transparent meaning of the Holy
Qur’an.
Most existents of the material and physical world can be
sensed by the five senses. However, one can not ascend up to
higher levels of being with these senses. There are ways and
instruments to help us understand each of these three physical
and supra-physical worlds. Material and non-material realities
are corresponding and communicating – in Mullà Æadrà’s
words, “correspondent” (muìaìàbiq) - but they are not truly like
each other, since there is, in fact, a great difference between
them.
Hence, to understand all the Qur’anic realities, or so to
speak, “in commenting the Holy Qur’an”, one must not be
content with its outward and verbal meanings. Rather, one must
plunge into the never-ending depth of these meanings, since just
as the non-material world is hidden to a number of people, so
the Holy Qur’an, being the manifestation of those worlds, also
has esoteric and deep inner meanings which are hidden from
man’s bodily senses. Therefore, understanding and commenting
on the mere outward meanings of the Holy Qur’an cannot be
considered a true and all-pervasive understanding and
commentary.
One who is content with words, or with their literary and
artistic aspects when commenting on the Holy Qur’an, can only
understand the beauty and euphony of the words, and their
literary and verbal aspects, or at the most, extract the legal and
jurisprudential connotations from the outward meanings of the

book. Or else he may imagine God as having hands, eyes, throne
and seat, as Ash‘arite and Mu‘tazilite theologians and some of
the Hanbalite jurisprudents may do (Asfàr, Vol. 9, p. 299).
Following the ancient Iranian Illuminationist school,
Mullà Æadrà considers “light” a non-material reality; the same
as “being”. He says “light and being are the same, and their
difference is in their conception; whereas the Holy Qur’an is
also light (Qur’an 7:157, 5:15, 4:74), therefore, this book is the
locus of manifestation of the world of being and contains both
the visible and the invisible (Qur’an 6:59)”, (Asràr al-àyàt, p.
35). In other words, four centuries before the advent of the new
European hermeneutics, Mullà Æadrà’s hermeneutics upgraded
the interpretation of the text (and the commentary on the Holy
Qur’an) by pulling them out of the domain of mere words to the
realm of existents and the phenomena of the world. Like those
who, nowadays, consider interpretation of texts as equivalent to
recognizing psychological, sociological, and historical
phenomena, he, too, considered the Holy Qur’an’s
interpretation equivalent to the interpretation of the world and
man, and hidden and apparent truths.
Muslim gnostics, among them Mullà Æadrà, believe that
the world of existence originated in the divine command,
through the word “kun” (become!) (according to a Qur’anic
verse). They call this word “ontological fiat”, that is, with a
simple copula the existence and the divine speech occur at the
same time and become one. They also consider existence equal
to light philosophically –a light that illuminates the external
non-existents (originally known to God), and makes them
apparent, embodied and existent.
Ibn ‘Arabí sometimes takes “wujêd” (existence), which is
cognate with “wijdàn” (finding), to be synonymous with the
latter. Mullà Æadrà also considers “wisdom and knowledge of

the Holy Qur’an” as an opening to the world of realities. He
believes that every existent has knowledge to the extent of its
existence; and whatever has knowledge, will be resurrected. So,
all objects, even inanimate being, will enjoy resurrection
(Risàla al-åashr).
The knowledge of the inner meanings of the Qur’an
acquired by a commentator is, in fact, perceived by him through
his inner senses. In other words, the commentator establishes a
kind of union and communion with the world of existence. The
ancient gnostics call the world of existence “cosmos”, and the
divine speech as “Logos”.
According to gnostics and Mullà Æadrà, perhaps, each
person can find a meaning in the Holy Qur’an quite apart from
those found by others. Moreover, each person can find
something in the Holy Qur’an according to her/his capacity.
Some hermeneutic philosophers believe in this point, the only
difference between Mullà Æadrà and them being that
hermeneutic philosophers do not believe in mystical intuition
and illumination as he does; and although Mullà Æadrà believes
in reason, he does not believe in personal predilections that we
parade as reason, especially, if such are strange to the text and
quite remote from it. Here, it is worth examining the principle
of ta’wíl (hermeneutic interpretation).
Hermeneutic interpretation of the Holy Qur’an

The term “ta’wíl” is used several times in the Holy
Qur’an. Its literal meaning means “return to the origin of the
word”. In contemporary hermeneutics, sometimes the
interpretation of the text, or understanding the intention of the
text, is beyond the realm of the speaker’s will, and is subject to

the reader’s judgment.
Mullà Æadrà and a number of other commentators
undoubtedly do not view interpretation, in this sense, as correct.
As we will indicate, Mullà Æadrà does not allow any deviation
from the true purport of the words of the Holy Qur’an to occur.
According to him, commentary must be such that the meaning
should not be allowed to go beyond the word’s sense, its realm
and the generally-accepted meaning of that word. In other
words, the commentator of the Holy Qur’an (and probably of
any other religious text) is its trustee and must observe the
terms of the trust.
According to Mullà Æadrà, ta’wíl, is a necessary tool
for interpretation. It has connections with the world of
existence, far beyond the verbal and outward meanings of the
Holy Qur’an. There are many secrets, mysteries and meanings,
which cannot be understood or explained by verbal
commentary. In addition, the outward meanings of the words
are not sufficient for us to allow comments on those intricate
and mysterious realities (Tafsír-i àyat al-kursí, p. 176).
Therefore, a true commentator must interpret those words
accurately, and in doing so, he has to plunge into the words
and extract the depth of their inner meanings. Furthermore, he
sometimes even has to draw aside the veil of the material
world and the physical senses, and obtain deeper meanings
through reason, intuition, unveiling or other faculties. The
Prophet’s special progeny Imàm ‘Alí (the Commander of the
Faithful) and his Household have placed the deepest meanings
only at the disposal of the confidant of mystery and true
gnostics. The hermeneutic interpretation of the Holy Qur’an is
not the opposite of its outward meaning, rather it supplements
it: the inner meanings of the Holy Qur’an are like the cores of
seeds, and its outward meanings are like the shells of seeds
(Tafsír-i àyat al-kursí, p. 176). On the basis of this simile,
ta’wíl is undoubtedly, not a free or wishful interpretation
beyond the outward meanings of the words, nor an arbitrary
commentary. Rather, it gives a real and thorough commentary
on the intended meaning of the word or sentence. The Holy
Qur’an says: “the Qur’an explains everything to us”, whereas,
in commenting on the Holy Qur’an we should not be content
with its verbal and outward meanings, otherwise everything or
“kull-i shay’” cannot be perceived. Consequently, the real
meaning of the Qur’an is realizable only through its real
interpretation or ta’wíl.
But ta’wíl, in the true sense of the term, means
approaching the Holy Qur’an, plunging into it, and discovering
its depths, different layers, and inner meanings. By correct
ta’wíl we mean going beyond the outward meanings of the
words to unveil their inner meanings (which are hidden by the
former) with the help of illumination and reason. Ta’wíl and
esoteric interpretation is a kind of validating reason.
The role of reason in ta’wíl

There are three ways of finding the meaning of the
Qur’anic text: First, by referring to a dictionary and a grammar
book; second, through intuition and immediate, direct
knowledge; and third, by discovering the meaning of the text
with the help of reason and its “truth-finding” power.
Therefore, ta’wíl, in the view of the Holy Qur’an, means
neither turning away from the verbal meaning of the word, nor
depending on the purely unseen, nor being heedless of reason.
Even those like Mullà Æadrà who consider intuition the main
factor or the most important factor in the gaining of knowledge,
appreciate reason as a divine grace, serving as light to help in

the acquisition of knowledge, while regarding it inabsolute and
below revelation.
The new hermeneutics, despite having been given
appealing and uproarious publicity, have attained nothing more
than that of Muslim gnostics, and are, therefore, at the
beginning of the way.
The role of the outward meaning of the word

Mullà Æadrà says: “in hermeneutic interpretations, the
departure point begins at the words of the text and their outward
meanings”. Unlike some exegetes, he attaches much importance
to the outward meanings of the words of the Holy Qur’an. He
says: “religion commands that nobody shall unduly overlook
the outward meanings of the Holy Qur’an, nor reason; and
every spiritual or intellectual finding, as well as commentaries
and interpretations arising therefrom must all be in harmony
with the rules governing the language of the text”.
The divine, Satan-free intuitive vision bestowed on the
heart is certainly valid, but is reliable only when it can
supplement the outward meaning of the Holy Qur’an, the words
of which must always be predicated by their own real meanings,
and not through metaphors or similes used therewith.
It is at this juncture that he points to the triple worlds of
existence and to their coincidence and correspondence with one
another. He asserts that everything that exists in this sensible
world has certainly a similar manifestation in the imaginal
world; and that the outward and temporal meaning is similar to
and coincident with the inner and spiritual meaning.
Unveiling and intuition

Here, we must cast a glance at intuition and Mullà

Æadrà’s opinion about it. The reflection of realities in the
human heart, that is to say, the act of seeing the non-material
world through the non-material eye is intuition or unveiling.
Mullà Æadrà divides intuition into two main categories.
First, symbolic intuition: He calls this kind of intuition,
“formal intuition”, which can find the meaning of symbolic
form of realities (non-sensible realities) through inner (and not
bodily) senses. He says that just as man’s body has sensory
organs through which he can see, hear and touch material
objects so the human spirit also has corresponding non-material
senses (Mafàtíå al-ghayb, p. 49).
This kind of intuition arising from inner senses can
decipher the symbolic form of realities. However, the Prophet
(æ), in a state of intuitive vision, saw knowledge drinking milk.
Therefore, Mullà Æadrà says that hermeneutic interpretation
(ta’wíl) is like interpreting a dream. This analogy is not
surprising, since material life as compared with life in the other
world is like a dream and the Commander of the Faithful, ‘Alí (‘a)
said: “People are asleep and they will wake up upon death”.
Second, cognitive intuition: Mullà Æadrà calls this kind
“spiritual intuition”. This is an intuition which is not symbolic.
Instead, man’s mind and spirit perceive the realities from a
phenomenon or a sentence not perceivable in a normal state, i.e.
like a key, by the turning of which the doors of a garden are
opened and a hidden reality is suddenly revealed to the observer
(Mafàtiå al-ghayb, p.151). This is the intuition, which is called
“inspiration” or “sacred faculty”.
Following the Iranian Illuminationist school and the
schools of Socrates and Plato, Mullà Æadrà believes in the
imaginal world, and based on this, he says that the reason for
belief in this kind of “discovery of realities” is that everything
and every phenomenon existing in this material world, has a
“spiritual image” or an archetype in the other world, because

the material world is just the shadow of the other world. There
is nothing in this world which has no corresponding counterpart
in the other world (known as “spiritual essence” Mafàtiå al-
ghayb, p. 94).
With regard to the intuitions explained above, the other
world has two shapes: one is the world which we see in the
form of a symbolic transformation system, and the other is the
world of “special intellectual meaning” which manifests itself in
its real form in this world.
Mullà Æadrà says that it must not be thought that the
“other world” is housed in a space or a place far from this
world, since “special intellectual realities” are here in this world
and very close to us. They are not concealed and hidden at all
the reason they are hidden from our sight and senses is that we
do not have the necessary means of perceiving them (i.e. a
polished mirror of pure spirit and heart).
Likening man’s spirit and heart to a mirror has a long
history in Persian and, particularly, gnostic literature. Also,
somewhere else, Mullà Æadrà has pointed to the “mirror of the
heart” as a transparent instrument for non-sensory perception.
He has said a “chaste and virtuous heart is, like a mirror, clear
and free of rust and opaqueness. Such a heart, when facing the
realities of the worlds, can perceive them to the extent of its
capacity for perception and reflection (Mullà Æadrà, Tafsír,
2/299). Such perception and reflection over the realities is
called intuition.
Conditions of ta’wíl
It behoves us to indicate another principle in Mullà
Æadrà’s Qur’anic hermeneutics. He says that there are pre-
conditions which have to be met before we are enabled to
perceive and interpret the depth of the meanings of the Holy

Qur’an. In addition, not all men are equal to the task. The main
pre-conditions are: turning away from the material world and its
pleasures, exercising spiritual discipline, and possessing
intrinsic preparedness for the task. Only such people can
conceive the hermeneutic realities by integrating themselves
with the spirit of the world, or the Holy Spirit (which Mullà
Æadrà calls the Holy Father). If a person is not equal to this
task, and has no self-restraint, he must not try to seek out
meanings beyond the Holy Qur’an’s outward aspect (Tafsír,
3/298 and Tafsír-i àyàt al Qur’an, p. 168).
Perhaps, one of the meanings of the verse: “Nobody else
shall touch it other than the chaste ones” (Chapter Wàqi‘ah,
Verse 79), is that which was just said by Mullà Æadrà; since
the term “mass” (which in Arabic means “to touch”), in its
wide sense, can mean more than merely touching the Holy
Qur’an, and, therefore, can also mean commenting on the
realities of the Holy Qur’an.
This point leads us to another principle of the Qur’anic
hermeneutics laid down in Mullà Æadrà’s exegetic school. That
is, although it is the divine message, the understanding of the
text of the Holy Qur’an, depends on the commentator’s
personality, his spiritual rank and preparedness, and also on his
mastery of literary nuances of the language, which can be
infinite in number as is true in the case of the message of the
Holy Qur’an. It is to be noted that Paul Ricoeur maintains the
same opinion concerning the infinite realm of the message of
the text and the art.
Conclusion
In conclusion we can sum up the principles followed by

Mullà Æadrà in the interpretation of the Holy Qur’an, as
follows:
1. The text of the Holy Qur’an contains messages
and meanings, of which a part can be elicited from
the outward meanings of the words and the other
part through rational methods and intuition. Opting
for self-coined meaning and imposing the same on
the Holy Qur’an is dishonest and cannot be
considered as the true meanings of the words of the
Holy Qur’an. Therefore, in Mullà Æadrà’s
hermeneutics, the reader is not free to impose
meanings of his own liking on the text. He,
therefore, has to seek out the speaker’s meanings
and intention.
2. The text of the Holy Qur’an, being the mirror of
divine speech, is, in the ultimate analysis, in union
with divine knowledge and divine command
(which is the origination of the world and its
existents) with the former being the locus of the
manifestation of the latter because there exists no
separation among the divine attributes on the one
hand and between them and the divine essence on
the other hand. The Holy Qur’an, therefore, is a
mirror of both this material and the other non-
material worlds. As a result, a true commentary on
the Holy Qur’an must ultimately lead man to a true
recognition of the world of being. It is to be noted
that Qur’anic hermeneutics are intended to
establish relations and connections with the
realities of being, i.e., with man, and up to the
farthest phenomena of the world, and has in itself

ontological dimensions.
3. Authentic religious texts such as the Holy
Qur’an must be explained not only through the
outward meanings of their words but also through
their other meanings which are only perceivable by
the hidden intellectual faculties of man. Therefore,
in making use of true hermeneutics with regard to
the Holy Qur’an one must not content oneself with
the use of outward senses. To appreciate the divine
speech and book, one has to resort to his own
spiritual power.
4. The commentator’s personality can have a
determining influence on the depth of his
perception and interpretation of the Holy Qur’an,
so can his spiritual chastity and bodily
mortification.
Understanding God’s
Word in Mullà Æadrà’s
Philosophy
U
nderstanding and the interpretation of God’s
Word or Speech has always been a topic of
debate among scholars. It has also been
tackled in Islamic philosophy and gnosis from different angles.
The Holy Qur’an refers to ‘word’ as àyat (sign). This sign,
which is, of course, meaningful, is comprehensible through the
following ways:
1. Natural indications: such as natural but
extraordinary events, including eclipses of the sun and
moon, earthquakes, etc.
2. Human languages: such divine Words, which
are called revelation, descends only to those people who
possess the necessary qualifications and potential to
receive it.
3. Speechless expression: in the form of
inspiration and direct transmition of concepts to the mind
and heart of the addressee.
From another angle, however, all the phenomena of the

world are caused by God’s command, creation. In other words
these are His acts and words whose denotation are essential and
natural.
In this regard, the first leader of the Shi‘ites, Imàm ‘Alí
(‘a), says: “When God wills to bring something into existence,
He says to it, “Be, (kun) so there it is. The word of God is His
act, and it is not in the form of “call” or “voice” audible to the
physical ear”.1
This saying of Imàm ‘Alí (‘a) paves the way for our
discussion and leads us to its central point. It separates the
divine Word not only from the domain of human speech (which
demonstrates an arbitrary and commonly agreed means of
expression created by the intermingling of the human voice and
air) but also from the puns exclusively used in the philosophy of
language. It takes the divine Word to the realm of natural
phenomena and the phenomenology of divine revelation. As a
result, the hermeneutic interpretation of the Qur’an is done
mainly within the domain of philosophical rather than
traditional hermeneutics. Accordingly, Mullà Æadrà’s
interpretation and hermeneutics may be considered as a bridge
connecting and reconciling those two kinds of hermeneutics, as
well as the foundation of philosophical hermeneutics.
The word “be” (or “become”, or “come into existence”),
which is frequently used in the Qur’an,2 represents the ‘Divine’s
will’ and ‘the Divine’s command’ and is taken to mean “God’s
Word” objectively existing in the external world. In fact, the
external existence of objects, or their existence, as it is called by
Heidegger, depends on the divine Word, “be”. It seems that this
word, which Muslim gnostics, quoting from the Holy Qur’an,
call ‘existential being’3 is the same as ‘Logos’, which had been
used in the Illuminationist philosophy of ancient Iran and in
ancient Greek philosophy.
Understanding God’s Word in … 51
Consequently, the world together with all the existents

contained therein (which are sometimes called the macrocosm)
are one Book and one divine address, and all the things in the
world have interpretable and meaningful signs to help man
perceive divine intensions and purposes. This fact, however,
does not prevent God from communicating with man through
conventional and verbal sings called ‘revelation’.4 Verbal
speech or ‘revelation’ is not only related to the existential word,
but, as viewed by Islamic gnosis and Mullà Æadrà, is also
regarded as a level and grade in the hierarchy and domain of the
existential word (or Logos). It seems as if God speaks to the
microcosm through the microcosm and the symmetry,5 or
perhaps the union, of these two ‘men’ in existence reveals the
divine intentions and purposes to mankind through different
signs. While man’s speech is intended to express his innermost
meanings, the divine Word aims at revealing both the hidden
features of being and the objective and external existence of the
divine will.
Therefore, the divine Word appears in the form of both
external existents in the world of creation and in revelations. It
descended to the Prophet (æ) in his own language and
utterances intelligible to him (but without any mediation of
voice or of anything else), and was absorbed by his
understanding-an understanding –perception which was never
separate from his intentions - which confronts with realities
through knowledge by presence.
The important point is that these two types of divine
Words (genetic and spiritual) are in fact two faces of the same
reality. Muslim gnostics and Mullà Æadrà, however, go further
by saying that existence has a hierarchy and domain consisting
of certain vertical and horizontal levels, grades and levels.
Intellectual existence, which is at the top of this hierarchy and
domain, together with imaginal, objective, and external
existences which follow thereafter respectively have the highest
priority in the said hierarchy. Then mental6 existence occupies

the middle level, and “verbal existence” of mental concepts, as
well as its corresponding written existence, stands on the lowest
level.
Existence at this stage is like an object, the image of
which is reflected in several mirrors. These mirrors are in fact
the aforesaid levels on which the different dimensions of
existence stand according to their validity, grades and the
degrees of their strength.7 In the view of Mullà Æadrà,8
existence seems to revolve around itself and shows a new face
on each of these existential levels (i.e. intellectual, imaginal,
objective, mental, verbal and written). This deceitful and luring
idol puts on different appearances at different moments.
Therefore, this leads us to revert to our opening remark by
saying that existence is in fact God’s book, whose beginning
and end are the same, and whose whole being is only one
‘Word’ which appears differently on different occasions. It
might be due to such various manifestations of existence or
‘Word’ that philosophers have sometimes interpreted “Logos”
as cosmos and sometimes as God’s Word or Speech.
According to the above discussion, revelation is the same
God’s Word or Speech. It passes through all the levels
mentioned above and changes itself into words which are
incarnated in the mirror of the Prophet’s mind, as if God were
whispering the same into his ear. Consequently, we can
consider the Qur’an to be the verbal form of the true and
objective realities of the macrocosm. This holy book has a
meaning as vast as the universe in its oral form and, like other
realities of existence, is an ‘àyat’ or sign of God, embracing His
holy words. The Qur’an frequently refers to this symmetry and
equates itself with “Kitàb-i Mubín” or “the Manifest Book”.9
The Prophet’s perception of revelation, or his
understanding of God’s Word, is exactly the same as the
reflection of the eternal realities and the phenomena of the
universe on the Prophet’s soul. God’s Word, after descending

through all the existential levels, is received in the form of
verbal messages, consisting of exclusive words with exclusive
meanings whose depth and esoteric aspects are perceivable only
through exalted intuition.
At the time when revelation descends to the Prophets, it
seems that their senses are not “on the alert”, and that the divine
Word is perceived only through their presential and intuitive
knowledge. Perception of the divine Word happens
automatically, and no other factor contributes to the Prophet’s
perception of revelation. The existence of some common verbal
signs to be exchanged between the Sender and the receiver of
revelation, exactly like the signs and codes used in transmitting
messages, is the only prerequisite needed in order to allow the
perception of revelation to happen. The language of the Qur’an
is Arabic, and so was the Prophet’s (the fact that is frequently
restated in the Qur’an),10 therefore, the philosophy of common
language has been the basis of perception of God’s messages.
Contrary to contemporary hermeneutic philosophic
theories, the interference of the horizons and presuppositions of
the commentator or his interpretations in bringing the
revelations into being, is totally invalid since such assumption
will undermine the validity of such revelations; thus rendering
them short of the pure Word of God.11
The prevalence of a rational atmosphere over him which
has enabled his perception to be free of matter, thus enabling
him to receive the Word of God as revelations, is another reason
why the Prophet’s perception of revelation is pure and free from
any interference. As was mentioned before, existence embodies
material, imaginal and supra-imaginal (rational) levels. We can
find the same existential levels in mankind, including the
Prophet (æ). That is to say, man lives in a world and in an aura
full of sense impressions and matter and he possesses the
imaginal faculty as well as an imaginal level (i.e. supra-material
level) that is equal to and consistent with imaginal existence in

the cosmos and the universe. He also possesses a supra-
imaginal faculty (wisdom or a rational faculty) that is equal to
and consistent with the supra-ideal universe or the rational
universe. According to Mullà Æadrà and the gnostics, the
existential levels of ontology are not accidental, rather they
follow the general order of creation and represent the relation
between the macrocosm and microcosm. Revelation should be
recognized not only through the position taken by the Prophet (æ)
in relation to the wording of the Qur’an, but also through
gaining knowledge of the total process of its descent. The
reason why the word “descent” has been chosen is that it
implies the downward journey of revelation through all levels
of existence. As was mentioned before, although verbal
existence (and then written one) are recognized by Islamic
gnostics to be the lowest of all existential levels, there are still a
few people who do not consider them as levels of existence.
Understanding God’s Word

Now that inquiry into the process of the perception of
revelation and the divine Word (the Qur’an) by the Prophet
Moåammed (æ) has been completed, it is now time to explore the
philosophy of understanding (and understanding the Qur’an) by
commentators and ordinary men. To accomplish this end, it is
necessary here to tackle in brief the nature of “understanding”.
In its general sense, understanding means what man’s
faculty of perception comprehends from a verbal phenomenon
or other things. The “understanding of a speech” (or written
text), as per its well-known definition, means understanding the
intended meaning of the speaker (or the writer) through his
words. However, this definition has been set aside in
contemporary hermeneutics, and a new definition has been
given instead. In this definition, there are only two sides: the
interpreter (addressee) and the text (the word).
Heidegger does not conceive of perception as a simple
process, but as one of the modes of existence in the universe.
This means that understanding is rooted in an existence which is
over and above man’s existence, but since man has awareness
and a manifest existence, he is, therefore, the only existent who
is able to understand and interpret the horizons (macrocosm and
microcosm) within the realm of his own existence. Like most
Western philosophers, Heidegger does not give any reason for
his theory. In this theory, phenomenology and hermeneutics are
intertwined and understanding and interpretation are equated
with the manifestations of existence. In the literature of Islamic
gnosis, this is called the natural language of existents and
represents the first divine language or Logos.
If Heidegger’s theory is exactly what was described
above (i.e. that the three-fold levels of man’s ontology
correspond to the three-fold levels of existence in the universe,
and that, unlike other existents, man can harmonize himself
with all existential levels at every step, and as a result can
receive and perceive the message of existence whether in the
form of revelation or art or human language), then Heidegger’s
claim concerning the relation between man’s understanding and
the mode of his existence in the world (Dasein) is demonstrable
and acceptable; otherwise, we would have a very long way to
go.
Unfortunately, Heidegger’s approach is different from
that of Mullà Æadrà. He is even unable to comprehend the spirit
of Plato’s words. Heidegger seems to have been influenced by
Sophists whenever he considers man or Dasein as the exclusive
center and criterion of truth. That is why the relativism existing
in Sophism also emerges in the philosophical hermeneutics of
Heidegger’s school of thought, and understanding and
interpretation of each text and works remain relative, infinite,

and unfinalized.
The word ‘horizon’ in Heidegger’s school of thought is
not gradational.12 But the horizon of people are different.
According to this theory, all concurrent contradictory horizons,
understandings and interpretations are considered true and real.
Consequently, the importance of man’s role in the perception
and interpretation of the universe is questioned, and considered
false and illusory. According to such insight “Absolute Being”
(i.e., God) has no role and the chain of existents in the universe
does not end up in Him. According to Islamic philosophy and
Mullà Æadrà’s school of thought, any understanding of
existence will be untrue and incomplete, and will face a
deadlock unless it accepts the Absolute Being (God), who is the
Necessary Being.
Another defect in Heidegger’s hermeneutics is that the
domain of his horizon-finding hermeneutics is material and
confined to the world of sensible things. This is because he does
not conceive man’s understanding of the universe (or his
questioning about existence) as anything beyond uttering the
words of a text or the appearance of a phenomenon. Unlike
Mullà Æadrà’s hermeneutics, he never goes beyond the
borderlines of matter and sensible things. Rather, he aims at
going beyond what is before him to gain a deeper
understanding. This is like trying hard to place a big object into
a small container wherein there will remain neither the
container, nor the content.
Heidegger’s occasional attempts at interpreting and
comprehending existing phenomena following Plato’s method,
which are out-of-cave observance of reality, have been
concomitant with some misunderstanding. The reason is that the
state of Plato’s out–of–cave observance is in fact the state of
being beyond the aura of matter and sensible things. This is
exactly what Mullà Æadrà believes in, i.e. belief in the imaginal
world and supra-images.
Henry Corbin had grasped this point, and thus called
hermeneutics “the unveiling of the veiled”, which in Islamic
Gnosis is considered equal to the Platonic concept of existence
or idea.
Mullà Æadrà believes that the best way of reasoning in
order to prove that “understanding or interpretation” and
“Dasein or human existence” are interrelated, is to find an
existential relation between the microcosm and macrocosm.
He also maintains that perceiving the classification of
existential degrees, starting with objective and ending with
verbal existence is the best way of proving the relation
between language and existence on the one hand, and the
manifestation of existence in language on the other. This is
because without existence, and benefiting from existential
degrees, man would have been unable to adapt himself to
nature, speak languages, interpret nature, and approach,
discover, and experience new and real horizons.
In Gadamer’s definition, understanding a text or word, or
hermeneutics, is a synthesis resulting not only from the dialog
between the two horizons, but also from their dialectics. These
two horizons consist of the interpreter’s horizon and that of the
text. This theory (which is based on the existence of
presuppositions, traditions, historical background, as well as
conditions shared by the interpreter and the addressee) intends
both to demonstrate the interference of the interpreter’s horizon
with all its dimensions and content, as something inevitable,
(scientific), and necessary, and to impose such interference on
the philosophy of hermeneutics to show that with the
interference of the interpreter’s mind or horizon, there no pure
content and meaning in the realm of interpretation will exist.
It is to be noted that this theory is, in fact, far from
reality, because it imposes on man some kind of automatic,
unconscious deterministic mechanism which is totally

inconsistent with the state of consciousness admitted to be in
man. It is crystal clear that unlike other existents, man,
through his knowledge and the domination of his natural free
will over him, can overcome a great part of nature’s
determinism, and can overrule his own experiences and even
presuppositions.
In unconscious situations, man is influenced by
traditions, social experiences, his so-called personal horizon,
and even his constitutions; Moreover, he ventures to draw on
his presuppositions in order to help him in the interpretation and
perception of things – things particularly having artistic traits.
However, he is, through his freedom of thought and
consciousness, able at the same time, to guard against the
impact of interference on his interpretations. In other words, if
this theory is true in particular cases, it is generally false in
general cases, otherwise total belief in determinism would make
a free and independent man a powerless and submissive
existent.
We do not wish to expound supernatural phenomena such
as telepathy and correct prophecy here. However, among the
simple daily analyses made around us, covering religious texts,
legal, physical or mathematical rules, we can find certain
examples in which the interpreter, rather than surrendering to
his presuppositions or social traditions, is in searches to
discover the intended meaning of the speaker and the
physiognomy of the writer in the mirror of the text in order to
interpret the text. Even the incentive to understand the ultimate
meaning of the author, rather than reading a series of questions
and seeking their answers in the text, is what motivates people
to read Gadamer’s books.
According to what was discussed before, man’s
understanding is a complicated process that cannot be limited to
a general principle. The only acceptable general principle on the
basis of which interpretation and understanding of phenomena,

whether natural, verbal or artistic, can be made is the one
stating that a common, absolute, real, ultimate or a so-called
universal understanding, according to which every human being
thinks of himself as sharing with others in the understanding of
a specific phenomenon, exists in the world.13
It is possible to demonstrate the validity of this general
principle through the correspondence existing between the
macrocosm and the microcosm. With regard to art, the writer
believes that a work of art, which is the creation of an artist, is
the reflection of a manifestation of the macrocosm in the soul of
that artist, and that his work is not merely an innovation because
everyone else under the same conditions and inspired by the
soul of the universe or the macrocosm could have created the
same artistic phenomenon with all the meanings it bears.
The illumination experienced by a mystic wayfarer and
the words uttered exceptionally (and not habitually) by a
someone who foretells the future are, in fact, phenomena
welling up, and simultaneously not welling up, from within.
It is equally possible for everyone to understand the work
of an artist and the words of a mystic poet in its general sense
and up to a certain extent despite all their complexity,
ambiguity and vastness of meaning. This is because all people
possess a common spiritual element enabling them to
understand one another and to perceive nature. The existence of
a universal understanding is also in full conformity with the
wholistic practical theories and the theory of mystic Oneness
(tawåíd).
Revelation
Phenomenology of revelation is also possible by the same
way. Revelation is the most complete and powerful type of
dialog between the macrocosm and the Prophets, and is the
reflection of existential realities in their soul. The macrocosm

can be considered as one of the means and causes of revelation
and expression of the divine Word to mankind. Thus understand
revelation should be, to the same extent, possible for the people
of a language, since in addition to its being a commonly agreed
means of expression and communication, language is a human
phenomenon. Thus, it is an existential phenomenon which has
been introduced more or less in Heidegger’s theory and in the
theories of some contemporary hermeneutic philosophers.
Human understanding and

interpretation
At the outset of this paper, reference was made to the
hierarchy of existence (covering rational, imaginal, material,
verbal and written existences). Reference was also made to the
existence of a sensible, imaginal, and rational hierarchy in man.
Mullà Æadrà solved the problem of man’s understanding
of God’s Word through the same way. He believes that the
understanding and interpretation of the Qur’an necessitates
referring its utterances and words back to known realities and to
the unknown realities beyond them, with a view to discovering
the depth of the meanings underlying them. Gnostics call this
process ‘ta’wíl’. Literally speaking, ta’wíl means the returning
of everything to its primary and original position. This is a
process of ascent (in contrast with revelation, which is one of
descent); that is, a flight from words towards rational realities.
Generally speaking, understanding of God’s word (the
Qur’an and revealed texts), which have been revealed to the
Prophet (æ), is realized only after completion of the following
two independent stages.
The first stage, which is called verbal interpretation, and
which means paying attention to man’s verbal and commonly
agreed signs while observing all their literary, literal and

rhetorical aspects, is called by Schleiermacher as syntactical or
grammatical interpretation. This stage is also the domain of
regular and popular literary criticism, aiming at the creation of
the desired meanings from combination of words. This stage
corresponds to the lowest level of existence (i.e. written or
verbal existence).14
The second stage is hermeneutic interpretation (ta’wíl)
which means going beyond the limit of the words, outward
meanings with a view to discovering the innermost purports and
the intention of the speaker. This phenomenon is like going
beyond the material and sensible world and entering the
innermost spirit of the world. This innermost spirit is hidden to
the senses, but is the origin of deep sense impressions and is
higher and more powerful than ordinary sense impressions at
the existential level. Superficial understanding and
interpretation of the Qur’an, though limited in scope, is
considered as comprehension of God’s word; but according to
Mullà Æadrà, it cannot be considered as true interpretation and
deep understanding of the word. As has been stated in åadíth,
God’s word embodies seven to seventy shades of deep inner
meanings.15 As a result, to confine oneself to its narrowest
shade, and verbal meaning denotes failure to perceive the
essence of the speaker’s meaning and intention, and falls short
of rendering worthy interpretation. Contrary to the existing
Western hermeneutic schools of thought, any search for
connotations of words beyond their outward meanings, far from
being an irresponsible, whimsical or temperamental action, is
made independently of the presuppositions, horizons, and
background knowledge of the interpreter, is the exact intention
of the speaker, which is realized, and does exist, in the stages of
revelation and in the supra-material world, and which can be
perceived only by those people who have transcended the
realms of matter and material laws, and observe the imaginal
realities with the aid of their immaterial soul, and inward

intuition, philosophically known as microcosmic world of
imagination.
This stage, too, consists of different degrees or levels
which, like those of existence and light, are either ascending or
descending; depending on the rise and fall of the interpreter’s
immaterial soul and inward purity.
The mystical interpretation of the Qur’an, or the
perception of the depths of its concepts is possible only through
the ascending journey of perception from sense and matter (the
world of speech) to higher and higher stages, that is to the
imaginal and rational stages of the soul, and attaining the
reality. As Mullà Æadrà says: “Both the Qur’an and man
possess outward and inward aspects. In other words, they have
both evident and hidden aspects.16 The inward aspect of the
Qur’an is its spirit, which should be perceived by man through
his soul, that is, through employing a power beyond his outward
senses.
What is beyond the outward sense is veiled and hidden,
thus the hidden meanings of the Qur’an cannot be deciphered
through the senses and the outward meaning of its words. Like
man, the Qur’an has some levels. The lowest level, i.e., its
words, can be perceived by means of man’s lowest degree
(sense) of existence, while its higher levels can only be grasped
through man’s highest levels of soul, of which intellect or
wisdom is one. The Qur’an calls the highest level of perception
of its word, as well as the perception of other Divine Words,
“qalb” (heart). Considering Qur’anic terminology, “qalb” is the
same as love, which is linked with the highest kingdom of the
soul and intuition.
Mullà Æadrà emphasizes that comprehensive
interpretation of the Qur’an and true understanding of God’s
words should begin with the understanding and interpretation of
its words. Therefore, any interpretation of this holy book which
goes against its outward meaning, or which ignores the book is

incorrect.
The next stage is realized through intuition. In other
words, through the union of the spirit of man with the spirit of
the world, the macrocosm and the vast space of immaterial
existence. At this stage the words are unveiled and truth
emerges; a truth which is the same as the realities of the world,
and which corresponds to the supra-material existence. That is
why Mullà Æadrà has given the title of “Mafàtiå al-ghayb”,
meaning the keys to the invisible world, to his book on the
philosophy of interpretation.
Though generally accepted by Muslim philosophers and
gnostics, Mullà Æadrà’s definitions of hermeneutic
interpretation or ta’wíl have been refuted by scholars sticking to
the outward meanings of language (literalists). These scholars
believe that interpretation means the literal study of the Qur’an.
However, according to Mullà Æadrà, these scholars have
deprived themselves of perception of the hidden realities and
hidden beauties of this holy book.
Index
‘ahl al-bàìin, 9 al-Åadíd, 29

‘ahl al-ta’wíl’, 9 Alí, 27, 28, 43
‘Allàmah Ìabàìabà’í, 28 al-Ìàriq, 29
‘Allàmah Ibn Manîêr, 16 al-Mízàn fi tafsír al-
‘allamahê, 15 Qur’àn, 28
‘ilm al-uæêl, 15 al-Najm, 34
a priori, 12, 14 al-Raåmàn, 15
aåàdíth, 27, 28 al-Wàqi‘ah, 29
åadíth, 29, 35, 61 al-Zilzàl, 29
Åanafí, 3 Amír al-Mu’minín, 27
Åanbalí, 3, 5 amr, 19
Abbasid Caliphs, 10 Andalusia, 10
Abbasid, 4 Arabic language, 35, 16
Abê Bakr, 4 Arabic literature, 30
abjad, 17, 21 Arabic, 17, 20, 21
Active Intellect, 34 Aramaic, 10
Adam, 15 Aryan, 13
Æaåàbah, 28 Aristotelian, 8
Æadr al-Dín Moåammed Aristotle, 8, 18
Shíràzí, 28 Asfàr, 32, 33, 34, 37, 63
Africa, 10 Ash‘arite, 3, 37, 28
Ahl al-bayt, 27 Asràr al-àyàt, 30, 33, 38
åikmat al-muta‘alliyah, 29 Athens, 7
al-A‘là, 29 åujjat, 35
al-Asfàr al-arba‘a, 29 Avicenna, 28
al-Baqara, 29 Àyat al-kursí, 29
Alexandrian, 17 Bàìiní, 4
Bàìiniyyun, 4 Far East, 10

Basra, 28 Fàtiåa, 63
bayàn, 15 Gabriel, 34
Bible, 8 Gadamer, 9, 24, 57, 58
British, 17 Galileo, 17
Cartesian, 17, 21 Ghadír, 3
China, 10 Gnosis, 49, 51, 55, 57
Chomsky, 14 gnostic, 4, 19, 22, 25, 28,
Clear Book, 19, 20, 21 29, 30, 31, 44
Collingwood, 17 gnostics, 18, 19, 22, 38, 39,
commentaries, 29, 30, 31, 40, 42, 50, 51, 54, 60, 63
42 God, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 15,
commentary, 9, 28, 29, 30, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24,
31, 37, 38, 46 25, 27, 30, 32, 33, 34,
commentator, 28, 29, 30, 37, 38, 49, 50, 51, 52,
36, 39, 40, 47, 53, 54 53, 54, 56, 60, 61
creato ex nihilo, 18 Gospels, 10
Crito, 13 Greece, 7
Dasein, 9, 55, 57 Greek, 7, 11, 13, 17, 18, 50
Descartes, 17, 21 Hanbalite, 37
Dilthey, 8 heart, 34, 42, 44, 49, 62
Divine Speech, 35 Hebrew, 10
Divine Word, 11, 12, 18, Heidegger, 9, 50, 55, 56, 60
19, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, Henry Corbin, 57
49, 50, 51, 53, 54, 60, 62 hermeneutic interpretation,
Eastern, 18 31, 39, 40, 42, 43, 44,
Egypt, 4 50, 61, 63
Enoch, 7 hermeneutic, 11, 25, 33, 39,
esoterists, 9, 11 40, 42, 43, 44, 45, 50,
European experts, 9 53, 60, 61, 63
European, 13 hermeneutics, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10,
Fàìimah Zahrà, 27 21, 38, 39, 41, 44, 45,
Fàìimid, 4 46, 47, 50, 54, 55, 56, 57
Fakhr al-Dín Ràzí, 31 Hermes, 7
Holy Spirit, 34, 45 Islamic philosophy, 19, 24,

Hormus, 7 29, 49, 56
Hushang, 7 Islamic, 4, 10, 11, 13, 26,
Îàhiriyyah, 11 51, 54, 55, 57
Ibn ‘Arabí, 38, 63 Ismà'ílí, 4
Idris, 7 Isutzu, 15
illumination, 31, 39, 41, 59 Jadhawàt wa mawàqít, 17
Illuminationist schools, 29, Jesus Christ, 10
38, 43 Jesus, 10, 18
Imàm ‘Alí, 3, 4, 40, 50 Jewish scholars, 8
Imàm J‘afar Æàdiq, 4, 9 Jewish, 8, 12
Imàmat, 3 Jews, 8
Imàms, 4, 28 khal‘e badan, 37
India, 10 Chaliph, 4
interpretation, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, Kitàb-i Mubín, 19, 52
11, 15, 18, 19, 22, 23, Kufa, 28
24, 25, 27, 28, 29, 30, kull-i shay’, 41
31, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, kun, 38
43, 44, 45, 47, 49, 50, Light Verse, 29
53, 55, 56, 57, 58, 60, Lisàn al-‘arab, 16
61, 62, 63 literalism, 11
interpreters, 3, 9, 11, 19, logic, 8
24, 25, 54, 57, 58, 61, 62 Logos, 18, 39, 50, 51, 52,
interpreting, 4, 8, 9, 11, 13, 55
20, 25, 43, 56 M‘arifat al-‘àlam al-akbar
interpretive, 28, 29, 31, 36 wa al-‘àlam al-asghar,
Iran, 4, 7, 10, 50 63
Iranian Muslim, 28 macrocosm, 17, 25, 50, 52,
Iranian, 13, 17, 18, 29, 38, 54, 55, 57, 59, 63
43 Mafàtíå al-ghayb, 30, 32,
Islam, 4, 9, 10 35, 43, 63, 64
Islamic culture, 7 Majma‘ al-bayàn, 30
Islamic gnosticism, 21, 22, Màlikí, 3
25 Manifest Book, 52
mass, 45 posteriori, 14
Mecca, 3, 28 Preherminas, 8
Medina, 3, 28 Prophet Mohammed, 27
microcosm, 25, 51, 54, 55, Prophet, 3, 10, 17, 21, 27,
57, 59 28, 32, 34, 36, 40, 43,
microcosmic, 61 51, 52, 53, 54, 59, 60
Miftàå, 63 Pythagoras, 16
Mír Dàmàd, 5, 17 Pythagoreans, 17
Moåammed, 27, 54, 64 qalb, 62
Mongol, 4 Qur’an, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11,
Moses, 10 15, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22,
Mu‘tazilite, 3, 28, 37 23, 24, 26, 27, 28, 29,
muìaìàbiq, 37 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35,
Mullà Æadrà, 5, 19, 21, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41,
25, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 42, 44, 45, 46, 47, 49,
32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 50, 52, 53, 54, 60, 61,
38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 62, 63, 64
44, 45, 46, 49, 50, 51, revelation, 3, 9, 10, 13, 15,
52, 54, 55, 56, 57, 60, 22, 23, 24, 27, 31, 32,
61, 62, 63 34, 35, 36, 41, 49, 50,
Muslim gnostics, 18, 19, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 59,
38, 42, 50, 51 60, 61
Muslim philosophers, 28, Risàla al-åashr, 39
63, 64 Sadrian exegesis, 31
Muslim, 11, 13, 15, 22 Safavid era, 29
Muslims, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9 Satan, 42
Nahj al-Balàghah, 63 Schleiermacher, 8, 60
Níshàburí, 30 Scriptures, 10, 11
North of Africa, 4 semantics, 23
Occult Sciences, 16 Semitic, 13
Peripatetic, 29 Shadíd al-Quwà, 34
Pinker, 14 Shàfi‘í, 3
Plato, 13, 43, 55, 56 Shi‘ite, 3, 4, 9, 28, 50
Platonic concept, 57 Shiraz, 29
Socrates, 8, 13
Sophism, 55
Sophists, 8, 55
Spain, 10
Sufis, 10
Sufism, 4, 5, 29
Sunnite, 3, 4
ta’wíl, 31, 39, 40, 41, 43,
44, 60, 61, 63
Tafsí, 9, 10, 30, 44, 45
Tafsír-i àyàt al Qur’an, 45
Tafsír-i àyat al-kursí, 40
tawåíd, 59
Torah, 8, 10, 11
Turkey, 10
Umayyad, 4
understanding, 7, 8, 9, 10,
11, 20, 23, 24, 25, 32,
35, 36, 37, 39, 45, 49,
51, 52, 54, 55, 56, 57,
58, 59, 60, 61, 62
Wàqi‘ah, 45
Western, 13, 18, 55, 61
wijdàn, 38
wujêd, 38
Yàsín, 29
Zamakhsharí, 30
A note on the Author
S eyyed Mohammed Khamenei is the Persident of

Sadra Islamic Philosophy Research Institute and
the Edition-in-Chief of Kheradnameh-e Sadra
(a quarterly journal on philosophy). His main areas of research
are Islamic philosophy, mysticism, history of philosophy and
law. Professor Khamenei has written many articles and several
books on philosophy including Development of Wisdom in Iran
and in the World, Mulla Sadra’s Transcendent Philosophy, and
Mulla Sadra’s life, character and school. He has also taught
philosophy at Qum (Hawzah) and Tehran University, Al-Zahra
University, Allamah Tabatabai University, and Islamic Azad
University in Tehran. He is also member of various
philosophical institutes and the head of Mulla Sadra
International Society, History of Philosophy Institute, and the
center for comparative studies in Qum. He has also participated
in various national and international congresses and Inter-
religions dialogues in Greece, Austria, Swiss, Iran, and U.K.
Mulla Sadra
Mulla Sadra also known as Sadr al-Din

Shirazi as well as Sadr al-Muta’allihin was born
in Shiraz in southern Iran in 1571 into an
influential and well known family and spent the
early years of his theological training in that city.
He died in 1637 and his final resting place is in
Najaf.
Later he traveled to the city of Isfahan to
expand further his intellectual horizons. While in
Isfahan he studied under a number of eminent
scholars like Shaykh Baha’ al-Din Amili and Mir
Damad.
He then left Isfahan to devote himself to a
life of asceticis, and inner purification. Mulla
Sadra considered spiritual training to be the
essential condition for those aspiring to gain the
True Knowledge of hikmat-I-illahi (literally theo-
sophia).
After completing his spiritual training, he

returned to his native city of Shiraz and spent the
last period of his life in teaching. Most of his
major works were completed during this period.
During this period he trained a number of well
known scholars and philosophers including Mulla
Mohsen Fayz Kashani, Fayaz, Tonkaboni and Haj
Mulla Hadi Sabzevari.
Mulla Sadra is the supreme example of that
class of sages who combine intellectual discipline
with spiritual experience and whom Suhrawardi
had called the Muta’allih. It is for this reason that
Mulla Sadra was given the highest title possible
within the tradition of Hikmat, the title of Sadr al-
Muta’allihin, meaning foremost amongst the
Muta’allihin or that group of men who are
themselves the elite among all who seek the
knowledge of divine.
The writings of Mulla Sadra range from the
monumentals such as Asfare Arba’eh, Shawahid
al-Roboobyeh, Masha’ir, ‘Arshyyeh, Mabda’ wa

Mo’ad, Tafseere Qur’an and sharhe Usoole Kafi
to treaties of a few pages. Because of their
immense importance most of them were printed in
lithographed editions nearly a century ago in
Tehran. Some have appeared in new editions
during the revival of interests in Mulla Sadra
during the past decade, but most still remain to be
critically edited and printed in editions that would
make the contents of these works more easily
accessible.
Mulla Sadra created a new school in
philosophy by fusing together the views of the
major Philosophical and Irfanic schools before
him such as Ibn Sina, Sohravardi and Ibn ‘Arabi.
His inventive presentation of his
Philosophical views, like the fundamental reality
of Existence and its Unity, the Trance Substantial
Motion, the Union of Intelligent and the
Intelligible, Allah’s Knowledge the Truth and its
Simplicity contains all things, the Soul being

materially Temporal and spiritually Substent, the
Soul in its unity being all of its faculties and the
Bodily Return has transformed his school into a
dynamic philosophical school that has a profound
impact on the current Islamic Thoughts.
Notes
1
. Nahj al-Balàghah.
2
. At the end of ‘Al- Yas’ Surah (Chapter).
3
. Mafàtiå al-ghayb, Mullà Æadrà, third Fàtiåa, first Miftàå.
4
. In the Qur’an, revelation has sometimes been used in a particular
sense.
5
. Ibn ‘Arabí, the treatise of M‘arifat al-‘àlam al-akbar wa al-‘àlam
al-asghar.
6
. The mental and ideal types of existence are usually considered to be
at the same level in this classification.
7
. Unlike some of the contemporary hermeneutic philosophers, Mullà
Æadrà views the written existence as being weaker than the oral
existence. Asfàr, vol. 7.
8
. Asfàr, vol. 7, p. 24.
9
. In the Transcendent Philosophy, Kitàbi Mubin is a hypothetical
book recording all the future and past events and phenomena, and
presenting a timeless picture of the world of creation.
10
. Surah: al-Dokhan verse 58, Surah: Maryam verse 97, Surah: al-
Qamar verse 17.
11
. Refer to Surah: al-Najm.
12
. Nafs al-amr means pure reality or the level and limit of the essence
of things.
13
. According to Muslim philosophers, acquired reason and the union
with Active Intellect refer to the highest level of understanding and
knowledge, as well as to a common point for real and nafs al-amri
perceptions.
14
. All people who are acquainted with Arabic language and literature
understand this stage to some extent. Refer to the Holy Qur’an:
Surah: al-Dakhan (Chapter): verse 58: “This (which) We recite
unto thee is a revelation and a wise reminder”. Surah: Maryam
verse 98: “So We have made this (the Qur’an) easy in our own
tongue (O Moåammed æ), only that you may give glad tidings to
the Muttaqên (pious and righteous persons - See V, 2:2), and warn
with it the Ludda (most quarrelsome) people”. Surah: Al-Qamar
verses 17, 22, 32, and 40: “And We have indeed made the Qur’an
easy to understand and remember, then is there any that will

remember (or receive admonition)?”.
15
. Mullà Æadrà, Mafàtíå al-ghayb, Tenth Fàtiåa, First Miftàh.
16
. Mullà Æadrà, Mafàtíå al-ghayb, p. 39.

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Mulla Sadra, Hermeneutics,

and Understanding God's

Mullà Æadrà’s Principles of Hermeneutics ......................... 27

Mullà Æadrà’s interpretative method ...................................... 36

Understanding God’s Word in Mullà Æadrà’s Philosophy ......... 49

Understanding God’s Word .................................................... 54

A Note on the Author ....................................................................... 71

In the Name of God, the Wise, the Knower

and were considered to be the Islamic orthodox. The Sunnites

1. The so-called prominent members of the community.

in the Qur’an. Some of them (Åanbalís), in the guise of

I n all societies the mutual relations of society and

namely ‘herald’ and ‘hermeneutics’. Inspired by this name,

and paved the way for philosophical hermeneutics. The issue of

political and military struggles against the Abbasid Caliphs.

are not available and we have the Greek translation of them in

gestures and body movements; or the use of words and

interpreting revelation and the Divine Book and Western and

contexts, it is said that “the names have descended from the

Third, as stated earlier, Muslim scholars have considered

Experiments have shown that the power of sentence

Mír Dàmàd, the Iranian philosopher who is the heir to

Muslim gnostics say that man’s words are produced by

particle in the heavens and on the earth, but it is (written) in the

strength or weakness in existence. These stages are called

divine Word (the sublime and complete case of which is the

b) As revelation and the divine Word are natural

horizons of an interpreter’s modern traditions and the horizon of

W ith the descent of God’s revelation to the

Prophet’s son-in-law, and by Fàìimah Zahrà (‘a) the Prophet’s

Æadr al-Dín Moåammed Shíràzí (979-1050/1571-1642),

meanings in the Holy Qur’an, in fact, lower the worth of their

2. non-material and the imaginal world, and

speech is always indirect and is transmitted to them only

from its author philosophically speaking it possesses the level

As is mentioned in the Chapter al-Najm and as was seen

Mullà Æadrà’s interpretative method

Firstly, he has to begin with the outward meanings and

jurisprudential connotations from the outward meanings of the

latter. Mullà Æadrà also considers “wisdom and knowledge of

Hermeneutic interpretation of the Holy Qur’an

text, is beyond the realm of the speaker’s will, and is subject to

The role of reason in ta’wíl

appreciate reason as a divine grace, serving as light to help in

The role of the outward meaning of the word

Unveiling and intuition

Here, we must cast a glance at intuition and Mullà

“spiritual image” or an archetype in the other world, because

perceive and interpret the depth of the meanings of the Holy

In conclusion we can sum up the principles followed by

farthest phenomena of the world, and has in itself

From another angle, however, all the phenomena of the

Consequently, the world together with all the existents

priority in the said hierarchy. Then mental6 existence occupies

universe on the Prophet’s soul. God’s Word, after descending

level) that is equal to and consistent with imaginal existence in

Understanding God’s Word

interpretation of each text and works remain relative, infinite,