Principles of Fatimid Symbolic Interpretation (Ta'wil): An Analysis Based on the Majalis Mu'ayyadiyya of al-Mu'ayyad al-Shirazi (d. 470/1078)
Book Chapter in "Reason, Esotericism, and Authority in Shiʿi Islam"
“For Muslims, the Qurʾan and Shariʿa (divine law) brought by the Prophet Muhammad in the early 7th century AD constitute God’s message to human-kind. Since the very beginning of Islam, they have sought to understand their true meaning. They grappled with some of the Qurʾan’s apparent contradictions. For example, which verse should be taken at face value, the one that states, “Fresh faces will look at God on the last day,” or the one that says, “Eyes do not see him”? They also tried to make sense of the seeming arbitrariness of the Shariʿa. Why pray two cycles in the dawn prayer, for example, and three in the sunset prayer? Why fast in the month of Ramadan and not, say, Safar? The Fatimid hermeneutic answered these questions by harmonizing revelation and reason through the divinely guided authoritative exposition of the living Imam, from the line of the Prophet Muhammad and his Legatee ʿAlī. In this article I draw on the collected lectures of the preeminent Fatimid scholaral-Muʾayyad fī-l-Dīn al-Shīrāzī (d. 470/1078) – al-Majālis al-Muʾayyadiyya – to distill and analyze the principles of Fatimid symbolic interpretation, “taʾwīl.”
No Fatimid text enumerates the principles of their hermeneutic system;these have to be inferred. Within the genre of Fatimid taʾwīl, al-Muʾayyad’s Majālis is the culmination of their taʾwīl schematics. A deep mine of Fatimid philosophy, the Majālis systematically conceptualize knowledge in the early lectures, and then reference it and build upon it throughout. A few lectures also explicate the necessity for taʾwīl. The combination of these theoretical remarks on interpretive principles with rich and varied applications makes al-Majālis al-Muʾayyadiyya the ideal source for analyzing the principles of Fatimid symbolic interpretation.
Basing my analysis on al-Muʾayyad’s Majālis, – and drawing also on the works of two major Fatimid scholars before him, al-Qāḍī al-Nuʾman (d. 363/974) and Hamīd al-Dīn al-Kirmānī (d. ca. 411/1021) – I delineate in this article ten interdependent principles of Fatimid taʾwīl. They are: (1) the rationality of faith; (2) the inversion of the literary perception of real and figurative; (3) the harmonization of the physical and spiritual worlds; (4) the mutual validation of the exoteric and esoteric aspects of the Shariʿa; (5) the substance of taʾwīl manifest in God’s unity, God’s call, and the system and hierarchy of spiritual ascension; (6) the concept of living history, with the stories of the Prophets reflected in Muhammad’s mission; (7) the methodology of taʾwīl, presented through scriptural evidence and rational proofs; (8) taʾwīl as the true knowledge integral to salvation; (9) the sole authority of the divinely-guided Prophet, Legatee and Imam to interpret the Qurʾan and Shariʿa; and (10) the rationale for taʾwīl.
My analysis demonstrates that al-Muʾayyad did not randomly assign esoteric meanings on a case-by-case basis. His explication of these materials is governed by a systematic hermeneutic that, as I mentioned at the outset, harmonizes reason and revelation through the divinely guided taʾwīl interpretation of the living Imam. Together, these ten principles articulate a comprehensive, coherent, and logical system of symbolic scriptural interpretation.” (Tahera Qutbuddin)
Author: Dr. Tahera Qutbuddin
Link to Full Chapter: Academia.edu