Tafsir as Mystical Experience: Intimacy and Ecstasy in Quran Commentary: Tafsir surat al-baqara by Sayyid ‘Ali Muhammad Shirazi, The Bab (1819-1850)

In Tafsir as Mystical Experience, Todd Lawson shows how the Quran may be engaged with for meaning and understanding, the usual goal of mystical exegesis, and also how it may be engaged with through tafsir in a quest for spiritual or mystical experience. In this earliest of the Bab’s extended works, written before his public claim to be the return of the hidden Imam, the act of reading is shown to be something akin to holy communion in which the sacred text is both entrance upon and destination of the mystic quest. The Quran here is a door to an abode of glory and an abiding spiritual encounter with the divine through the prophet, his daughter Fatima and the twelve Imams of Ithna-‘ashari Shi'ism who inhabit the letters, words, verses and suras of the Book.

Cover calligraphy by Burhan Zahrai of Quran 53:11