ماهنامه معرفت
سال بیست و سوم شماره 8 (پیاپی 203، آبان 1393)

The present paper seeks to elucidate Imam Sajjad’s words in his supplications of invokers. In one of the phrases of this supplication, Imam Sajjad (peace be upon him) refers to seeking the tranquility of heart by God’s remembrance, because anxiety, worry and uneasiness are the necessities of worldly life. God’s remembrance is the highest pleasure. When man realizes the depth of this pleasure, he complains about his engagement in passing worldly pleasure and asks pardon of God.On the other hand, God’s remembrance is two-way. This is not such that only we remember God. God is never inattentive to us and our conditions. This two-way remembrance has an infinite pleasure for man. If we know that our kind creator and God remembers us and never denies his blessings and mercy from us, we will have additional pleasure.

The question of nature of ambiguous and unambiguous is twin with the Glorious Quran and researchers of the Quran have long searched for its proper answer. In the meantime, Allamah Tabatabaii is one of the scholars who have admirably answered the question. Using a descriptive analytical method, the present paper recounts and criticizes late Allamah Tabatabaii’s view with the aim of reviewing his views and theories about injunctions, ambiguity and its analysis. Allamah believes that ambiguity means several ambiguous significations in which real intention is hidden. Having established the principle of mixture of hidden and heavenly descends with impurities after descending on the earth, Allamah thinks that the existence of ambiguity in the Quran is natural and unambiguous verses which are well-grounded, solid and as Mother of the Book should determine the real intention of ambiguous verses. He believes that this view is resulted from deliberation on the Quran and interpretive school of Holy Prophet’s Household (peace be upon them).

Among Quranic verses all of which are light, some have noticeable luminousness in terms of content, which are called the most luminous verses. Using a documentary method to gather data and a descriptive-analytical method to analyze them, the present paper studies the verse 56 of the Chapter Scatterers (51:56) as one of the most luminous verses, which is discussed by Allamah Tabatabaii, in terms of its key role in explaining the complexities of other verses, with the aim of proving its comprehensive content. The results show that this verse has a key and direct role in interpreting other Quranic verses related to the aim of marriage, reproduction, God’s right over His servant, servant’s right over God, and a key and indirect role in interpreting the verses related to the aim of best creation, the reason why killing a person means fighting against God’s divinity and other issues, and that there is coherent relationship between aforementioned issues.

One of the most profound issues which is always discussed among interpreters of the Quran and scholars of Quranic sciences is “the interpretation of the Quran by personal opinion”, whose history can be traced back to the time of revelation and Holy Prophet’s lifetime. The most famous saying about the prohibition of interpretation of the Quran by personal opinion is Imam Ali’s saying, who citing Holy Prophet (May blessing and peace of Allah be upon him and his progeny) states “someone falsely attributed some lies to Holy Prophet (May blessing and peace of Allah be upon him and his progeny), such that Holy Prophet stated in a sermon: the number of false sayings attributed to me is increasing. Anyone who attributes false sayings to me will be in hell-fire and will abide in it.”Interpretation of the Quran by personal opinion means interpreting the Quran on the basis of independent standpoint and independence from valid sources and documents, with any intention and aim. We can refer to many Quranic verses and hadiths which prohibit interpretation of the Quran by personal opinion. These hadiths can be divided into five groups. Based on these traditions, particularly the fifth group, Allamah Tabatabaii concludes that prohibition of Quranic interpretation is not related to the interpretation itself but to its method, which means that even if we obtain correct results through incorrect interpretation of the Quran our method of interpretation is disfavored, reproachable and condemned.

The hadiths and works of contemporaries of the Quran’s revelation constitute a part of reality of Quranic commentary and researchers of the Quran have always paid particular to these hadiths. This is while Allamah Tabatabaii proposes the way of interpreting the Quran by Quran and independence form interpretive hadiths in his work, Al-Mizan Commentary. Using a descriptive-analytical method, the present paper seeks to study the basis of Allamah Tabatabaii’s view about the status of interpretive hadiths and the quantity and quality of their application in Al-Mizan Commentary. Allamah Tabatabaii asserts that interpreters should refer to Holy Prophet’s interpretation in order to interpret some ambiguous phrases in Quranic verses or some difficult verses. On the other hand, he believes that it is necessary to use hadiths in possible cases when he explains the correct way of interpretation. In addition to these principles, Allamah Tabatabaii has used interpretive hadiths in different ways in the postscript of many verses in his commentary.

Before writing “Al-Mizan Commentary”, Allamah Tabatabaii wrote his first commentary work entitled “Al-Bayan fi Mowafeghatah Bayn Al-Hadith wa Al-Quran” (An Explanation on compatibility between Hadiths and the Quran) in which he takes interpretive hadiths into consideration and tries to explain compatibility between the Quran and hadiths. Using a descriptive-analytical method, the present paper discusses the similarities and differences between these two commentaries with the aim of introducing them and elaborating on the advantages of “Al-Mizan Commentary”. These two commentaries are similar in terms of explaining the aim of Quranic Chapters and reviewing hadiths.In terms of formal-structural differences, Al-Mizan Commentary has a relative comprehensiveness in interpreting Quranic verses. Al-Mizan is distinguishable from Al-Bayan in terms of transmitting and reviewing interpretive hadiths at the end of interpretive discussion and proposing independent thematic issues. Finally, some phrases in Al-Bayan are modified in Al-Mizan.In terms of formal-content differences, the important feature of Al-Mizan is variety in interpreting the Quran and paying attention to the role of context, which is not such extensive in Al-Bayan. Furthermore, some recitations of Quranic verses are reviewed and some Quranic doubts are resolved in Al-Mizan. References of Al-Mizan are also much more extensive.

Spirit and its relationship with other related Quranic concepts such as Holy Spirit, Faithful Spirit and Our Spirit is one of the controversial issues among interpreters. However, the common feature of this kind of theories is that they do not provide a systematic technique to explain spirit and lack a proper conclusion about the concepts related to spirit. Using a descriptive-analytical method, the present paper elaborates on Allamah Tabatabaii’s theory about spirit in the Quran. Using a systematic interpretation, he sums up the verses related to spirit. In this regard, he starts with a different and precise explanation about the verse of “Treasuries” (15:21) and successfully explains spirit and its related concepts in the Quran. According to his view and with regard to the verse of “Treasuries”, spirit is a reality with analogically predicated of degrees and its related concepts such as man’s soul (spirit) and its different degrees and stages are a single reality.

The present paper seeks to review scientific products related to Allamah Tabatabaii’s works and thoughts, which are indexed in Islamic World Science Citation Center. During 1999-2013, 208 articles with the growth rate of 23.5% were indexed in Islamic World Science Citation Center and only 17 articles could obtain citation. Totally, 21 articles have obtained citation. The review of the works related to Allamah Tabatabaii show that these works include 70 secondary thematic fields. Among researchers of Allamah Tabatabaii’s works, 12 researchers have had at least three or more articles. The review of institutes collaborating in producing scientific works related to Allamah Tabatabaii’s works and thoughts shows that researchers of 105 institutes collaborate with each other in this regard. In the meantime, Allamah Tabatabaii University, Isfahan University and Tehran University are at the top of this collaboration. The periodicals of “Religious research”, Ghabasat (brands)” and “Quranology” have published most of the works related to the thoughts of this century’s thinker.