Investigating the Typology of Safi Interpretation

Interpretive texts constitute an important part of literature history in the Islamic world. Each of the interpreters has a method for interpreting the Quran according to the specialized knowledge, the audience, geographical areas, historical periods, religious beliefs, and so on. Although all of them belong to the category of interpretations or interpretive texts, it is necessary to show the differences and similarities of different interpretations and their classification. Since the interpretations of Quran have three main genre characteristics including multiplicity, similarity, and difference, the genre approach is a suitable instrument for classifying these kinds of texts. Therefore, in this research, it has been attempted to investigate Safi interpretation and its meta-textual, textual, and intertextual analysis based on a genre approach. The results of this research are: Safi interpretation belonged to interpretation or Qur'anic interpretation genre and mystical subgenre; Safi Ali Shah has influenced men of government and with that influence, he expanded Ne’matollahi Dynasty and promoted and consolidated the tradition-oriented discourse of the government. He composed Safi interpretation at the request of the disciples in order to propagate and establish the Ne’matollahi Dynasty. The target audiences were all of people, the main external functions were guiding-advertising and sociopolitical. This interpretation is under the category of inferential-esoteric interpretations and the dominant interpretive approach of the text is the literary-mystical approach. It is also related to two examples of earlier texts, Ghazali’s Meshkat al-Anvar and Molavi’s Masnavi Ma’navi.