Appearance
The Qur’an: Its Revelation and Understanding
This page gathers what Āyatullāh Jawādī Āmulī teaches about the Qur’an itself across al-Tasnim: how it came down to the Prophet and to the people, the occasions and setting of its revelation, what revelation (waḥy) is and how it differs from inspiration and from rational proof, and, from his Introduction, how the Qur’an is to be understood: in the language of human nature, by itself, with the Sunnah and the Prophet’s Household, and by the intellect rather than by opinion. Each answer is a short summary of his words, with links that open the passage in al-Tasnim.
How the Qur’an came down
Was the Qur’an sent down to the Prophet alone?
The usual reading is that the Qur’an was revealed to the Prophet, and since we are his community it is as if it was revealed to us. Āyatullāh Jawādī Āmulī takes the verses more precisely: the Qur’an was revealed to the Prophet, and it was also sent down to the people, not merely for them: O people! A proof has come to you from your Lord, and We have sent down to you a clear light.
The Qur’an is a special manifestation of God and a weighty discourse. Ordinary people cannot bear it without an intermediary. Had it come down directly on an ordinary heart it would shatter it, as it would a mountain. So it first pours onto the Prophet’s heart, where its truths, interpretation and inner meanings remain, and from there its outpourings and outward meanings reach others.
Read in al-Tasnim: Verse 2:136 · The Descent of the Qur’an to the People · Verse 2:136 · The Descent of the Qur’an to the People
Is the Qur’an still revelation when it reaches us?
Yes. The end point of Qur’anic revelation is not the Prophet’s heart: the message, travelling from his heart to his lips and from there to the ears of the community, remains revelation. So one who listens to the Qur’an hears the words of God, and it is recommended, on reciting or hearing “O you who believe,” to answer “At Your service” (labbayk). This, he says, shows that God is still speaking to humanity and His address is current. The whole path is guarded by angels against distortion, which is why the Qur’an is called a rope with one end in God’s hand and the other in ours.
Hence the saying of the Commander of the Faithful that whoever recites the Qur’an, it is as if prophethood had been placed within him, “except that revelation does not come to him.”
Read in al-Tasnim: Verse 2:136 · The Descent of the Qur’an to the People · Introduction · Attributes of the Qur’an from the Perspective of the Infallibles (a.s.)
What are the occasion, atmosphere and climate of revelation?
Exegetes have studied the occasion of revelation: the particular event that prompted one or more verses. Āyatullāh Jawādī Āmulī adds two wider horizons that, he says, existing exegeses have largely not explored. The atmosphere of revelation belongs to a whole sūrah: the conditions, people and events while it was coming down. Some sūrahs, such as al-Ḥamd, al-Anʿām and al-Naṣr, came down all at once; others unfolded over months or years. The climate of revelation belongs to the whole Qur’an: the world of its twenty-three years.
The relation runs both ways: the setting called for the revelation, and the revelation transformed the setting. For example, Sūrah al-Nisāʾ came down in Medina among polytheists, hypocrites, the Jewish tribes and the weak in faith, and this background is crucial for its verses 71 to 91.
Read in al-Tasnim: Introduction · The Occasion, Atmosphere and Climate of Revelation of the Qur’an · Introduction · The Occasion, Atmosphere and Climate of Revelation of the Qur’an
How much weight do the occasions of revelation carry?
Reports of why a verse came down are of three kinds. Historical accounts not narrated from an Infallible, such as those from Ibn ʿAbbās, are aids to understanding but carry no authority of their own. Narrations with a weak chain deserve respect but are not binding. Narrations with a sound chain do explain the occasion, but they “do not confine the verse’s meaning to a specific scope or breadth”: they show one instance of the verse’s general meaning without narrowing it.
For the Qur’an is not bound to the people about whom it came down: “If a verse died with the death of those about whom it was revealed, nothing would remain of the Qur’an.” Some verses, such as those of guardianship (5:55), mubāhala (3:61) and purification (33:33), refer specifically to the Prophet’s Household, and they too do not lose their meaning after them.
Read in al-Tasnim: Introduction · Exegetes’ Views and Revelation Contexts in Interpretation · Introduction · Exegetes’ Views and Revelation Contexts in Interpretation
Where was Sūrah al-Ḥamd revealed?
Most exegetes hold that it is Meccan; some say Medinan, and some that it came down twice. The question, Āyatullāh Jawādī Āmulī notes, has no effect on its exegesis, since no verse of it changes meaning with the place of revelation. But the evidence points to Mecca. The Meccan Sūrah al-Ḥijr says We have certainly given you seven of the often repeated [verses] (15:87), which the narrations identify as al-Ḥamd, in the past tense. There is no prayer without al-Ḥamd, and prayer was instituted in Mecca, as ʿAllāmah Ṭabāṭabāʾī explains. Narrations from Imam ʿAlī and Imam al-Ṣādiq say it was the first thing revealed in Mecca, though some scholars count it as the fifth sūrah revealed.
Read in al-Tasnim: Surah al-Hamd · The Place of Revelation of Sūrah al-Ḥamd · Surah al-Hamd · The Place of Revelation of Sūrah al-Ḥamd
What revelation is
Is every “revelation” in the Qur’an prophetic revelation?
No. When God says of Jesus’ disciples, And when I inspired the Disciples (5:111), the word awḥaytu means inspiration (ilhām), not legislative revelation, just as when God “revealed” to the bee or to Moses’ mother. The disciples were told to have faith in Me and My messenger, so they were certainly not prophets; legislative revelation belongs to the prophet alone.
Imam al-Bāqir explains the verse simply: “He inspired them.” Inspiration, Āyatullāh Jawādī Āmulī notes, is sometimes knowledge, such as news of the unseen, and sometimes action. What the disciples received was practical: it reached the practical intellect, which governs resolve, will, faith and sincerity, not the theoretical intellect, which governs conception and assent.
Read in al-Tasnim: Verse 5:111 · The Meaning of Revelation in the Verse · Verse 5:111 · A Discussion of the Narrations
What kinds of revelation are there?
Āyatullāh Jawādī Āmulī distinguishes several. Some revelation is legislative and meant to be conveyed to the people, such as the commands of prayer, fasting and pilgrimage. Some concerns acting on the law: when Celebrate the Name of your Lord, the Most Exalted came down, the Prophet said, “Place it in your prostrations.” And some is supportive, providential and confirmatory: a revelation of action, not of ruling, which brings no new law, like the revelation to the Imams: We revealed to them the performance of good deeds…
So the angels speaking to Mary does not make her a prophet with a law, as al-Qurṭubī held, nor were her wonders Zechariah’s miracles, as al-Zamakhsharī held. They were her own marvels (karāma), and hers was an “informative prophethood”; she followed Zechariah’s law.
Read in al-Tasnim: Verse 3:42 · Subtleties and Allusions · Verse 3:42 · Subtleties and Allusions
See also: Key Debate: Was Mary a Prophet?
What did God give the prophets that others cannot learn?
God’s teachings to the prophets are of two kinds. Some are knowledge that can be passed on to others, simplified through examples and stories, like He taught Adam the names. Others cannot be passed on by learning, because they are not knowledge at all but miracle and action: no one can learn by study to turn a staff into a serpent.
David shows the difference. God taught him the craft of making coats of mail, which others can learn; but He made iron soft for him, rather than teaching him how to soften it. Such works depend on the holiness and purity of the person and the annihilation of the servant’s will in the will of his Master; then fire becomes coolness and peace for Abraham. The knowledge of Moses and Khiḍr, he adds, was experiential (shuhūdī), not acquired.
Read in al-Tasnim: Verse 18:64–65 · Subtleties and Allusions · Verse 18:64–65 · Subtleties and Allusions
See also: Key Debate: Was Khiḍr a Prophet?
How does revelation differ from rational proof?
They agree in some respects but differ in others. Revelation is wider: rational proof deals with universals and cannot reach particular beings. Revelation is knowledge of the concrete existent itself, while proof works with concepts. Revelation is presential (ḥuḍūrī), proof acquired (ḥuṣūlī). And the path of revelation is infallible and belongs to the prophets and Imams, while the path of reason is sound only in its logic: philosophers, theologians and exegetes can err.
Yet what reaches the rest of us from revelation comes in concepts and words. So when reason is weighed against transmitted proof, what is compared is the Infallible’s spoken statement, not his direct finding. Where reason cannot reach, as with many unseen beings, authentic transmitted evidence still guides; where reason does reach, the same matter is both rational guidance and among God’s signs.
Read in al-Tasnim: Verse 2:38–39 · Unity and Distinction between Proof and Revelation · Verse 2:38–39 · Unity and Distinction between Proof and Revelation
How could the Prophet know the unseen stories he told?
One knows of an event by hearing of it, reading of it or witnessing it. The Prophet did none of these with the stories the Qur’an tells: Neither you nor your people used to know them before this; he rose from among an unlettered people, and you were not present with them. The charge that a Roman blacksmith taught him is groundless: that man could barely speak simple Arabic.
Knowledge of the unseen belongs to God alone in origin, just as creating and giving life do. No one can know or report the unseen except by God’s permission, as His manifestation. So the Qur’an attributes such reports to God: when the Prophet’s wife asked who had told him, he answered, The All-knowing and the All-aware informed me.
Read in al-Tasnim: Verse 3:44 · Denial of Normal Channels of Knowledge for Unseen News · Verse 3:48–49 · The Validity of Attributing Reports of the Unseen to God
See also: Key Debate: Did Jesus Actually Work His Miracles?
Why is revelation said to be “sent down to the Tribes”?
Say, “We believe in God and what has been sent down to us, and what was sent down to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, and the Tribes…” (2:136). Revelation is ascribed to the Tribes because each of the twelve tribes had a prophet, not because Jacob’s twelve sons were prophets: according to Imam al-Bāqir, only Joseph among them was. Revelation is ascribed to Ishmael, Isaac and Jacob because Abraham’s scriptures were current among them until Moses; that a book came down upon each of them is not known.
The verse then speaks of what was given to Moses and Jesus. “Giving” may be broader than “sending down”: it covers not only the scripture but also prophethood and miracles, such as the staff and the raising of the dead. And from their Lord shows that the prophets have nothing of their own.
Read in al-Tasnim: Verse 2:136 · The Secret of Attributing Revelation and Scripture to the “Tribes” · Verse 2:136 · The Difference in Expression Between “What Was Sent Down” and “What Was Given”
How the Qur’an is to be understood
In what language does the Qur’an speak to all people?
The Qur’an is in Arabic, and its fine points need the study of Arabic. But its true language, Āyatullāh Jawādī Āmulī explains, is the language of innate nature (fiṭra), which every human shares in every age. That is why Salmān the Persian, Ṣuhayb the Roman and Bilāl the Ethiopian stood equal before it, and why its call to reflect (47:24) and its challenge (17:88) are addressed to all.
Everyone does not benefit equally. Its knowledge has levels: expressions for the general public, indications for the elite, subtleties for the friends of God and truths for the prophets. Sin, disbelief and blind imitation of forebears veil the heart. So he rejects three extremes: that the Qur’an is a mute riddle, that it is symbolic and meant only for a few, and that knowing Arabic is enough to interpret it.
Read in al-Tasnim: Introduction · The Universal Language of Innate Nature (Fiṭra) · Introduction · The Universal Language of Innate Nature (Fiṭra)
How does the Qur’an teach differently from scholarly books?
Its readers range from the simple to the wise, so it teaches at many levels at once: with wisdom, good instruction and the best argument, and with parables. It proves God’s unity with the philosophers’ argument of mutual incompatibility, If there were within them gods besides God, they both would have been ruined (21:22), and also with the simple picture of a servant with quarrelling masters (39:29).
Unlike a book of science, ethics or law, it weaves rulings together with admonition (fasting is prescribed so that you may become righteous). It does not merely report opinions: what it quotes without refuting, it affirms. It ties natural events to God and to the Hereafter. It picks out from history only what instructs, and it teaches that which you did not know: what humans could not reach without revelation.
Read in al-Tasnim: Introduction · Methods of Expounding Knowledge in the Qur’an · Introduction · The Difference between the Qur’an and Scholarly Writings in Expounding Knowledge
If the Qur’an is clear light, why does it need exegesis?
Exegesis (tafsīr) uncovers what is not immediately apparent. The Qur’an stands between two extremes: it is not so plain that it needs no unpacking, nor so obscure that it falls outside human speech. So it both allows and requires exegesis. It is a heavy word (73:5) that would humble a mountain (59:21), and it speaks of God’s names and attributes, decree and destiny, the soul and the infallibility of prophets and Imams. Its full depth is open only to the purified (56:79), so all exegesis is “to the extent of human capacity.”
Its knowledge also unfolds gradually, like sustenance. Every age brings its own questions and doubts, so scholars must know their time and look at the Qur’an afresh. One example is the secularist claim that religion has no place in politics.
Read in al-Tasnim: Introduction · The Possibility and Necessity of Qur’anic Exegesis · Introduction · Emerging Doubts and Understanding the Qur’an
See also: Key Debate: Religion and Politics
What is “explaining the Qur’an by the Qur’an”?
It is the foremost method of exegesis, and the method of the Prophet’s Household: each verse is explained by other verses, the central and clearer verses lighting up the subsidiary ones. Imam ʿAlī put two whole years of nursing (2:233) together with thirty months of carrying and weaning (46:15) and concluded that the shortest pregnancy is six months, which overturned a sentence of stoning. The Prophet said, “The Qur’an confirms parts of itself with other parts.”
Its forms range from the simple to the subtle: one part of a verse explaining another, a verse read in its context, or one verse supplying what another leaves unsaid. Āyatullāh Jawādī Āmulī names his teacher’s Tafsīr al-Mīzān as the summit of this method.
Read in al-Tasnim: Introduction · Explaining the Qur’an by the Qur’an · Introduction · The Exegetical Methodology of the Prophet’s Household
See also: Glimpse: The Method of Exegesis of the Prophet’s Household · Key Debate: A Criticism of al-Mīzān Answered
Is the Qur’an an authority in itself?
Yes, but not the only one. The Qur’an calls itself light, which shines by itself and lights up other things, and a clarification of all things (16:89). It invites even sceptics to look for contradiction in it (4:82), and for those who do not yet accept the Prophet, only the Qur’an itself can answer that charge. And the Sunnah’s authority itself rests on the Qur’an, since the Qur’an is the miracle that proves the Prophet’s mission. To make the Qur’an’s plain meaning depend on narrations would be circular.
Yet it is independent, not exclusive: the Sunnah and reason are authorities too. Against the Akhbārī claim that only the Infallibles understand the Qur’an, he answers that its full depth is theirs alone. Its outward meanings are open to everyone, and the Imams themselves sent people back to the Qur’an.
Read in al-Tasnim: Introduction · The Qur’an as a Non-Exclusive Source of Authority · Introduction · Doubts about the Independent Authoritativeness of the Qur’an
See also: Key Debate: Is the Qur’an an Authority in Itself?
How are the Qur’an and the Prophet’s Household inseparable?
The Prophet left “the Two Weighty Things”: the Book of God, the greater, and his Household, “and they shall never be separated.” That promise, says Āyatullāh Jawādī Āmulī, is news of the unseen. It requires an infallible Imam in every age who knows the Qur’an’s meanings, and a Qur’an kept from distortion. Their inseparability is more than an Imam carrying a copy of the Qur’an: the Imams are its foremost explainers, and the Qur’an points to them. The Household without the Qur’an would be the Household without the Household, and the Qur’an without the Household would be the Qur’an without the Qur’an.
So a verse is understood in five stages: by itself; in the light of the whole Qur’an; with all the related narrations; testing those narrations against the Qur’an; and only then, where both agree, as the teaching of Islam.
Read in al-Tasnim: Introduction · The Inseparable Link Between the Qur’an and the Prophet’s Family (a.s.) · Introduction · The Five Stages in Understanding the Teachings of the Religion
See also: Glimpse: The Inseparable Link between the Qur’an and the Prophet’s Family · Theme: Imāmah
What part does the intellect play in exegesis?
The demonstrative intellect, kept free of illusion and fancy, is one of the sources of exegesis. “The intellect functions as God’s internal messenger,” but unlike the prophets it is not guaranteed against error. Sometimes it is only a lamp, drawing a verse’s meaning from other verses and narrations; sometimes it is a source, bringing premises from demonstration and the sciences.
Not every certainty can overrule a verse’s plain meaning. Certainty of logical necessity, as in philosophy or mathematics, can. Certainty from experience shows only what usually happens, not what must happen. So Abraham was untouched by the fire (21:69): that is unusual, but not rationally impossible, and needs no reinterpretation. Scientific findings, he adds, should not dictate exegesis, though sound evidence can serve as a witness to the Qur’an’s meaning.
Read in al-Tasnim: Introduction · Interpreting the Qur’an by the Intellect · Introduction · Interpreting the Qur’an by the Intellect
What is forbidden “interpretation by opinion”?
“The Qur’an is not a blank slate” for projecting one’s own views; it is “the feast of God.” Interpretation by opinion (tafsīr bi-l-raʾy) is not true exegesis. It is forcing one’s views onto the text, and the Prophet relates from God: “He who explains My words according to his own opinion has not believed in Me.” It comes from ignorance or folly, and it is blameworthy when it departs from Arabic usage, from sound reason or from the Qur’an’s overall teaching. Even a true meaning, ascribed to God without proof, is like a judge who rules rightly without knowing.
Prior knowledge is not the problem: no one can interpret without it. The fault is in not listening. Having asked his question, the exegete must fall silent and let the text answer, whether it confirms, completes or overturns what he thought.
Read in al-Tasnim: Introduction · Methods of Qur’an Exegesis · Introduction · Psychological and Logical Certainty in the Interpretation of Sacred Texts