Esoteric Interpretations of the Qur’an: The Foundations of Shia Ismaili Ta’wil

The discourse of the Qur’an-e-Sharif, rich in parable and allegory, metaphor and symbol, has been an inexhaustible well-spring of inspiration, lending itself to a wide spectrum of interpretations.

Imam Shah Karim al-Husayni Aga Khan IV

You see, my mission is situated on three levels. Firstly, religious: it concerns a symbolic exegesis of the Qur’an…Our religion is esoteric, you understand. It is a perpetual initiation.

Imam Shah Karim al-Husayni Aga Khan IV

The global Muslim population of some 1.6 billion people revere the words of the Qur’an as God’s revelation to humankind. When the Prophet Muhammad was alive and guiding his community, he alone was the interpreter and teacher of the Qur’an, which did not yet exist as a text. The Qur’an is primarily a recitation (as the word qur’an means) and it was recited by the Prophet Muhammad to his community of believers as and when he saw fit in response to specific situations and events. When the Prophet was alive as the divinely-authorized guide there was no official “text” or “scripture” of the Qur’an (like today) that people had their own copies of. There was no special class of ‘ulama’ or clerics who interpreted the Qur’an in vastly divergent ways based on their own opinions and scholarly learning.

Given the prevalence and popularity of overly literal and outward interpretations of the Qur’an in today’s climate, the present article offers ten arguments demonstrating that the Qur’an contains esoteric (batini) meanings and requires an esoteric interpretation – called ta’wil. This is followed by a discussion about the legitimate sources of the esoteric interpretation (ta’wil) of the Qur’an and then an overview of the method and framework of ta’wil in the Shi‘a Ismaili tradition of Islam.