The Silent Qur’an and the Speaking Qur’an: Scriptural Sources of Islam Between History and Fervor

From the third/ninth century on, the significant number of works bearing titles such as “Revelation and Falsification,” “Revelation and Alteration,” “The Qur’an and Falsification” show clearly that many Muslims, and especially Shi’ites, deemed the ʿUthmānian version of the Qur’an to have been falsified and censored.¹ In their eyes this state of affairs stemmed directly from the tragic events that followed the Prophet’s death: the violent shunting aside of ʿAlī, the sole legitimate successor of the messenger of Allāh, and the seizure of power, abetted by a wide conspiracy, by Abū Bakr, his companion ʿUmar, and other Qurayshite opponents of the people of the Prophet’s family. After having traduced Muḥammad and his wishes for the succession, it became necessary to falsify his book, particularly if this contained the names of his true followers and real enemies.²

Indeed, these two elements, the Sacred Family of the Prophet and the Qur’an, are inextricably linked; to betray the former ineluctably means to distort the latter. Moreover, they are intimately connected in the famous hadith of “the Two Precious Objects” (al-thaqalayn). Transmitted with many variants, accepted by Sunnis as well as by Shi’ites (though of course with different interpretations), this hadith, which goes back to the Prophet, states essentially that he left after him as a inheritance for his community “Two Precious Objects” that are inseparable, namely, his family and the Book of God.³ This statement of the Prophet thus established an organic relationship between the two elements, that is, for certain believers, an equivalence in holiness as well as in the spiritual economy of Islam. Since the identity of the Qur’an was known, each major political and religious tendency in nascent Islam sought to claim the identity of the second element for its own advantage, to wit, “the family of the Prophet” (expressed variously as ʿitra, ahl al-bayt, āl al-rasūl, āl al-nabī…). Even the Umayyads, coming from the Banū ʿAbd Shams—in other words, the hereditary enemies of the descendants of Hāshim whom Muḥammad belonged to—briefly reclaimed this title (a claim that vanished very speedily after their fall). For some of the early Sunnis, according to various interpretations, this formula denoted either the wives of the Prophet or the totality of believers, that is, the entire Islamic community (the latter interpretation runs counter to the letter and the spirit of the majority versions of the hadith, according to which the Two Objects are destined for the community and are thus distinct from it). Nevertheless, on the basis of plain reasoning, most Sunnis finally came to accept that the family of Muḥammd denoted, in a global sense, all of the Banū Hāshim (which all the descendants of this clan, and, in particular, the Abbasids, maintained) or, more precisely, Muḥammad’s immediate family, namely, his daughter Fāṭima, his son-in-law and cousin ʿAlī and their two sons al-Ḥasan and al-Ḥusayn (which the proto-Shi’ite Alids and later the Shi’ites of all persuasions had always maintained).⁴

For the latter, the treachery of Muḥammad’s enemies who deprived ʿAlī of his succession lay squarely in the breach of the connection joining these two elements, thereby distorting the Prophet’s mission. In effect, they did violence to the Prophet’s family and falsified the divine book. In a tradition going back to the Prophet and transmitted by Shi’ites, he alerted his community: “You will be held to account over what you have made the Two Precious Objects undergo which I have left to you, namely, the Book of God and my Family. Beware, with respect to the Book, do not say that we have altered and falsified it (ghayyarnā wa-ḥarrafnā) and with respect to my Family, do not say, we have abandoned and killed it.”⁵ In a letter attributed to the imam Mūsā al-Kāẓim and addressed to a disciple,⁶ we read: “Do not seek to embrace the faith of those who do not follow us [literally, “those who are not our Shi’ites”], do not love their religion, for they are traitors who have betrayed God and His messenger by betraying what was given in trust. Do you know how they have betrayed these holy trusts? The Book of God was entrusted to them and they have falsified and altered it. Their true leaders [i.e., ʿAlī and his descendants] were designated to them, but they turned away from them.”⁷

As we shall see in this chapter, according to the first Shi’ite Qur’an commentaries, the chief elements censored from the Qur’an were mainly personal names, particularly those of members of the Prophet’s family and their enemies. For those who maintained the thesis of falsification, these excisions from Scripture would have made it unavoidably unintelligible. What might be comprehended in a text specifically revealed on the matter of such and such a person if the names of those persons have been removed? Undoubtedly it was from the period of such authors as al-Sayyārī (see chapter 2) when this thesis must have been especially popular, that is, the third/ninth century or perhaps even earlier, that the twofold doctrine dates; according to this, the Qur’an is a guide, to be sure, but a mute, a silent guide, while the imam is, parallel to it, a Qur’an, a speaking Book. Because of falsification, the Book of God has become a “Guide,” a “Qur’an,” or a “silent Book” (imām, qur’ān or kitāb ṣāmit). In order to recover its Word, the teaching of the genuine initiates—the imams, whose person and/or teaching are said to be “the speaking Qur’an” (Qur’an nāṭiq)—is henceforth necessary.⁸ Thus the two expressions denote the Qur’an and the Hadith, respectively, the two scriptural sources of Islam, while ushering in the problem of the intelligibility of the Scripture and, accordingly, the necessity for hermeneutics as a means of understanding.⁹ Two traditions going back to the imam Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq appear to express this clearly: “If the Qur’an could be read as it was revealed, not even two persons would have disagreed with respect to it” and “If the Qur’an had been left as it was revealed, we would have found our names there just as those who came before us are named there [i.e., the holy figures of earlier religions].”¹⁰ In the light of this sort of tradition, it is falsification that has made the Book incomprehensible and so necessitated hermeneutics, the object of which is to restore its lost meaning. In Shi’ism the imam is the “hermeneut,” the interpreter par excellence and his teachings, his hadiths, are meant above all to be explicit interpretation (tafṣīl, taʿbīr), exegesis (tafsīr), hermeneutics or spiritual elucidation (ta’wīl) of the Book (in the early period all such terms are more or less equivalent). The imams and their teachings are what give the Word to a Qur’an struck dumb by alteration. Over time, this radical thesis, based on that of falsification, will gradually give way to the doctrine according to which the Qur’an itself in its original version is a coded text on several levels, which as a result requires the imam’s hermeneutics in order to be adequately understood.¹¹ I shall come back to this later.

Beginning with its earliest texts, Shi’ism defines itself effectively as a hermeneutical doctrine. The teaching of the imam/walī (friend or ally of God)¹² exists for the essential purpose of revealing the hidden meaning or meanings of Revelation. Without the walī’s commentaries and explanations, the Scripture revealed by the prophet (nabī) remains obscure, its deepest levels not understood. For example, in the parts belonging to the most archaic levels of the Kitāb Sulaym b. Qays, with which we are now familiar, we already read: “ʿAlī declared: ‘Interrogate me before you lose me! By God, at the revelation (tanzīl) of each verse the messenger of God recited it to me so that I might recite it in turn and I have had knowledge of the interpretation of its hidden meaning (ta’wīl).’”¹³

In one of the sermons ascribed to him, ʿAlī, imam and hence hermeneut par excellence, says: “This light by which we are guided, this Qur’an which you have asked to speak and which will not speak. It is I who will inform you about it, about what it contains of knowledge of the future, of teaching on the past, as a remedy for your miseries and an orderly arrangement of your relationships.”¹⁴

The hermeneutical character of Shi’ism, propelled by the teaching of the imams, is just as powerfully illustrated by the important, and celebrated, hadith of “the warrior of ta’wīl” (mujāhid or muqātil al-ta’wīl). This is a prophetic tradition in which Muḥammad is said to have proclaimed: “Among you [i.e., among my followers] there is one who fights for the spiritual interpretation of the Qur’an just as I myself have fought for the letter of Revelation, and that person is ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib.¹⁵

A similar sentence is put into the mouth of ʿAmmār b. Yāsir, the faithful Companion of the Prophet and of ʿAlī, said to have been uttered at the Battle of Ṣiffīn where the latter’s troops clashed with those of Muʿāwiya: “By Him who holds my life in His Hand, just as once we fought our enemies for [the letter] of Revelation, so today we combat them for its spirit.”¹⁶

It is interesting to note that according to this statement, corroborated by others, the true issue of the Battle of Ṣiffīn was the protection of the spirit of the Qur’an by ʿAlī and his followers against the threat of its annihilation by the partisans of an exclusive literalness, that is, Muʿāwiya and his supporters. For the Alids, to break the organic link between the Book and its interpretation by the imam, and so to reduce the Word of God to its literal sense, is to lop off what is most precious from religion. Hence it is the entire spiritual destiny of Islam that is here at stake and therefore the necessity of ʿAlī’s jihād against Muʿāwiya.¹⁷

Following the conception driven by these traditions, ʿAlī, the imam par excellence and the “father” of all the other imams as well as the supreme symbol of Shi’ism, comes to complete the mission of Muḥammad by disclosing through his hermeneutical teaching the spirit concealed beneath the letter of Revelation. The same notion is transmitted by another prophetic tradition reported by the Ismaili thinker Ḥamīd al-Dīn al-Kirmānī (d. shortly after 427/1036): “I am the master of the revealed letter [of the Qur’an] and ʿAlī is the master of spiritual hermeneutics.”¹⁸

Other traditions, reported as well by non-Shi’ite sources, emphasize ʿAlī’s role as an initiate into the arcana of the Qur’an, traditions which of course Shi’ite works continually cite:

The antiquity as well as the centrality of these doctrines doubtless explains both the antiquity and frequency of redaction of exegetical works within the Shi’ite milieu. The bibliographical and prosopographical sources list more than a hundred works of this type, compiled, by and large, during the period of the historical imams, that is, from the first/seventh century to the second half of the third/ninth century. Almost none of the works dating from before the third/ninth century has come down to us except in the form of fragments in later writings. Many of these writings are traceable back to the immediate disciples of such imams as Abū al-Jārūd (of Zaydite tendencies, born ca. 80/699), Jābir b. Yazīd al-Juʿfī (d. 127/744–745), Abān b. Taghlib (d. 141/758–759), Thābit b. Dīnār, better known under the name of Abū Ḥamza al-Thumālī (d. 150/767), or Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. Khālid al-Barqī (d. 274/887–888 or 280/893–894).²⁴ These texts would all have been compilations of exegetical hadiths ascribed to the imams, probably without any additions on the part of the compiler who gave his name to the work.

The traditionist and Qur’an commentator al-Ḥusayn b. al-Ḥakam b. Muslim Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Kūfī al-Washshā’ al-Ḥibarī (d. 286/899)—as the last three elements of his name most often retained by his biographers indicate—was a native of the Iraqi city of Kūfa and a dealer and/or manufacturer of fabrics and garments, since al-washy (from which al-Washshā’ derives) as well as al-ḥibar (whence the name al-Ḥibarī) are terms for garments, most likely of silk or based on this precious fabric.²⁵ Notwithstanding some doubts expressed by some of his biographers, it seems clear that he was a Shi’ite with Zaydite leanings.²⁶ Even so, the Twelvers display no reluctance in drawing on him, which shows, yet again, how porous were the doctrinal boundaries between various Shi’ite movements, especially in the early period.²⁷ Some of al-Ḥibarī’s masters and transmitters can be identified through his biographers or from the chains of transmitters (isnād), either of his own works or from other similar works which cite him.²⁸ Some of his masters are not Shi’ites, such as ʿAffān b. Muslim al-Ṣaffār al-Baṣrī, Ibrāhīm b. Isḥāq al-Kūfī al-Ṣīnī, or Jandal b. Wāliq al-Taghlabī al-Kūfī; still, most are Shi’ites often with affiliations to the Zaydite branch. It is noteworthy how many of the men are from the city of Kūfa. Thus, to begin with, the imam Muḥammad b. ʿAlī al-Jawād (the ninth Twelver imam), al-Ḥusayn b. al-Ḥasan al-Fazārī al-Kūfī (considered a Shi’ite extremist, a ghālin), al-Ḥusayn b. Naṣr b. Muzāḥim al-Minqarī (son of the renowned author of the Waqʿat Ṣiffīn), al-Ḥasan b. al-Ḥusayn al-ʿUranī al-Anṣārī (one of the Zaydite leaders of the time), al-Faḍl b. Dukayn al-Kūfī (known as a moderate Shi’ite), Mukhawwil b. Ibrāhīm al-Nahdī al-Kūfī (a Zaydite who took part in the armed uprising of Yaḥyā b. ʿAbd Allāh), or Yaḥyā b. Hāshim al-Ghassānī (an important Zaydite personage). The same phenomenon is found among his disciples and transmitters. Of the non-Shi’ites mention may be made of Aḥmad b. Muḥammad Ibn al-Aʿrābī, Khaythama b. Sulaymān al-Qurashī, ʿAlī b. Muḥammad al-Nakhaʿī al-Qāḍī. And the Shi’ites: Furāt b. Ibrāhīm al-Kūfī (author of the celebrated Tafsīr), Ibn ʿUqda Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Kūfī (Jārūdite Zaydite), Aḥmad b. Isḥāq b. al-Buhlūl al-Anbārī (a Zaydite judge), al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī b. al-Ḥasan al-ʿAlawī al-Miṣrī together with ʿAlī b. Ibrāhīm al-ʿAlawī al-Madanī or ʿAlī b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sabīʿī al-Kūfī (the last three all Zaydite scholars and notables).

Two of al-Ḥibarī’s works have come down to us: al-Musnad, a collection of sixty-three traditions on different subjects going back to contemporaries of the Prophet (Ḥudhayfa, Khālid b. al-Walīd, Ibn ʿAbbās, Abū Ayyūb al-Anṣārī, ʿĀ’isha, ʿAlī, etc.). The great majority of the traditions deal with the countless virtues and the praise, especially by the Prophet, of ʿAlī’s good qualities.²⁹ The second work is of course his Qur’an commentary, which has been edited at least twice.³⁰ The work is known under several titles: Tanzīl al-āyāt al-munzala fī manāqib ahl al-bayt (“The Revelation of the Verses Concerning the Virtues of the Members of the Prophet’s Family”), Mā nazala min al-Qur’ān fī amīr al-mu’minīn (“What Has Been Revealed in the Qur’an Concerning the Commander of the Faithful,” i.e., ʿAlī), Mā nazala min al-Qur’ān fī ahl al-bayt (“What Has Been Revealed in the Qur’an About the Members of the Prophet’s Family”), etc., and, more commonly, Tafsīr al-Ḥibarī (“The Qur’an Commentary of al-Ḥibarī”).³¹ The main transmitter of the book is the Iranian-born Shi’ite scholar Abū ʿUbayd Allāh Muḥammad b. ʿImrān al-Marzubānī al-Baghdādī (b. 296/908–909, d. 384/994).³² The commentary as such along with its addenda contains one hundred traditions, almost all of which go back to the Companion Ibn ʿAbbās and refer to the presumed allusions or hidden meanings of the Qur’an dealing with ʿAlī, the members of his family, his followers, and his enemies. From this perspective the work may be deemed to belong, to some extent, to the genre of the asbāb al-nuzūl (“the circumstances of Revelation”) in a Shi’ite version whose identity is concealed beneath the authority of Ibn ʿAbbās, a highly revered figure for non-Shi’ites and considered “the father” of Sunni Qur’an exegesis.³³

To gain a clearer sense of al-Ḥibarī’s Qur’an commentary, we here translate some excerpts (omitting the chains of transmitters of traditions—isnād—not pertinent to our subject):

• Commentary on Sura 2 (al-Baqara), verse 25: “Announce the good news to those who believe and who do good works.” Ibn ʿAbbās: “[This verse] was revealed with regard to ʿAlī, Ḥamza [b. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib], Jaʿfar [b. Abī Ṭālib] and ʿUbayda b. al-Ḥārith b. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib.”³⁴

• Qur’an 2 (al-Baqara)/45: “Fortify yourselves with patience and prayer; this may indeed be an exacting discipline but not for the humble.” Ibn ʿAbbās: “‘Humble’ is he who abases himself in prayer [before God] and who goes enthusiastically to prayer; this deals with the Messenger of God and ʿAlī.”³⁵

• Qur’an 2 (al-Baqara)/81–82: “No! He who has committed evil and whom sin engrosses…” Ibn ʿAbbās: “This was revealed with regard to Abū Jahl.” “Those that have faith and do good works are the heirs of Paradise and shall abide thee forever.” Ibn ʿAbbās: “This was revealed with particular regard to ʿAlī for he was the first to be converted [to Islam] and the first after the Prophet to have performed the canonical prayer.”³⁶

• Qur’an 3 (Āl ʿImrān)/61: “Come! Let us summon our sons and your sons, our wives and your wives, our people and your people and let us subject ourselves to an ordeal [literally “a reciprocal imprecation”]…” Ibn ʿAbbās: “[This verse] was revealed with regard to ‘the persons’ of the Messenger of God and ʿAlī; [the expression] ‘our wives and your wives’ refers to Fāṭima; ‘our sons and your sons,’ that is, Ḥasan and Ḥusayn [sic: the two names lack the article].”³⁷

• Qur’an 4 (al-Nisā’)/1: “Fear God in whose name you make requests of one another as well as the wombs [that bore you] for God watches you…” Ibn ʿAbbās: “This was revealed with regard to the Messenger of God, the members of his family and his parents; for on the Day of Resurrection all kinship will be abolished except for his.”³⁸

• Qur’an 5 (al-Mā’ida)/55: “You have no master but God and His Messenger and those who believe, who perform the prayer and give alms while bowing down.” Ibn ʿAbbās: “This was specifically revealed with regard to ʿAlī.”³⁹

• Qur’an 5 (al-Mā’ida)/67: “O Messenger! Proclaim clearly what has been sent down to you from your Lord, [for] if you do not do that, you are not delivering His message.” Ibn ʿAbbās: “This was revealed with regard to ʿAlī. The Prophet had received the command to proclaim ʿAlī [as his successor]. Then he took him by the hand and said, ‘He whose patron (mawlā) I am, ʿAlī is his patron as well. Lord! Love him who loves ʿAlī (wāli man wālāhu) and be hostile to him who is hostile to him.’”⁴⁰ This tradition is made complete by another which comments on Qur’an 13 (al-Raʿd)/43, recorded by the traditionist ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAṭā who cites the Imam Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad al-Bāqir: “God revealed to His Messenger: ‘Proclaim to the people: He whose patron I am has ʿAlī as his patron as well.’ But the Prophet, out of fear of the people, did not proclaim this.⁴¹ Then God revealed to him: ‘O Messenger! Proclaim clearly what has been sent down to you from your Lord, [for] if you do not do that, you are not delivering His message.’ It was then that the Messenger of God took ʿAlī by the hand, on the day of Ghadīr Khumm, and proclaimed, ‘He whose patron I am has ʿAlī as his patron as well.’”⁴²

• Qur’an 9 (al-Tawba)/18–19: “The only ones who[really] visit God’s places of worship are those who believe in God and the Last Day, who perform the daily prayer, who give alms, and who fear God. Those people will be without a doubt amongst the rightly guided.” Ibn ʿAbbās: “This verse was reserved exclusively for ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib.” Qur’an: “Do you reckon giving water to the pilgrim and visiting the Sacred Mosque to be the same as those who believe in God and in the Last Day?” Ibn ʿAbbās: “[the first phrase] was revealed with regard to the [clan of] Ibn Abī Ṭalḥa, the guardians [of the Temple at Mecca], and [the second] with regard to the son of Abū Ṭālib [i.e., ʿAlī].”⁴³

• Qur’an 9 (al-Tawba)/20–21: “Those who believe and who have migrated and striven in God’s way with their possessions and their persons are greater in rank in God’s view. They are those who will be glorified. Their Lord gives them the tidings of mercy and approval from Him and gardens where they will have everlasting bliss.” Ibn ʿAbbās: “This was revealed solely with regard to ʿAlī.”⁴⁴

• Qur’an 13 (al-Raʿd)/7: “You are simply a warner and for every people a guide has been given.” Abū Barza: “I heard the Messenger of God say, ‘You are simply a warner,’ and he placed his hand on his own breast [in other words, at the verse that designated the Prophet]; and while reciting ‘and for every people a guide has been given,’ he indicated ʿAlī with his hand.”⁴⁵

• Qur’an 14 (Ibrāhīm)/27: “God confirms those who believe by firm speech.” Ibn ʿAbbās: “This refers to the walāya of ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib.”⁴⁶

• Qur’an 32 (al-Sajda)/18: “Is he who is a believer like him who is profligate?” Ibn ʿAbbās: “‘The believer’ here designates ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib, and ‘the profligate’ is al-Walīd b. ʿUqba b. Abī Muʿayṭ.”⁴⁷

• Qur’an 33 (al-Aḥzāb)/33: “O you, people of the Household! God wants only to remove uncleanness from you and to purify you wholly.” Ten or so traditions reported by several Companions of the Prophet (Ibn ʿAbbās, Abū al-Ḥamrā,’ Anas b. Mālik, etc.), and especially by Umm Salama, the Prophet’s wife, identify “the people of the Household” of this verse with the Five of the Cloak, namely, Muḥammad, ʿAlī, Fāṭima, al-Ḥasan, and al-Ḥusayn.⁴⁸

• Qur’an 37 (al-Ṣāffāt)/24: “Hold them firmly! They are to be questioned.” Ibn ʿAbbās: “These people will be questioned about the walāya of ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib.”⁴⁹

• Qur’an 66 (Li-ma tuḥarrimu ou al-Taḥrīm)/4: “But if you two support one another against him [i.e., the Prophet], know that God is his protector, as well as [the angel] Gabriel and the just among the believers.” Asmā’ bint ʿUmays: “‘The just among the believers’ is ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib.” The same verse as commented upon by Ibn ʿAbbās: “The expression ‘you two’ designates ʿĀ’isha and Ḥafṣa. ‘God is his protector’ refers to the Messenger of God. ‘The just amongst the believers’ was revealed exclusively with reference to ʿAlī.”⁵⁰

It seems to me that this short sample of reports, which are after all quite repetitive, is enough to provide a clear picture of the nature and contents of al-Ḥibarī’s Tafsīr. The different Qur’anic verses are taken as codes designating persons or historical groups who are identified completely with personages whose religious knowledge and knowledge of the Qur’an stand as authoritative (the Prophet’s Companions, Followers (tābiʿūn) or Shi’ite imams, etc.). In this identification of individuals “concealed” under the literal sense of the Qur’an, ʿAlī has the lion’s share by far. The deeply pro-Alid character of our Tafsīr is thus not in doubt, and yet all proceeds as though al-Ḥibarī, by resorting to the authority of persons who cannot be accused of Shi’ite sectarianism (notably Ibn ʿAbbās), sought on, the one hand, to establish his impartiality and his moderation and, on the other, the reality—objective because not tendentious—of the sanctity of ʿAlī as well as, to an implicitly lesser degree, that of the other members of the Prophet’s family (ahl al-bayt).

Al-Ḥibarī’s moderation, however, is not limited merely to this. For him, exegesis discloses the spirit of the Qur’an, its hidden meaning, when those persons about whom the Word has been revealed are identified. Nevertheless, perhaps because of his Zaydi affiliation, our author never casts doubt on the authenticity of the accepted text by asserting the notion of falsification (taḥrīf). For other tendencies too, especially in the tradition that will eventuate in Imamism, the importance of the personages and of their historic roles forms the center of gravity of the faith itself; hence such notions cannot figure explicitly in the text of Revelation. In a letter to his close disciple al-Mufaḍḍal al-Juʿfī, the sixth Imam Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq puts great stress on the fact that true faith lies in the knowledge of persons (inna al-dīn huwa maʿrifat al-rijāl), that knowledge of persons is the religion of God (maʿrifat al-rijāl dīn Allāh), and that these persons are the friends of God, particularly the Prophet, the imams and their followers, on the one hand, and, on the other, the enemies of God, that is, the adversaries of the imams and their followers. Thus the very basis of faith rests on recognizing God’s allies and their opponents, that is, God’s adversaries.⁵¹ It is for this reason that many Shi’ites maintained that the original Qur’an, the integral version uncensored by official authorities, included the names of the principal personages from these two groups. Such compilations, especially those of an exegetical nature, as that of al-Sayyārī, and later those of Furāt, ʿAlī b. Ibrāhīm al-Qummī, al-ʿAyyāshī and others, include a large number of citations taken from this “Qur’an of ʿAlī”—citations that obviously do not occur in the Qur’an known to everyone—in which many historical personages, and especially the members of the ahl al-bayt, are mentioned by name.⁵² According to several traditions, all the influential members of the Quraysh (by which the enemies of the Prophet and of ʿAlī may be understood) were named in the Qur’an before they were effaced by those who falsified it.⁵³ Leaving aside this sort of assertion, countless sources and/or exegetical traditions—Imami but also Ismaili—maintain that the positive words, expressions, or passages of the Qur’an often symbolically designate the friends of God, most especially the ahl al-bayt and the imams, just as the negative expressions designate their opponents.⁵⁴

The Book of Sulaym b. Qays (chapter 1) relates a tradition that, all by itself, sums up practically all the elements examined here: the necessity for ta’wīl as hermeneutics of the Qur’an, explication of the hidden meaning of the Book, which has the effect of illumining the spirit covered by the letter along with the political stakes involved in the elaboration of the sacred Scripture and hermeneutical practice. This tradition takes the form of a dialogue between ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAbbās (this is our Ibn ʿAbbās), an eminent member of Muḥammad’s family, and the Umayyad Muʿāwiya b. Abī Sufyān, the relentless enemy of ʿAlī, as is well known:

Ibn ʿAbbās: “Do you forbid us [i.e., the ahl al-bayt, the members of the Prophet’s family] to read the Qur’an?”

Muʿāwiya: No.

Ibn ʿAbbās: Do you forbid us to seek to know its spirit?

Muʿāwiya: Yes.

Ibn ʿAbbās: Then [in your view] we ought to read the Qur’an without wondering what God’s intention was [in revealing this or that verse]?⁵⁵

Muʿāwiya: Yes.

Ibn ʿAbbās: But which obligation is more important: to read the Qur’an or to put it into practice?

Muʿāwiya: To put it into practice.

Ibn ʿAbbās: But then how can we put it into practice properly without knowing the divine intention that lies hidden in what God has revealed to us?

Muʿāwiya: Ask those who comment on the Qur’an differently from you and the members of your family [i.e., the family of the Prophet].

Ibn ʿAbbās: By God! The Qur’an was [mainly] revealed regarding my family and so I should ask after its meaning from the members of the family of Abū Sufyān [and others…]?

Muʿāwiya:…Well, then, read the Qur’an and comment on it, but say nothing about what God revealed in your own regard or what the Prophet proclaimed about you. Relate other traditions…⁵⁶

Even if it is difficult to accept the authenticity of this dialogue, at least in its totality—since Muʿāwiya readily admits that God and the Prophet have expressed themselves in favor of his historic enemies—it cannot be denied that it does explain and justify, on its own, the old, recurrent Shi’ite notion that the Qur’an remains “mute” so long as it has not been subjected to the hermeneutics of an imam from the Prophet’s family, which is thereby identified with the authentic language, the true word of the Qur’an that reveals “God’s intention.” Whence the conceptual pairing, mentioned earlier, of the Qur’an as “the silent Book or Guide” (kitāb/imām ṣāmit) and of the imam as “the speaking Qur’an” (qur’ān nāṭiq).⁵⁷

The kind of exegesis encountered in al-Ḥibarī, discerning all sorts of persons from the Prophet’s entourage beneath the veil of one Qur’anic verse or another, occurs as well among non-Shi’ite authors—true, in much more limited measure and particularly, as already emphasized, within the context of the “circumstances of Revelation.” But it develops into a veritable literary genre within Shi’ism in which, over time, two characteristics assume ever greater amplitude: first, the suppression of non-Shi’ite individuals in the chains of transmission in favor of Shi’ites, especially the holy imams, as the main transmitters of tradition or the leading exegetes of the Qur’anic text. Hence the persons identified beneath the veil of the letter of the Qur’an will become, in the order of their importance, ʿAlī, the other holy members of the Five of the Cloak (thus, apart from ʿAlī, the Prophet Muḥammad, his daughter Fāṭima, his two grandsons al-Ḥasan and al-Ḥusayn), the historical adversaries of the latter from the Shi’ite perspective, the other imams, the followers of these, and their enemies.

We might call this literary genre that of “personalized commentaries,” a term that is not terribly elegant but has the advantage of clarity. These are quite plentiful in Shi’ism. We may cite as examples:

In the third/ninth century, hence in al-Ḥibarī’s day: Mā nazala min al-Qur’ān fī amīr al-mu’minīn (“What has been revealed in the Qur’an with regard to the Prince of Believers,” i.e., ʿAlī) by Ibrāhīm b. Muḥammad al-Thaqafī (d. 283/896), author of the renowned Kitāb al-ghārāt.⁵⁸

In the fourth/tenth century: the Tafsīr of Furāt al-Kūfī (d. ca. 300/912), a disciple of al-Ḥibarī;⁵⁹ Kitāb al-tanzīl fī’l-naṣṣ ʿalā amīr al-mu’minīn (“The Book of the Revelation in the Text of the Qur’an with Regard to the Prince of Believers”–known also under other titles) of Ibn Abī al-Thalj (d. 322/934 or 325/936–937);⁶⁰ Asmā’ amīr al-mu’minīn min al-Qur’ān (“The Names of the Prince of Believers in the Qur’an”) by Ibn Shammūn Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Kātib (d. ca. 330/941–42);⁶¹ Mā nazala fī’l-khamsa (“What Has Been Revealed About the Five”—i.e., the Five of the Cloak) and Mā nazala fī ʿAlī min al-Qur’ān (“What Has Been Revealed About ʿAlī Drawn from the Qur’an”) by ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Jalūdī al-Baṣrī (d. 332/944);⁶² Ta’wīl mā nazala min al-Qur’ān fī ahl al-bayt (“Esoteric Interpretation of What Has Been Revealed in the Qur’an About the Family of the Prophet’s Abode,” with variant titles) by Muḥammad b. al-ʿAbbās al-Bazzāz, known as Ibn al-Juḥām (alive in 328/939–940);⁶³ Mā nazala min al-Qur’ān fī ṣāḥib al-zamān (“What Has Been Revealed in the Qur’an Regarding the Master of the Time,” i.e., the Mahdi—another title with variants) by Ibn ʿAyyāsh al-Jawharī (d. 401/1010), the author of the Muqtaḍab al-athar.⁶⁴

In the fifth/eleventh century: Āy al-Qur’ān al-munazzala fī amīr al-mu’minīn ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (“The Qur’anic Verses Revealed About the Prince of the Believers ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib”) by al-Shaykh al-Mufīd (d. 413/1022);⁶⁵ two books by al-Ḥākim al-Ḥaskānī (d. after 470/1077–1078), namely, Khaṣā’iṣ amīr al-mu’minīn fī’l-Qur’ān (“The Specific Qualities of the Prince of the Believers in the Qur’an”)⁶⁶ and Shawāhid al-tanzīl (“Witnesses to Revelation”).⁶⁷

In the sixth/twelfth century: Nuzūl al-Qur’ān fī sha’n amīr al-mu’minīn (“The Revelation of the Qur’an Concerning the Rank of the Prince of the Believers) by Muḥammad b. Mu’min al-Shīrāzī (exact dates unknown);⁶⁸ Khaṣā’iṣ al-waḥy al-mubīn fī manāqib amīr al-mu’minīn (“Particularities of the Clear Revelation Concerning the Virtues of the Prince of the Believers”) by Ibn al-Biṭrīq al-Ḥillī (d. 600/1203–1204; see the bibliography).

In the eighth/fourteenth century: al-Durr al-thamīn fī khams mi’a āyat nazalat fī amīr al-mu’minīn (“The Precious Pearl of the Five Hundred Verses Revealed Regarding the Prince of the Believers”—there are also variants of this title) by al-Ḥāfiẓ Rajab al-Bursī (see the bibliography).

In the tenth/sixteenth century: Ta’wīl al-āyāt al-ẓāhira fī faḍā’il al-ʿitrat al-ṭāhira (“Esoteric Interpretation of the Outer Meaning of the Qur’anic Verses Revealed with Regard to the Virtues of the Pure Family,” i.e., the family of the Prophet) by Sharaf al-Dīn al-Astarābādī.

In the thirteenth/nineteenth century: al-Āyāt al-nāzila fī dhamm al-jā’irīn ʿalā ahl al-bayt (“Verses Revealed in Denunciation of Those Who Are Unjust Toward the Prophet’s Family”) by Ḥaydar ʿAlī al-Shīrwānī ⁶⁹ or al-Naṣṣ al-jalī fī arbaʿīn āyat fī sha’n ʿAlī (“The Clear Text of Forty Verses on the Rank of ʿAlī”) by al-Ḥusayn b. Bāqir al-Burūjirdī.⁷⁰ We observe finally that the writing of this sort of work continues to the present day within Shi’ite milieus.

Al-Ḥibarī’s Qur’an commentary is one of the oldest texts of its type to have come down to us. The commentary of another renowned Zaydite, Muqātil b. Sulaymān (d. 150/767) is clearly much older, but, on the one hand, he was Zaydite solely in politics and Murji’ite in theology and, on the other hand, and precisely for this reason, his work, though original in many aspects, offers little that is specifically Shi’ite. Thus he stands outside the frame of our complex of problems.⁷¹ As a result, it is works such as the Tafsīr of al-Ḥibarī that appeared to have introduced an initial form of esotericism into specifically Shi’ite Qur’an exegesis. In this regard, our text belongs squarely within the tradition of pre-Buwayhid exegetical works.⁷² These texts display several noteworthy characteristics:⁷³ none of those commentaries that has survived treat the Qur’an as a whole; simply a more or less broad selection among the suras and/or the verses is subjected to exegesis. The commentaries are made up almost exclusively of traditions ascribed to the people of the Prophet’s family (ahl al-bayt); this is what is termed al-tafsīr bi’l-ma’thūr (literally, “commentary by traditions”). This selection is typological by nature and deals mainly with those verses best suited to receive typically Shi’ite exegesis in the spheres of theology, jurisprudence, and history and, still more specifically, with reference to the ahl al-bayt, their followers and their adversaries. Exegesis of a grammatical, lexicological, philological, or rhetorical type is almost completely absent. In this respect it may suffice to mention the tafsīrs by (pseudo?) al-Ḥasan al-ʿAskarī, the eleventh imam of the Twelvers (in the version transmitted by Abū al-Ḥasan Muḥammad b. al-Qāsim al-Astarābādī),⁷⁴ by al-Sayyārī (third/ninth century),⁷⁵ by ʿAlī b. Ibrāhīm al-Qummī (d. after 307/919), by Furāt al-Kūfī (d. ca. 300/912), by al-ʿAyyāshī (d. beginning of the fourth/tenth century),⁷⁶ and, of course, that of al-Ḥibarī. Moreover, I have termed this pre-Buwayhid Shi’ism—nourished by huge bodies of hadiths (as will be seen in later chapters) or, more precisely, by the doctrines that provide its foundations—the “original esoteric and nonrationalistic” tradition.⁷⁷

Matters will change with the coming to power of the Buwayhids shortly before the end of the first half of the fourth/tenth century. The reasons for this are tangled and complex; Shi’ite political dominance will cause this period to be termed “the Shi’ite century” of Islam; indeed, alongside the Buwayhids at the very center of the caliphate, the Fatimids, the Carmathians, as well as the Ḥamdanids, reign over the most significant areas of the Islamic empire. A further reason: the complete occultation of the last Twelver imam in 329/941 according to tradition. And a third and principal reason: the turn toward rationalism in Islamic thought. The combination of these historical, political, and religious factors leads, among other things, to the rise of a new class of Twelver jurist-theologians who gravitate toward the Buwayhid princes and strive to justify their rule. With the Sunni Abbasid caliphate still in place, and Sunnis still in the majority, these scholars feel a pressing need for legitimacy and respectability, and so they begin to assume a critical distance from those of their predecessors belonging to the “original esoteric and nonrationalistic” tradition. This is the beginning of the development, at the very heart of Twelver Shi’ism, of a new “theologico-juridical, rationalist” tradition that henceforth will become predominant and majoritarian and will thrust the primitive esoteric tradition into isolation.⁷⁸ As far as exegetical literature is concerned, the monumental commentary by a brilliant representative of this new tradition, al-Shaykh al-Ṭūsī (385–460/995–1067), his al-Tibyān fī tafsīr al-Qur’an, is a representative indicator of this turning point. This is quite likely the first commentary on the entirety of the verses of the Qur’an in which specifically Shi’ite matters are almost completely rubbed out, sugarcoated if not indeed submerged in exegeses of a grammatical, lexicological, theological, and juridical sort. In fact, side by side with authorities belonging to the ahl al-bayt, others, including even Sunnis, as well as the personal opinions of the author himself (this is what is called al-tafsīr bi’l-ra’y), are added to the mix.⁷⁹ From this period onward, commentaries sticking to the original tradition to which al-Ḥibarī’s work belongs, will become the exceptions, except following the Safavid period, from the tenth/sixteenth century on, and the partial recollection of Imami traditionalism.⁸⁰

To return to al-Ḥibarī’s Tafsīr: In what does its esotericism consist? In the first instance, it is conceivable that a perception of the text of the Qur’an as a coded message requiring exegesis to reveal its secrets could be seen in its own right as an esoteric procedure of an initiatory sort. The personalized commentary, disclosing specific historical personages beneath the veil of the Qur’anic letter, doubtless displays the oldest and the most elementary form of exegetical esotericism, destined to become ever more complex over time, as we shall see. And yet perhaps there is more. Beyond the persons so identified in the divine message, what does this genre of Shi’ite Qur’an exegesis seek to transmit?⁸¹ Is there a secret teaching contained in the personalized commentaries in general and in al-Ḥibarī’s Tafsīr in particular? Does there exist some “subliminal message” that the authors of this literary genre are attempting to insinuate for the faithful?

Obviously, the persons, whether positive or negative, who are directly targeted, even if not explicitly cited by the Divine Word (according to the view of the proponents of the falsification thesis) assume in the eyes of the faithful a dimension that is paradigmatic, emblematic, polarized in a positive or a negative manner, respectively. When God deigns to speak of the members of the Holy Family of the Prophet, or of their friends or adversaries, all these figures become the protagonists of a sacred history of universal scope: they are the actors in a cosmic battle between Good and Evil. As the Qur’an ceaselessly reminds us, they repeat and reenact the battle that the prophets and saints of the past had to wage against the injustice and ignorance of their opponents. Now, the letter of the Qur’an (tanzīl), at least in the version commonly known, does not allow for a complete comprehension of this basic truth. Rather, the hermeneutics (ta’wīl) of the imam makes perception possible. On the one hand, the Forces of Good and the Forces of Evil and, on the other, the letter and the spirit of the Book, those two notions underlying the literature of personalized commentary, appear to signal the transition toward a major religious evolution: the initial form, still elementary, of what I have termed elsewhere the double view of the world characteristic of Shi’ism; the dualist vision and the dual vision, distinct and yet indissoluble and complementary.⁸² I shall come back to this at greater length in later chapters.

At this stage, the initial vision seems to come down to a dualistic conception of humanity. Accordingly, the universe is a vast battlefield where the people of Good and the people of Evil—otherwise known as the different allies of God (walī, plural awliyā,’ i.e., prophets, imams, saints of all periods) with their followers, on one side, and their adversaries with their partisans, on the other, clash in conflict throughout the entire span of creation. Adam and Iblīs, Abraham and Nimrod, Moses and Pharaoh, Jesus and Pontius Pilate, Muḥammad/ʿAlī and Abū Bakr/ʿUmar are the protagonists in the long history of this combat. This dualism grows out of a “theory of opposites” (ḍidd, plural aḍdād) exemplified by fundamental “couples” such as imam/enemy of imam (ʿaduww al-imām), people of the right/people of the left (aṣḥāb al-yamīn/aṣḥāb al-shimāl), guides of light/guides of darkness (a’immat al-nūr/a’immat al-ẓalām), or even walāya/barā’a, that is, holy love toward God’s allies and distancing from their enemies.⁸³ The enemies of walāya, the dark powers of barā’a, are not necessarily pagans and unbelievers. The Israelites who betrayed Moses by joining the cult of the Golden Calf, or the Companions of the Prophet who betrayed him by rejecting ʿAlī, his sole designated successor, are not non-Israelites or non-Muslims, but rather they are those who reject the fundamental message of the founder of the religion, what Shi’ism calls walāya, the love and authority of God’s Ally, and in so doing they empty the religion of what is most profound within it. In fact, in the Islamic period, the adversaries, the enemies (ʿaduww, pl. aʿdā’), are those who rejected ʿAlī’s walāya and afterward that of the imams descended from him. In effect, this involves almost all the Companions, and especially the first three caliphs, the Umayyads, the Abbasids, and, in a general sense, those whom Shi’ites call “the majority” (al-akthar) or “the masses” (al-ʿāmma), that is to say, those who will end up being called “the Sunnis.”⁸⁴

This dualistic conception, already quite old in Alid milieus—among those eventually known as Shi’ites—is naturally driven by the personalized commentaries such as that of al-Ḥibarī. As we have seen, the negative phrases and concepts of the Qur’anic text are almost systematically connected with the adversaries, the real as well as those presumed to be on ideological grounds, of Muḥammad and of ʿAlī, just as the positive statements and notions are associated in almost all instances with ʿAlī, his family members or his followers. This hermeneutical attitude is plainly announced in several traditions that Shi’ite sources draw on continually:

We have already broached these traditions in considering the Book of Sulaym b. Qays (chapter 1). In a certain sense, this early work forms another textual basis for the dualistic vision since it is entirely devoted to a denunciation of the corruption of mainstream Islam after the Prophet’s death, a corruption due to the treachery and thirst for power of almost all the Companions, with the first two caliphs chief among them. The latter effectively seized control of the nascent Islamic community by shunting ʿAlī aside from a power that belonged to him by right by God’s command and that of His messenger. Moreover, the Kitāb Sulaym b. Qays at the same time reports a large number of traditions containing personalized Qur’anic commentaries:

Verses 89:25–26 are linked to Abū Bakr and to ʿUmar: “For on that Day no one will punish as He will punish. No one will bind with chains like His.”⁸⁸ Verses 9:100 and 56:10 are said to be linked with ʿAlī: “Those who led the way, the first of the Emigres and the Helpers [of the Prophet]” and “Those who went first are those closest [to God].”⁸⁹

Verses 98:7 and 6 are associated with ʿAlī’s friends and enemies, respectively: “Those who believe and perform good works are the noblest of humankind” and “Those amongst the People of the Book who do not believe as well as the polytheists will be in hell-fire for eternity; they are the worst of humankind.”⁹⁰

Verses 14:37; 22:77 and 2:143 are associated with ʿAlī: “[Lord] make the hearts of certain men incline toward them”; “O you who believe! Bow down and prostrate yourselves, worship your Lord and perform good works in the hope of victory”; “We have made you a just nation so that you may testify to mankind.”⁹¹ The same is so for verses 11:17 and 13:43: “He who has received a revelation from his Lord and hears [the Revelation] proclaimed by a witness”; “He who has knowledge of the Book.”⁹²

Lastly, the famous verse 33:33 is linked with the Five of the Cloak:⁹³ O you, Members of the Household! God seeks only to remove uncleanness from you and to purify you wholly.”⁹⁴

One of the esoteric strata of this sort of Qur’an commentary consists then in justifying and in maintaining a dualistic conception of humanity in the minds of the faithful by inscribing it within the very fabric of the sacred Book.

Yet another stratum appears to play precisely the same role with respect to the second notion: the dual conception of the Word of God. Accordingly, Revelation is made up of two levels: the letter, in its patent, literal, exoteric sense, and the spirit, in its secret, hidden, esoteric dimension. The prophet-lawgivers, the messengers (nabī, pl. anbiyā’ or, more frequently, rasūl, pl. rusul) are the messengers of the letter of the divine Word destined for the majority of believers, while their imams are the messengers of the spirit of the same Word imparted to a small number of initiates. This dialectic based on the complementary pairing of the prophet and the imam, of the nubuwwa (status of prophethood) and of the walāya (status of divine alliance, of the imamate), of the letter of revelation and its spiritual hermeneutic (tanzīl/ta’wīl), stands at the very center of a dual vision of the sacred Scripture in accord with which every divine Word bears at least two levels: a level manifest and exoteric (ẓāhir) which conceals a level that is secret and esoteric (bāṭin), with the hidden imparting meaning to the manifest. As we have seen, for the earliest Shi’ite exegetical works, the personalised tafsīrs, the essential esoteric element of the Qur’an lies in the identification of the historical persons to whom the revealed text alludes, both explicitly or implicitly.

Yet another hypothesis might be posited as well: it is possible that this dual conception of the divine Word occurred as a consequence of belief in the falsification and censorship of the Qur’an. The original, integral text containing the names of all the protagonists, preserved in the original passages of the Revelation, was sufficiently clear as not to require commentary. Recall the aforementioned tradition of Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq: “If the Qur’an could be read as it was revealed, no two persons would have disagreed about it.”⁹⁵ At that point letter and spirit had not been separated and so they existed solely as such: the letter was the spirit and the spirit the letter. The clarity of the letter and the brilliance of the spirit formed a single and unique light perceptible to all. Falsification ruptured this unity of the text and made commentary necessary. The dual conception of Scripture, making the Hadith the commentary on the Qur’an, thus came about after the notion of falsification. It is conceivable that both viewpoints—namely, the Qur’an made unintelligible through falsification (probably the older view) and so requiring hermeneutics and the intrinsically enigmatic character of the Qur’an necessitating hermeneutics by its nature—circulated together and for the most part in Shi’ite milieus of the third/ninth century; it is even conceivable that the popularity of these viewpoints resulted from their very antiquity. Nevertheless, it is difficult to know what the majority view was at this period or even if one viewpoint excluded the other. In any case, as noted earlier, over time, and with steady marginalization of the notion of falsification from the Buwayhid period onward (see chapter 2), the first viewpoint was gradually set aside. Within this doctrinal context it is worth noting that the figure of ʿAlī, as he emerges in a striking number of verses, transcends the historical individual in order to symbolize the figure of the imam par excellence, supreme in representing not only all the guides of all times but also their very nature and function, that is, the divine alliance (walāya).

We have already seen the organic relationship that links Revelation with the figure of the imam, the messenger of the spirit, who is the tongue of the Book without which it remains “silent.” Lacking the imam’s explications, the sacred Scripture remains only as a letter, closed because unintelligible, and consequently, inapplicable. ʿAlī is the symbol of this “master of hermeneutics” (ṣāḥib al-ta’wīl) who is the walī/imam, a notion that countless traditions come to illustrate. Furthermore, the first Shi’ite imam is also the supreme symbol and the personification of walāya, a notion that over time will take on ever greater density, as we shall see later.

The two notions are thus intimately linked. Scripture possesses a hidden level. The revelation of this level illumines the struggle between Good and Evil by identifying the personages in conflict, the Allies of God and their opponents. Thus a new relationship has been established between Qur’anic exegesis, the Hadith, ethics, and theology. Here it may be helpful to recall one piece of evidence. As we have seen, Islam was born and took shape amid violence, within a multidenominational ambience of civil wars. As a result, the first theological speculations in Islam were born within this ambience. The endless discussions between Shi’ites, Murji’ites, Qadarites, Muʿtazilites, Jabrites, etc. revolve mainly around such vital questions as the following: Why are we engaged in ceaseless combat amongst ourselves? What lies at the origin of this violence: divine will or human actions? What constitutes legitimate authority? Does the latter derive its origins from God’s will or indeed from human choice? In other words, from determinism or from free will? Who is the just guide, who the injust leader? Who is a believer, who an unbeliever? What are the criteria of genuine belief, of apostasy, of unbelief? What solutions are there to these problems?⁹⁶ Shi’ite doctrinal thinking takes shape in the very same ambience, and its responses to these sorts of question are grounded in its perception of the historic events and their implications during Islam’s beginnings: treachery toward the Prophet Muḥammad and his message, conspiracy against his successor ʿAlī, distortion of his religion and falsification of his Book, thus rendered incomprehensible in its letter, the necessity for hermeneutics as a means of attaining the spirit and hence the intelligibility of the revealed text.

Finally, let us recall one other piece of evidence. In the third/ninth century, at the time when al-Sayyārī and al-Ḥibarī were writing, the Shi’ites were already history’s vanquished. Their minority religion was suppressed and ostracized and for centuries they suffered countless horrific massacres. The fourth/tenth century interlude with its Shi’ite domination of the most important regions of the Islamic world would be short-lived, and the return of a pure, harsh Sunnism, ushered in by various Turkic dynasties from the fifth/eleventh century onward, would restore things to their former state, at least until the Mongol invasion. History is pitiless and cruel to the vanquished. To endure it, they must manage to keep a certain distance from it. Metaphysics and mysticism, enveloped in an ever more refined esotericism, appear to have helped the faithful in the effort to surmount these circumstances. In the following chapters we shall explore this further.