Document Type : Academicm and Research
Authors
Assistant Professor, Quranic Sciences and Hadith Department, Shahid Mahallati Higher Education Complex, Qom, Iran
Abstract
Highlights
In the Holy Quran, sometimes a verse or a part of a verse does not appear to be related to what precedes or comes after it. A part of verse thirty-three of the al-Ahzab Chapter, known as the Purification Verse, has such circumstances. In this chapter, verses twenty-eight to the end of verse thirty-four are about the wives of the Messenger of God (peace be upon him and his household), in which God Almighty reminds them of certain things in a reprimanding tone and warns them against certain actions, but in a part of verse thirty-three, He addresses the “Ahlulbayt” (people of the household) with a change of address and tone: “Indeed Allah desires to repel all impurity from you, O People of the Household, and purify you with a thorough purification” and again addresses the wives of the Prophet (peace be upon him and his household) in verse thirty-four: “And remember what is recited in your homes of the signs of Allah and wisdom. Indeed, Allah is all-attentive, all-aware.” This sudden change of address and narrations that introduce the referents of the final part of verse thirty-three of the al-Ahzab Chapter as the five People of the Cloak has resulted in the creation of two incorrect approaches.
The first incorrect approach is that some Shiite scholars have considered this lack of homogeneity of the context as a reason for the displacement of these verses and, in other words, the spatial distortion of the verses. The second incorrect approach is that some Sunni scholars have also considered the existence of such a context as a reason for rejecting Shiite beliefs and not limiting the “Ahlulbayt” to Lady Fatimah, Imam Ali, Imam Hassan, and Imam Hussein (peace be upon them). Judging the existing opinions and verifying their correctness dictates the context of the chapter and that of the verses in question be examined with more care and attention. For this purpose, by comparing the views of Muhammad Taqi Modarresi and Ibn Ashour, who have examined the arrangement of the mentioned verses by referring to the context of the verses, this article seeks to answer the question of whether it is possible to find a solution that neither contradicts the muatwatir narrations of the denominations regarding the assignment of the title of “Ahlulbayt” to the “Five Pure Ones” nor does it lead to belief in the place distortion by referring to the context governing the entire chapter and verses twenty-eight to thirty-four.
The key phrases in Ibn Ashour’s interpretation of the Purification Verse are “Ahlulbayt”, “impurity”, and “purification”, which have been examined with a focus on the change of pronouns, context, and narrations of the two denominations. Ibn Ashour (1420 AH/1999) considers the meaning of “house” in the verse in question to be the house of each of the wives of the Messenger of God (peace be upon him and his household), and his contextual evidence is the phrase “And remember what is recited in your homes…” in the next verse. Ibn Ashour considers the addressees of the Purification Verse to be the wives of the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him and his household) and the reason for the change of the pronouns from the feminine to the masculine plural is the presence of the Prophet of God (peace be upon him and his household) among the wives and in the sense of prevalence. Ibn Ashour, when confronted with the numerous narrations of the two denominations that consider “Ahlulbayt” to refer to Imam Ali, Lady Fatimah and Imam Hasan and Husayn (peace be upon them), does not accept that they are the cause of the revelation of this part of the verse by citing Ibn Kathir and doubting the source of the mentioned narrations (vol. 21, p. 247). Ibn Ashour interprets the divine will mentioned in the verse as the existential will, and based on that, believes that God has purified the souls of the wives of the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him and his household) and protected them from committing major sins (vol. 21, p. 247).
Unlike Ibn Ashour, Modarresi considers the cause of the revelation of the verse to be specific to Imam Ali, Lady Zahra, Imam Hasan, and Imam Hussain (peace be upon them). His Quranic evidence for this claim is the context of the whole Chapter of al-Ahzab. He has first explained the connection between this part of the verse and the entire chapter, and then the connection between the wives of the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him and his household) and the abovementioned part of the verse. He considers the meaning of “purification” to be God’s special favor to the “Ahlulbayt” in terms of knowledge, piety, and infallibility. From his point of view, the divine will in this verse is the existential will (vol. 10, p. 335).
The attention of both exegetes has been related to the context of the verses and narrations and both of them have considered the divine will in the purification verse to be the existential will. Ibn Ashour considers the Verse of purification to be only about the wives of the Messenger of God (peace be upon him and his household). This is despite the fact that Modarresi, unlike Ibn Ashour, considers only Amir al-Muʾmineen, Lady Zahra, Imam Hasan, and Imam Hussain as the referents of the Verse of Purification and does not include the wives among the referents of the mentioned verse. The second difference between these two exegetes is that Ibn Ashour does not differentiate between “the houses of the Prophet” (buyūt al-Nabi) and “house” (bayt), while Modarresi interpreted the former to be related to material houses and the latter to be related to spiritual matters. And the third difference is that Ibn Ashour was unable to explain the connection between the reprimands and reproaches directed at the wives with the attributes mentioned in the Purification Verse.
An examination of the interpretative opinions of Ibn al-Ashour and Modarresi reveals that Ibn al-Ashour’s views encounter many problems, among which we can indicate that they do not conform with the context governing the chapter and other verses regarding the wives of the Messenger of God (peace be upon him and his household) in the al-Tahrim Chapter and they do not conform with many narrations accepted by the two denominations. In contrast, the conformity of Modarresi’s view with the context governing the al-Ahzab Chapter and other verses of the Quran, as well as conformity with the narrations accepted by both denominations, has caused his view to be free of the issues raised against Ibn Ashour. According to Modarresi’s point of view, although the Verse of Purification has a different cause of revelation from the verses related to the wives of the Prophet (peace be upon him and his household), due to its close connection with the Verse of Emulation and the connection with the verses related to the wives of the Messenger of God (peace be upon him and his household), it is placed in the mentioned place in the arrangement of the verses of the al-Ahzab Chapter.
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