Haqa'iq al-Tafsir

Haqa'iq al-Tafsir ("The Realities of Interpretation") is a book in which Abu 'Abd al-Rahman al-Sulami gathered the Sufis' sayings on understanding the Qur'an. The editor of Tabaqat al-Sufiyya counts it the first of al-Sulami's three major books, citing the fact that Abu Hamid al-Isfara'ini asked to see it when al-Sulami came to Baghdad. ³ He gives its opening words, "Praise be to God, who singled out the people of realities for the special secrets", and says many manuscripts survive, among them two in the Egyptian National Library copied in 1270 and 1271 AH. ¹

The editor says that before al-Sulami the Sufis had views on understanding the Qur'an that differed from those current among scholars generally, and that al-Sulami gathered them in this book "without tracing that to any foundation of knowledge"; the reader finds no opinion of al-Sulami's own in it. ²

• The critical position (Sunni scholars): the editor quotes al-Wahidi: "If he believed that this is tafsir, he has disbelieved"; al-Dhahabi: it contains "things that are in no way permissible, which some imams counted as Batini heresy and others counted as gnosis and reality", and he regarded its contents as "nonsense and Qarmatism"; and al-Suyuti, who called it an "unpraiseworthy" tafsir. ²
• The editor's position: Nur al-Din Shurayba holds that the book confines itself to Sufi interpretations "from which the outward sense of the words shies away", that one who reports unbelief is not an unbeliever, and so al-Wahidi's attack is "an unjust attack"; he cites as evidence of its acceptance among leading scholars that al-Isfara'ini wished to hear it read and a pulpit was set up for it. ⁴

The museum does not decide between the two positions.