Spiritual Gems: The Mystical Qur’an Commentary Ascribed by the Sufis to Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq

The mystical Qur’an commentary attributed by the Sufis to Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq (d. 148/765) This corpus of exegetical comments constitutes arguably the earliest extant mystical commentary on the Qur’an. It was preserved and transmitted by the Sufís of the early centuries of Islam, and is to be found in the 4th-5th/ 10th-11th century compendium compiled by M. b. al-Husayn al-Sulamí (d. 412/1021), in which Ja’far al-Sadiq is one of the most frequently cited authorities.

Spiritual Gems is the first ever full translation of this important corpus from al-Sadiq. Complete with analytical introduction and scholarly notes, the book contains detailed exposition of the methods and levels of scriptural interpretation used in this commentary and of the cognate ontological continuity between the levels of the human microcosm.

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Ja‘far al-Sadiq is believed to be the sixth infallible Imam, or spiritual leader, and successor to the Islamic prophet Muhammad. He is the founder of Shia fiqh, known as Ja’fari jurisprudence. He was an astronomer, an alchemist, an Islamic scholar and theologian, a writer, a philosopher, a physician, and a physicist. Farhana Mayer studied Arabic and Islamic studies, specialising in Qur’anic hermeneutics, at the University of Oxford, where she received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees. In addition to her independent research on interpretations of the Qur’an, she has worked for the Islamic Texts Society, Cambridge, and is currently with the Institute of Ismaili Studies, London, where she is a researcher and editor in the Qur’anic Studies Unit. She is co-volume editor of volume one of the IIS/OUP Anthology of Qur’anic Commentaries series: On the Nature of God (2008).