Yaser M. Haddara

So it’s been a rather long time but now that I’m back I wanted to pick up on the story of David and Goliath as told in surat al-Baqarah. If you click on the “Quran” tag you’ll be able to see the earlier two entries in this thread. But in quick summary I am recalling in this series of reminiscences an occasion for dialog that was presented to me back in grad school days. We had an interfaith discussion group where each session was led by a member of the group who selected a piece of text from his/her own sacred texts, facilitated a discussion around it in the group, then gave a short presentation. I chose the story of Saul, David, and Goliath as told in surat al-Baqarah, verses 246-252. I started with a contemporary commentary written by a Tunisian scholar that highlighted the historical context of the story.

I then moved on to what may be considered representatives of “classic” commentaries. I chose al-Qurtuby and al-Baydawy. I also included one of the leading shi’a commentators, al-Tabarsi.

What I called “classic” then (and still do now) is a tradition of Quranic commentary that was established in broad features by Imam al-Tabary (3rd century hijri). Until a few years ago, his was the earliest authenticated tafseer in published form. There is a published and translated commentary attributed to ibn Abbas radiallahu ‘anhu, but the authenticity of that attribution is dubious. More recently, I am told that other earlier tafaseer have found their way into publication but I am not familiar with those. Historically, scholars of tafseer after Tabary were heavily influenced by his style. The broad features of these commentaries were:

1. Commentary proceeded passage-wise. In other words, the commentator would break down the text into short passages, list the verses in each passage, then proceed to comment on the meaning of the passage and the issues it presented. Addressing themes running through the chapter was rarely done. Even addressing the context of a given passage or the transition from one passage to another was not consistently done.
2. The subjects dealt with in a commentary were clearly identified. They included interpretation of vocabulary, the identification of subjects/objects mentioned without identification in the text (e.g. in our passage a reference to “a prophet of theirs” would elicit discussion as to who that prophet was), the rendering of the overall meaning of the passage, specifying the occasion of revelation if known, discussing linguistic features in the text, and addressing legal rulings derived from the text. Within that range a commentator may emphasize one area over the others (e.g. ibn Atiyya was a commentator more interested in linguistic discussions) but a commentary wasn’t “really” a commentary unless it (a) touched on the majority of these questions; and (b) limited itself to these questions.
3. The sources of commentary were (a) other passages in the Quran itself; (b) prophetic tradition; (c) statements attributed to the companions; (d) Arabic poetry, which helped interpret vocabulary and provided a reference for standards of eloquence; and (e) expert opinion. Controversy arose early on what constituted expert opinion and the limits to which such opinion was to be restricted, but it was clearly impossible to provide a satisfactory interpretation of the text without referencing some expertise on language, history, theology, law, or some other disciplines.
4. Finally, these “classic” commentaries focused almost exclusively on the direct interpretation of text. Legitimate questions had to do with the immediate meaning, implication, or context of the text. Straying farther afield in the form of reflections on metaphor, spiritual inspiration, social import, or scientific or philosophical implications, was either not considered or not encouraged.

While the genre of tafseer continued to invite scholarly effort, and while each commentator tried to produce something that gave some individual contribution, the normative influence of Tabary was so strong as to determine for nearly ten centuries not only the subject matter but the tone and structure of the bulk of commentaries. And it did so across sectarian divisions! So a mu’tazilite mufassir like al-Zamakhshari arrives at theological conclusions directly opposed to those of his sunni peers, but he is (a) asking the same questions; (b) relying on the same sources; and (c) laying out the answer in the same order, organization of text, and tone of commentary!

As for what the classics actually said about the story of Talut, this piece is getting long enough that I think I need to defer that question till next time

Last week was a rather slow week for the blog . Last weekend was the LTP in Montreal, this weekend was the one at McMaster. Between preparing for these and catching up on work stuff I’m now falling behind again on my emails and on responding to comments. I did get a chance to check out a few wonderful blogs of people that either emailed me or left comments here. Check out Hadeel al-Shalchi, Ali Jafferi, and Jaffer Maniar.

On the bright side, with two LTP’s within one week of each other, a new episode of Little Mosque, and various happenings at McMaster and elsewhere, there is plenty inshaa Allah to blog about!

I wanted to go back to the story of Taloot. I waded through my old files last week trying to find my notes from that interfaith session I mentioned in my very first blog entry. I found so many of my old notes of so many things that were happening at and around Stanford in the early 90’s. (Good source for future blog material :> ). But unfortunately, I couldn’t find notes from that discussion. This actually bothered me a little b/c I am not sure I can remember what I actually said about each mufassir. Nonetheless, with one notable exception these tafaseer are all available. So inshaa Allah what I am going to do is to revisit these tafaseer, and as much as I can remember I will inshaa Allah do it in the same order that I used that first time.

The commentary that I had started with was a contemporary Tunisian scholar by the name of al-Tahir ibn Ashur. Both al-Tahir and his son al-Fadil (who passed away before his father) were leading scholars of Quran and tafseer. Al-Fadil ibn Ashur (the son) has a very short book called al-Tafseer wa raijaaluh (Tafseer and its men). Despite its brevity, it is one of the best analyses of the history of tafseer and the different contributions of the leading commentators. Reading this one short text led me to rethink how I had understood the different schools of tafseer up to then. I then had the blessing of coming across and reading al-Tafseer wal-Mufassiroon (Tafseer and scholars of tafseer) by Sh. Muhammad Hussein al-Dhahaby rahimahullah. This text elaborates on the point of view concisely presented by sh. ibn Ashur.

One of the stories shared with me by some of my friends from Tunis was that al-Fadil ibn Ashur (the son) had attained the status of having a column at al-Zaytouna where he sat to teach in the presence of his father. (This was also the practice for leading scholars in al-Azhar and is the equivalent of a “chair” in modern academia). Reportedly, when he would sometimes go a little farther afield than his father preferred the father would rap his knuckles on the column and say to his son, “Fadil: do not speak in the deen with your (baseless) opinion” .

Al-Tahir ibn Ashur (the father) is famous for an incident where he challenged the then Tunisian president Bourgiba. Bourgiba had given a speech to army units instructing them not to fast in Ramadan since they are to be considered engaged in the all-important service of the country and the fast would sap their energies and hinder their work. To counter the objections his remarks engendered he instructed the sheikh to address parliament and endorse his comments. On the designated day Bourgiba addressed parliament in a televised session then invited ibn Ashur to the podium. The sheikh stepped up to the podium, recited the fasting verse from sura al-Baqara, then concluded: صدق الله العظيم وكذب بورقيبة! (Allah the Almighty has told the truth, and Bourgiba lies!)

This scholar wrote a massive commentary on the Quran called al-Tahrir wal-Tanwir (Liberation and Enlightenment). For the particular set of verses that give the story of Taloot (al-Baqara 246-252) ibn Ashur does make a number of very interesting notes on linguistics (e.g. why the Quran uses the name Taloot instead of Saul) and on the order of phrases and how they are linked with each other (e.g. when the people objected to Taloot’s choice as king what did they mean by saying “we are more deserving than he” and why was the most appropriate response one that begins with the statement that “God chose him over you”?)

But the main thing that ibn-Ashur is interested in is to elaborate the lessons of history indicated by these verses. To do this he partly relies on Judaic scriptures to understand the historical context of these events. And to do that he filters the narrative through, and only admits information that is coherent with, the Quranic account.

The most important point highlighted by sh. al-Tahir is that this story appears to have been a turning point for the community of Israel. After the death of Moosa (peace be upon him) he was succeeded in the leadership of the nation of Israel by Joshua. Joshua created a system whereby each small community (town, village, etc.) had an appointed Judge to discharge their affairs. Some of these judges where themselves prophets divinely inspired. And there were also other prophets who did not take a political position with their people. This phase of their communal history is characterized by a government based in scholarship and inherently consultative. Leadership was a matter of scholarly merit, piety, and divine selection. And the processes of leadership did not lend themselves to authoritarianism or to the creation of a privileged class.

The events we’re studying here change all that. The Israelites were defeated by their enemies that occupied a number of their towns, exiled them from these lands, held many of their youth (fighting men) captive, and stole one of their most treasured religious symbols: the Ark of Moosa and Haroon peace be upon them. The Israelites sought to understand their defeat and somehow reconcile it with their understanding of their place in the World (this should sound familiar since Muslims have been in a similar state for quite a while now ). Their conclusion was that the power of their enemies lay in their system of government! They wanted a King and a monarchy and all the trappings of that system that they now held to be superior to their own. And in giving us their example the Quran is inviting us to contemplate not only the superiority of consultative government to authoritarian rule but also the trap of interpreting material success as moral superiority. (It hurts sometimes to feel like so many of us are missing the point, continuously; this is not a reference to some nameless others – I am speaking of myself first and my community of which I am part).

Sh. ibn Ashur then points out that while Allah allows the community of Israel to develop into a state similar in its structure and governance to the polities of the time and region, He instructs the community in what they need to do different. And He does this through the simple manner of the designation of the first royal and his successor. Taloot is chosen on merit. Dawood is anointed king and given wisdom (prophethood). In the Judaic scriptures that ibn Ashur consults Dawood peace be upon him is anointed king before he ever meets Taloot. In the Quran no mention is made of a relationship between Dawood and Taloot, rather his status as prophet-king is directly attributed to divine selection. Either way the emphasis is on qualities and character. The values of a hereditary, authoritarian monarchy are rejected even while the authoritative structures it provides to the administration of the state are adopted.

Sh. al-Tahir ibn Ashur discusses much more that is useful, indeed beautiful, in connection with these verses. But when I had 10 minutes I had to be selective with what I said, and here I have to be selective with what I write.

Next up inshaa Allah: al-Tabary and ibn Katheer. (But it’s gonna be a while ).

When the Quran tells the story of David and Goliath, it’s really the story of King Saul. The Quran speaks of Taloot (طالوت), which is the Arabicized name of Saul. Jaloot (جالوت) is the Arabicization of Goliath - it rhymes with Talut, so if you’re just reading along the parallelism that is set up is one of Talut vs. Jaloot – the divinely-ordained leader of the forces of good against the champion of the forces of evil. Dawood (David) peace be upon him doesn’t come into the picture until the end of the story.

The story of Taloot is one of my favorites. Sometime back in the early 1990’s I was a graduate student at Stanford. The Dean of Memorial Church and of Religious Life at Stanford was Bob Gregg, an insightful and quite wonderful human being. He proposed that some of the leaders of the various religious communities at Stanford should have an interfaith study group that is text-based: in each gathering, one person would be the facilitator. His/her responsiblity was to choose a piece of text from his/her religious tradition and “walk the others through it.” He hosted the group at his home. He went first with the story of Jonah (prophet Yunus peace be upon him) as told in the bible and we had quite the discussion, but that’s another story.

The second time round I volunteered and I picked the story of Taloot. The Stanford campus is home to the Hoover Institution (after President Herbert Hoover). The institution specializes in the study of war, revolution, and peace, and has a decent middle eastern collection in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish. By academic standards there is nothing particularly thrilling about the collection, but for the needs of a lay person like myself it was quite the thing. Hoover had closed stacks – so you couldn’t just go up into the stacks and browse the books. Instead, one would search through the card catalog, write down a call number of a book, and send up a request. Twenty minutes later, voila!

I was supposed to be studying Engineering at Stanford, but God knows I spent many an hour in that library just enjoying these books. The collection on the Quran in particular was quite something. They had every book of tafseer I had heard of, and some that I hadn’t. And they had a number of contemporary surveys of the science of tafseer and its giants that had a considerable impact on the way that I approached these books after that.

In any case, once I had volunteered to present the story of Taloot, I spent a couple of days holed up in Hoover taking notes from every book of tafseer there. I even waded through the tafseer attributed to Mohyiuddin ibn Araby – quite the experience indeed!

If I ever get the time I should probably dig up my notes from that time and post them here. The discussion group had two protestant priests, a catholic priest, a rabbi, a fellow from the bahai community, and myself. I made copies of verses 246-252 of soorat al-Baqara. Seven not very long verses make up the entire story in the Quranic narrative. I mentioned up front that this was the story of David and Goliath, they spent some time reading it, then discussion started. Most people can be quite insightful when they decide to be and this was no exception. People identified several key points, related the passage to their own narratives, etc. But the comment was made very simply that the text is confusing. To someone who has not spent enough time with the Quran this is a book that seems to meander. There is no apparent coherence to the story, one jumps from one scene to the next quite suddenly, and stories of the past are seamlessly interwoven with debates in the present and news of the future. You came out after the seventh verse not really sure if you even understood the story. What happened? And why?

I had heard these sentiments expressed before, not only from “outsiders” to the faith but from Muslims themselves. The feelings were frequently my own whenever I had failed to connect with some passage in the Quran either because some vocabulary was new to me, or because I hadn’t spent time asking the right questions, or because I had come to the passage with my own prejudice, or any of the many other reasons we sometimes misread our own text.

Per the rules of our group I needed to present (10-15 mins) some idea of how Muslim scholars have read the passage. Then we’d get back to the discussion. So I summarized my notes from Hoover. I started with a contemporary Tunisian scholar (ibn Ashour) who focused on the historical background to this story as discussed in Judaic texts. I summarized the classical exegetic approach represented by people such as Tabari, Qurtubi, and ibn Katheer. I mentioned ibn Arabi and other (more “mainstream”) sufi commentators (التفسير الإشاري). And I concluded with Hasan al-Banna’s remarks that see the story as an example of the successive selection of people (تمحيص or اصطفاء) until the ones left are those up to the mission. Aside from talking about the verses themselves I wanted my group mates to have a feel for the multiplicity of approaches that we take to the Quran and the diverse ways in which the Quran becomes guidance.

We still had considerable discussion about the verses. And I was very surprised (ecstatic, but surprised) to find that people changed their viewpoint of the Quran. It wasn’t just that they now “understood” what some commentators had said about the Quran. I would hazard a guess that most of the names I had mentioned were jumbled by the time we left the house that day. That was hardly the point. What some of the people there articulated a lot better than I had been able to was that the key to unlocking a Quranic story is to know up front that it is being told with purpose! One must follow the threads of the story that are highlighted in the text examining them always through the lens of “why?” Why does this story matter? Why are some parts missing? Why is it narrated in chronological or not in chronological order? Why do some pieces of the story seem to refer forward (or back) to other pieces? (How are these pieces connected?) When there is ambiguity, why is it allowed to stand? And if one has some facility with Arabic, why is one word used instead of another?

It is not just that there is a moral to the story, it is that there is a purpose in the telling!