ABSTRACT
w hen quranic commentaries are mentioned, they are usually associated in our minds with specialized, voluminous works of tafsīr, or exegesis, with their comprehensive interpretative framework covering the whole Quran starting from its first verse to the last. For convenient reasons we tend to ignore the fact that almost every work that deals with the religion of Islam involves, directly or indirectly, a certain understanding of the Quran and certain interpretations of particular Quranic verses. This is simply due to the obvious fact that the whole Islamic religion revolves around this Book. Sometimes even an incidental reference to a verse indicates an implicit, particular interpretation of it. This applies especially to Islamic esotericism. After all is said and done, one comes to the conclusion that the whole Islamic esoteric tradition is essentially an esoteric commentary upon the Quran. Quranic esoteric commentaries, therefore, range from works written for the specific purpose of esoteric commentary to comments scattered throughout all types of Islamic esoteric works. Moreover, the first kind—that is, commentaries in the strict sense—should not be taken as only those that cover the whole of the Quran. They include also commentaries upon one single verse and commentaries upon one sura or group of suras, sometimes very short ones. In addition, many of the commentaries that cover the whole of the Quran are only based on a “reading” of the whole Quran for the purpose of commentary, without giving a systematic, verse-by-verse interpretation of the totality of the sacred Book. Many esoteric interpretations still survive in the form of oral tradition coming down from one generation to another, and many are still in manuscript form and have not as yet been subjected to detailed study. The study of esoteric commentaries is an unexplored, varied, and immense field. In the present survey we shall, of necessity, mention only important authors and works known to contemporary scholarship, works that are far from few in number.
