Jalal al-Din Al-Dawani and His Commentary of The Surah of al-Fatiha

Abstract Interpretation of the Qur’an that started with the appearance of the Qur’an on the scene of history refers to a continuous act lasting to the doomsday. So, we will deal with a figure whose interpretation of the Qur’an could be considered under the title of commentary of allusion (ishari), Jalal al-D？n al-Dawani. We will first present the tafsir works of al-Dawani. Then we will edit his exegesis of the surah of al-Fatiha based on six manuscript copies. Also we will try to evaluate his work. When we look at al-Dawani’s studies of Qur’anic exegesis, we can see al-Dawani chooses a specific issue as the subject. So, his commentary of the surah of al-Fatiha is a sample of this. The commentary is consists of two parts. The first part examines the relationship of God to creatures, while the second part is about the relationship of creatures to God. Al-Dawani first differentiates the essence of God from His attributes, then studies on the quality of relationship of Divine attributes to creatures in the first part of the commentary of the surah. In the second part, he questions the possibility of reaching God from the world of abundance. Here, he states that arifs, the owners of sayr u suluk, and ahl al-istidlal who hit the right are bestowed favor while he describes those who could not go beyond the curtain of abundance as those who are subjects of God’s anger and who go astray. Summary Preferring the concept of ishara instead of ta’wil in the historical process, Sufis utilized the concept of ishara regarding the qur’anic exegesis in two meanings. The first is interpretations whose moral emphasis is strong in relation to zuhd, which came to mind at the first place. The second one is symbolic expressions having a theoretical language that was seen in Ibn Arabi and Sadr al-Din al-Kunawi. Although this language comprises a comprehensive approach to the world, and therefore the Quran as well, it has not produced a general discourse regarding tafsir, but instead has focused on certain chapters and verses. For example, the language that formed around the chapter of “Ikhlas” is an original example of this phenomenon. One of the commentators in this tradition is Dawani, who is the subject of this article. However, we will not look at Dawani’s commentary on the tafsir of the chapter of “Ikhlas”, but instead we will analyze his epistle on the chapter of al-Fatiha, which we believe to be using the same rhetorical devices. Dawani, who was born in a village nearby Iran’s Kazerun, has been influential, not only in his own region, but also in different cultural basins