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Keys to the Arcana: Shahrastani's Esoteric Commentary on the Qur'an: A Translation of the Commentary of Surat al-Fatiha from Muhammad b. 'Abd al-Karim Shahrastani's Mafatih al-asrar wa masabih al-abrar. Translated by TOBY MAYER. Qur'anic Studies Series, vol. 6. New York: Oxford University Press, in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies (London), 2009. Pp. xvi + 267 + 123 (Arabic text). $99.
Muhammad b. cAbd al-Karim al-Shahrastäni (d. 548/1153) was an Ismacili who was also known as an Ashcarite theologian and as a philosopher: a man of religious parts, as it were. His descriptive catalogue of the various religious groups known to his time and place (what used to be called a heresiography) has long been valued not only for the information it provides but for the spirit in which it was composed. The K. al-Milal is one of the proof texts for those who would claim that the study of comparative religion was bom during the heyday of Islamicate cosmopolitanism in the early and later medieval periods (from the cAbbäsids to the Mongols). Al-Shahrastäni was also a professor at the famous Nizämiyya of Baghdad for three years.
The book at hand is a careful, learned, and deeply considered presentation of al-Shahrastani's tafsïr, a work that began attracting scholarly attention in "the West" about twenty-five years ago in Guy Monnot's courses at the Sorbonne and in an article he later published in a collected volume dedicated to Henry Corbin. This research on the tafsïr had been stimulated to life by the pioneering scholarship on al-Shahrastäni by M. R. Jaläli-Nä'ini which appeared in 1964. There is no question that these earlier studies have been surpassed by the present work. Given the nature of the original composition, this book is not only a most welcome addition to the general tafsïr and Quranic studies library but also to the broader field of Islamic thought: theology, philosophy, and mysticism. The importance of the tafsïr, correctly postulated in the earlier French scholarship, is now clearly illustrated. The extant unicum of the original...