“The Wayfarer’s Sojourn At The Banquet: The Hermeneutics Of Nāṣir-e Khusraw’s Esoteric Guidance” (With A Parallel English Translation and New Persian Critical Edition of Nāṣir-e Khusraw’s Khwān Al-Ikhwān)

Abstract

The book of Khwān al-Ikhwān consists of 100 chapters. The focus of the book is on divine knowledge whose main source lies within the scripture as the Book of God. The author’s pedagogical approach underlines the methods and sources of acquiring this knowledge. Nāṣir-e Khusraw methodically utilises the hermeneutics of the Ismaili esoteric interpretation (taʾwīl) as his main interpretative apparatus. Having been appointed as one of the top official representatives (sing. ḥujjat) of the Ismaili Imam of the Time, who is recognised as the Speaking Qurʾān – i.e., ‘being himself the scripture made incarnate in speech’ as Nāṣir-e Khusraw expresses in his prelims to the book – the author is justified in having access to the main source of divine knowledge and in his practice of the Ismaili taʾwīl. The one-hundred chapters of the book address the following 10 main themes that – while synthesizing the architecture of the Ismaili esoteric interpretation (taʾwīl) – they follow the order of Revelation (tanzīl) and esoteric interpretation (taʾwīl): 1. Origination 2. Ontology 3. Cosmogony 4. Cosmology 5. Divinity 6. Epistemology 7. Humanity 8. Revelation 9. Eschatology 10. Resurrection. In expounding and elaborating this esoteric interpretive framework, which Nāṣir-e Khusraw calls the ladder of taʾwīl, the author defines the Origination and Resurrection as the source and return of divine knowledge whose conscious realisation enables human beings attain their true spiritual and intellectual divine state, to which he refers as mankind’s second birth. This second birth accentuates the eschatological significance of Resurrection as the purpose of taʾwīl in acquiring divine knowledge.