The Bab's Tafsir Surat al-Baqarah: Commentary on the Surah of the Cow

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Sayyid `Ali Muhammad "the Bab" Shirazi. Tafsir Surat al-Baqarah (Commentary on the Surah of the Cow). In Majmu`ih-'i Athar-i Hadrat-i A`la, INBA Series No. 69. (Tehran: Iran National Baha'i Archives Private Printing, c. 1977). Digitally reprinted here. (Lansing, MI: H-Bahai, 1999). Available on the World Wide Web at /~bahai/areprint/bab/S-Z/tafbaq/baqarah.htm References: MacEoin, Sources for Early Babi Doctrine and History, pp. 46-47. Abbas Amanat, Resurrection and Renewal: The Making of the Babi Movement in Iran, 1844-1850 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989), pp. 168-69, 248. B. Todd Lawson, "The Qur'an Commentary of Sayyid `Ali Muhammad, the Bab," (Ph.D. dissertation, McGill University, 1987), esp. Part I: "The Tasfir surat al-baqarah," pp. 68-249; B. Todd Lawson, "Interpretation as Revelation: The Qur'an Commentary of Sayyid `Ali Muhammad Shirazi, the Bab (1819-1850), in Andrew Rippin, ed., Approaches to the History of the Interpretation of the Qur'an (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 223-256; B. Todd Lawson, "The Structure of Existence in the Bab's Tafsir and the Perfect Man Motif," Cahiers Studia Iranica II, 1992, pp. 81-99. Notes: MacEoin remarks: "In the account of the conversion of Mulla Husayn Bushru'i in the Tarikh-i Jadid, it is related that, when he first fisited the Bab's house in Shiraz, he noticed several books on a shelf. He took one of these down and found it to be a commentary on the Surat al-baqara. The Bab indicated that he himself was its author. As we will see, other accounts of Bushru'i's conversion speak of the Bab's commentary on the Sura Yusuf (Known as the Qayyum al-Asma' or the Ahsan al-Qisas) and refer to it as the young prophet's first work. This has led to some confusion, confusion which seems unnecessary. References to the Qayyum al-Asma' must be taken as meaning the first work composed subsquent to the inception of Shirazi's prophetic career . . . The text of the tafsir on the Surat al-baqara seems to confirm such a view. According to the opening passage, the text was begun in the month of Dhu'l-Qa`da 1259/November to December 1843, when the Bab was in Shiraz. In this section he relates hw he dreamt that the city of Karbala (al-ard al-muqaddassa) rose up in pieces (dharratan dharratan) and came to his house to stand before him, at which moment he was informed of the imminent death of Sayyid Kazim Rashti, an event which took place in the early hours of 11 Dhu'l-Hijja 1259/2 January 1844. The tafsir, the Bab says, was begun on the day following this dream. According to a majority of the manuscripts consulted by me, this work was completed up to the first juz' of the Qur'an (verse 141 of the sura) in Muharram 1260/January to February 1844. INBMC 69, however, contains an additional thirty-eight pages, taking the commentary as far as verse 133. This means that the first part of this tafsir was completed by the time Bushru'i arrived in Shiraz in Jumada I 1260/May 1844, in time for him to find a copy in the Bab's house as related. The second half was finished in the course of the same year and was among the works in the Bab's possession when he travelled to Mecca some months later. It was, as we shall see, one of several manuscripts stolen from him while en route. Mazandarani states that several manuscripts of the first volume exist, although he does not reveal their location . . . Since this tafsir is the ony extended work of the Bab's written before May 1844 and still extant, it is of unique importance as a source of concrete evidence for the development of his thought in the six months or so that led up to the initial announcement of a prophetic claim."
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