Devotional Wisdom: Commentaries on Prayer and Supplication in Imami Shiʿi Islam

Abstract

This dissertation examines the significance of supplication (duʿāʾ) in Imami Shiʿi Islam, exploring its meaning as deduced by four different scholar-commentators, using methods of hermeneutic reading. Supplication is inherently important for Shiʿi Muslims, not only as a species of the Imams’ reported sayings, but also because of the meaning assigned to it. While the source’s significance is inherent and universal to all Imamis, the meaning is rarefied, requiring special access to the productions of meaning and the understanding of their explanations. The featured commentators, Sayyid Quṭb al-Dīn Muḥammad Nayrīzī (d. 1173/1759), Sayyid Kāẓim Rashtī (d. 1259/1843), Mullā Hādī Sabzivārī (d. 1289/1873), and Sayyid Ruhollah Khomeini (d. 1409/1989), apply their own intra-Imami mode of thought to their hermeneutic discourse. They rely on linguistic, traditional (hadith), and theological evidence as indicators of their own overarching tradition. It becomes indispensable to have a tradition that allows one to coalesce what the focus of consensus over meaning ought to be, however obscure or error-prone it may appear. Their intended purpose is to produce the opposite effect: to provide a transparency of meaning based on a commentator’s reasonable inferences, drawn from reliable sources of hadith, that prove the veracity of their interpretation and, by implication, improves their individual status as authorities of the Imams’ traditions. This dissertation consists of two parts that together constitute a study into a culture of devotional literacy and the authors who have made contributions towards it, most of whom remain unknown in Western academia. In Part 1, comprising three chapters, I begin with an overview of the history of extant works counted under the genre of Islamic supererogatory prayer, including with regards to their context, structure, and sources. I then shift to the figure of Ibn Fahd al-Ḥillī (d. 841/1437–38) and his ʿUddat al-dāʿī, a watershed work on the resources and ethical import of Shiʿi devotion. This brief departure from the historical account expands upon the current scholarship on Islamic occultism, showing that the devotions featured in Ibn Fahd’s work, subsequently standardized by the Safavids, have their origins in practices and identities that were concealed or rejected under the institutionalizing effects of the state. Part II, comprising four chapters, pivots to the focal case studies. I consider each author’s method of investigation and their assimilation of a supplication’s content to their tradition of Imami Shiʿism. Their commentaries are at once a demonstration of their incredible acumen and the social capital earned through authorial credentials. Based on this analysis, I affirm commentaries as a forum for varying perspectives on topics inspired by each supplication’s pericopes. Finally, the appendix sections include a survey of the featured supplications (Duʿāʾ al-ṣabāḥ/al-simāt/al-saḥar) and their historical provenance as imparted in the hadith collections, as well as an English translation of Nayrīzī’s Persian commentary. I posit that the commentators’ hermeneutics are means of promoting diverse enterprises of thought, while refreshing the relevance of supplication as a devotional tradition for Shiʿi Muslims. Shiʿi supplication today possesses a lasting pietistic prominence because of this commentary tradition and the ritualistic importance attributed to it by clerical specialists. Although commentaries often reflect certain biases or preconceptions tied to commitments to religious tradition, they also offer valuable new insights, particularly in areas where tradition plays a significant role in the life of a Shiʿi Muslim. These contributions help preserve a community bound by rites and beliefs, repeatedly under historical attack by the dominant sociopolitical order, while shaping the conceptual content of the community’s worshipful performances and expressions. Commentaries are edifying by their demonstration of an ideal of wisdom and the enrichment of proper ethical emotions and intuitions. Here, habits of thought and of devotion dovetail to cultivate a more perspicacious Shiʿi—one who, as a partisan of the Imam, understands the deeper meanings behind their suppliant words