ملّا جیون﷫ کا ذوقِ تصوّف : التّفسیرات الاحمدیہ کا اختصاصی مطالعہ

Mullā Jīwan's Sufi Dimension: A Specified Study of the Tafsīrāt-i Aḥmadiyya

Abstract

Mullā Jīwan whose full name was Aḥmad ibn Abī Saʿīd stood as the luminous sun of the juridical tradition, yet his exegetical vision was never content to rest at the threshold of letters and words alone; it pressed onward, crossing into that subtle realm of meaning which Ṣūfiyyah (the people of the heart) have always called Ilm-i Bāṭin. In his enduring masterwork, the Tafsīrāt- i Aḥmadiyya, one encounters a rare and arresting fusion of juridical precision and Ṣūfiyyah Ṣūfiyyah sensibility:a learning that does not merely adjudicate rulings, a sight that cleaves through the veils of the soul, a presence that draws the verses of the Qurʾān down into the mirror of the heart. He was the Imām of the jurists, and yet his heart kept the intimate company of the Ṣūfiyyah; the rigors of the Law could not estrange him from the fragrance of the Path and it was for this reason that he never conceived of Taṣawwuf as a rival to the outward sciences, but understood it, rather, as their inward completion. This, then, is the distinction that sets him apart among the exegetes of the Indian subcontinent: that he made learning an act of worship, commentary an epiphany, and the very words of revelation a mirror for his innermost being and the face that gazed back from that mirror was neither that of the jurist alone, nor of the sufi alone, but of that perfected man who holds both within himself.