The Nature of Revelation: In Defense of Viewing Revelation as the Divine Verbal from the viewpoint of the Shiʿa Mystic, Sayyed Ḥeydar Amoli

Abstract

The present article deals with the nature of revelation from Sayyed Ḥeydar Amoli’s viewpoint by an analytic method. In his works, especially in his most important exegesis of the Quran, under the title Al-Muḥiț al- ‘Aḍam, he has used words and expressions which clearly indicate that he considers the Qur'anic verses (revelation) to be, by nature, the outcome of a divine act in terms of both form and meaning. In several occasions, he explicitly states that the Qur'anic verses are the Words of Allah revealed to the Prophet. No modifications were made by the prophet in the words of Allah. Our evidences in this article show that, in spite of the fact that the concept of prophetic experience and the propositional model of revelation have been attributed to mystics, Sayyed Ḥeydar, as a mystic, rejects those views which consider revelation as a prophetic experience or as a propositional revelation. Rather, he considers it as a divine act, not as the act of the prophet. The more detailed discussion of this issue can be seen in the contents of this article.

Keywords

• sayyid ḥaydar āmulī
• propositional revelation
• speech act revelation
• quran
• al-muḥīț al-aʿẓam