The Straight Path

Reviewed by: Muzaffar Iqbal - Center for Islamic Sciences, Canada

Published by: The Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought and The Islamic Text Society. 2 Vols. 2023. Volume 1, 478pp; ISBN: 978-1911141488, Volume 2, 520pp; ISBN: 978-1911141495.

This excellent translation of a shorter tafsīr from the Mamlūk-era (648- 923/1250–1517) exegete and jurist Nūr al-Dīn Aḥmad al-Kāzarūnī al-Shāfiʿī al-ʿUmarī is a valuable addition to the growing library of English translations of pre-modern Qurʾān commentaries. The author of al-Ṣirāṭ al-mustaqīm fī tibyān al-Qurʾān al-Karīm—which has been misleadingly entitled The Straight Path: A Commentary on the Holy Qur’ān in this translated version—died in Makkah at an unknown date, but he is known to have lived in Kāzarūn (140 km west of Shiraz in present-day Iran), his place of birth, during the lifetime of the well-known Safavid-era jurist, philosopher, theologian and poet Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥmmad b. Asʿad al-Dawānī al-Kāzarūnī (830-908/1427-1502), whom he counts among his teachers. Very little is known about the early life of Nūr al-Dīn Aḥmad al-Kāzarūnī, but he rose to prominence in Makkah and his honorific titles indicate that he was a Qurʾān reciter and jurist.

Khalid William’s translation of al-Ṣirāṭ al-Mustaqīm is based on the 2017 Dār al-Risālah edition, edited by Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Shabrāwī, who consulted five manuscripts (one each in Hyderabad, Cairo, and Turkey, and two in the Royal Escorial Library in Madrid (cf. p. 10-11 of the original Arabic edition). Al-Shabrāwī notes other titles: Tafsīr al-Akhawayn (“Tafsīr of the Two Brothers”), which mirrors the title of Tafsīr al-Jalālayn, another Mamlūk-era shorter tafsīr, and Ṭawāliʿ Al-anwār (“The Ascending Lights”), which lucidly captures the essence of this wonderful tafsīr filled with light, beauty, brevity, and deep insights; it could have been used as the title of the English translation.