Editing Ismailism (section)

===View on the Quran===
{{See also|Esoteric interpretation of the Quran}}
[[File:IslamicGalleryBritishMuseum3.jpg|thumb|262px|Ismāʿīlīs believe the Quran has two layers of meaning, the ''[[Zahir (Islam)|zāhir]]'' meaning apparent, and the ''[[Batin (Islam)|bātin]]'', meaning hidden.]]

In the Isma'ili belief, God's Speech (''kalam Allah'') is the everlasting creative command that perpetuates all things and simultaneously embodies the essences of every existent being. This eternal commandment "flows" or "emanates" to [[Prophets and messengers in Islam|prophets]] through a spiritual hierarchy that consists of the Universal Intellect, Universal Soul, and the angelic intermediaries of ''Jadd'', ''Fath'', and ''Khayal'' who are identified with the archangels [[Seraphiel]], [[Michael (archangel)]], and [[Gibril|Gabriel]] (''Jibra'il'' in Arabic), respectively.<ref name="auto1">{{cite journal |url=https://www.academia.edu/51376060 |title=Shi'i Ismaili Approaches to the Qur'an: From Revelation to Exegesis |journal=The Routledge Companion to the Qur'An |date=January 2021 |last1=Andani |first1=Khalil |doi=10.4324/9781315885360-31 |s2cid=238691055}}</ref><ref name="auto">Khalil Andani, "Reconciling Religion and Philosophy: Nāṣir-i Khusraw's Jāmiʿ al-ḥikmatayn". El-Rouayheb, Khaled, and Sabine Schmidtke. The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Philosophy. Oxford, United Kingdom, Oxford UP, 2017.</ref> As a result, the prophets receive revelations as divine, spiritual, and nonverbal "inspiration" (''wahy'') and "support" (''taʾyīd''), through the means of the Holy Spirit, Gabriel, which is a heavenly power that illuminates the souls of the prophets, just as the radiance of light reflects in a mirror.<ref name="auto1" /> Accordingly, God illuminated [[Muhammad]] with a divine light ([[Nūr (Islam)|''nur'']]) that constituted the divine nonverbal revelation (through the medium of archangel Gabriel), and Muhammad, then, expressed the divine truths contained within this transmission in the Arabic terms that constitute the [[Quran]]. Consequently, the Isma'ilis believe that the Arabic Quran is God's Speech in a secondary and subordinate sense, as it only verbally expresses the "signs" (''āyāt'') of God's actual cosmic commandments.<ref name="auto1" />

According to the 14th Isma'ili Imam and fourth Fatimid Caliph [[Al-Mu'izz li-Din Allah]], "[The Prophet] only conveyed the meanings of the inspiration [''wahy''] and the light – its obligations, rulings and allusions – by means of utterances composed with arranged, combined, intelligible, and audible letters".<ref name="auto1" />

The Isma'ili view on God's Speech is therefore in contrast with the [[Hanbali]] view that it is eternal sounds and letters, the [[Mu'tazila]] view that it is a temporally created provision of sounds, and also the [[Ash'ari]] and [[Maturidi]] views that it is an everlasting nonverbal attribute contained in God's essence. Even so, the Isma'ilis agree with most other Islamic schools of thought that the Quran is a miracle that is beyond imitation and without equal (''mu'jiz''), for its external linguistic form and presentiment of spiritual meanings transcends the limits of eminence of Arabic poetry, prose, and rhyming speech.

The Isma'ilis believe that Muhammad is the living embodiment of the Quran. For instance, the Isma'ili [[Da'i]] and poet Nasir-i Khusraw ([[Nasir Khusraw]]) believed that Muhammad's soul expressed God's nonverbal divine inspiration in the form of two symbolic oral discourses – the Quran and Prophetic guidance ([[Hadith]]). Therefore, on one hand, Muhammad constructed the verbal form of the Quran, and, on the other hand, through his existence, he embodied the living and speaking Quran: "The cause of all existents [''ʿillat al-aysiyyāt''] is only the Word of God, ... [T]he Speaker Prophet is found to be a receptacle [''mahāll''] for the Word of God in the corporeal world and is designated by its names".<ref name="auto1" /> As such, [[Muhammad]] is the "locus of manifestation" (''mazhar'') of God's words, just as a reflective mirror to the radiance of light, and the Quran and Prophetic guidance (Hadith) are verbal manifestations of God's words, which are reflections from this mirror.<ref name="auto1" />

The Isma'ili view of revelation also influences their perception of the meaning of the Quran. In this view, the Quran and prophetic guidance (Hadith) are encoded in symbols in parables that preserve a superior level of meaning. As such, the literal interpretation of the Quran is only the "outward dimension" (''zāhir'') of the divine revelations that Muhammad received, and beyond it lies the "esoteric dimension" (''batin'') of the religion that contains the divine truths (''haqāʾiq'').<ref name="auto1" /> The Ismailis maintain that divine guidance is required to access the divine truths and superior meanings contained within the revelations.

The method of spiritual [[hermeneutics]] that is used to reveal this "esoteric dimension" or ''batin'' of the divine revelation is known as ''taʾwīl''.<ref name="auto" /> According to [[Nasir Khusraw]], ''taʾwīl'' is the process of "returning" something to its metaphysical source.<ref name="auto" /> In the context of ontology, ''taʾwīl'' is to discern an object in its original ontological domain as a symbol and parable that represents a reality in a higher ontological domain <ref name="auto" /> The opposite of ''taʾwīl'' is ''tanzīl'', which is to encode divine realities in the form of symbols and parables that are interpretable to human beings in the material world.

The Isma'ilis believe that besides prophets, God's Speech also illuminates the souls of the Legatees and Imams, through the medium of the Holy Spirit, which allows them to perform many of the spiritual functions of [[Muhammad]]. For example, in the Isma'ili hierarchical ranks (''da'wa''), Muhammad is the Messenger, Imam ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib ([[Ali]]) is his Legatee, and his successors from Imam [[Husayn ibn Ali]] to the Fatimid Caliphs ([[Fatimid Caliphate]]) are the Imams. As a result of being divinely inspired (''muʾayyad''), the Prophets, Legatees, and Imams can perform ''taʾwīl'' and disclose it as instruction (''taʿlīm'') to the lower ranks of the Ismaili ''da'wa'', including regular people.

Unlike prophets, the Imams cannot compose a new ''tanzīl'', instead they interpret the ''tanzīl'' (Quran) and prophetic guidance (Hadith) by reanalyzing them in the context of new circumstances, while retaining the underlying principled spirit, and help guide "spiritual adepts" to the divine truths by disclosing their inner meanings through the spiritual [[hermeneutics]] of ''taʾwīl''.<ref name="auto" /> Every Imam provides this authoritative instruction (''taʿlīm'') to the community during their own time. As a consequence, the Isma'ili Imam acts as the "speaking Quran", while the Arabic Quran, in its written or recitative form, is consigned the position of the "silent Quran".<ref name="auto1" />