Erfaniyat Dar Adab Farsi

     In mysticism, the pilgrim’s progress plays a significant role throughout the path to reaching God, the Almighty. The mystic’s perception of the nature of this spiritual journey plays a fundamental role in shaping his actions. Various mystics have chosen different ways for achieving this objective. Some of the measures undertaken by them are "self-knowledge", "austerity" and "love and affection for God". Seyed Haidar Amoli, following Ibn Arabi, chooses the method of "self-knowledge" and decides to follow the path of "piety" through its different stages. He considers the ultimate end of this spiritual journey to be the observation of the unseen world based on knowledge, which can be gained through cognition of the divine nature, while Mir Seyed Ali Hamedani follows the path of Kabrouyeh and Shatar, which is based on the method of "love and affection". This spiritual journey can start through the love of the mystic and finally reaching God. it can also be in the form of sacrifice of the lover for the beloved and becoming eternal by joining the divine power and the unity of the lover and the beloved. However, both directions reach the same destination and both mystics believe in a way of love and affection towards the creator.

Story is one of the best and most accessible ways which Qur'an uses for conveying the concepts and explaining its religious teachings. Quranic stories are considered as narrations a large proportion of which is devoted to the lives of the prophets. As character is one of the main elements of a narrative and also, since after Moses, the prophet Ibrahim is the most frequent character in Quranic stories, the present article studies how the application of an exegesis approach to the four famous theosophical interpretations of Haghayegh-ol- Tafsir, Latayef-ol-Esharat, Kashf-ol-Asrar, and Rouz-ol-Jenan can detect the formation of the symbolic character of Ibrahim. The study uses library and documentary sources and conducts a descriptive method based on content analysis. The authors have shown that the exegesis approach has been effectively used in tracing the transformation of Ibrahim from the character of a divine prophet to a symbolic figure in theosophical interpretations written between the first to the sixth century. The element of character in these interpretations becomes a dynamic and evolving factor in the narrative plot line in such a way that about the interpretation of the Quran verses related to Ibrahim, we are sometimes faced with a seeker and sometimes with a traveller on the path where his experiences in spiritual conduct are evolving in the path of progress, that is, approaching the truth. From the point of view of mystic commentators, the frequency of divine afflictions in different stages of Ibrahim's life should form a perfect model for his followers.