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Mary and Jesus Persian Art Nasir-i Khusraw’s Esoteric Interpretation  of Jesus’s Virgin Birth

By Karim H. Karim

Editor’s Note: Received by email from Professor Karim yesterday with the permission to publish here. Please view his impressive biography at the bottom and also his other articles in the links below.

The most widely celebrated event in the world is Christmas, during which Christians commemorate the birth of Isa Nabi (Jesus) by his mother Bibi Maryam (Mary). Muslims, unlike Christians, do not believe Jesus to be the son of God but revere him as a great Prophet. The Holy Bible’s New Testament and the Holy Qur’an both speak of the virginity of Mary and the miraculous conception of Jesus.

There are many more references to Mary in the Qur’an than in Bible.

The Islamic revelation’s description of angel Jibril’s (Gabriel) announcement to Mary about the coming birth (Qur’an, 19:16-21) resonates with its account in the Gospel of James (Akyol, 2017); both have details that are not in the New Testament. (The Gospel of James is one of the Christian apocrypha that are not included in the Church’s text of the Bible.) Some religious believers hold the story of Jesus’s virgin birth to be historically true; others do not adhere to its literal aspect but look primarily for its symbolic truth in order to enrich their spiritual understanding.

Certain Ismaili scholars have sought to interpret the Qur’an esoterically through the analytical means of taʾwil to derive its inner meaning. They believe spiritual reality and deep truth to be located in the batin (esoteric) realm. Whereas Muslims generally agree that Qur’anic verses have both outward or zahiri (exoteric) and inner or batini meanings, the Shia and Sufis give greater importance to the batin. Esoteric interpretations of scripture are also conducted in other religions, for example by Jewish Kabbalists and Christian Gnostics. The purpose of such analysis is to obtain knowledge and insight that assist believers in their respective spiritual journeys.

At least two Ismaili scholars, Qadi Nuʿmān (d. 974) (Virani, 2021) and Nasir-i Khusraw (d. 1088), conducted esoteric interpretations of the Qur’anic revelation on Jesus’s miraculous conception. My article addresses Khusraw’s reference to the important event in his book Shish Fasl. Apart from being one of the most accomplished writers in the Persian language to this day, Khusraw was the Hujja (Proof) and Chief Da’i of the Ismaili mission in Khurasan (which historically covered northwestern Afghanistan, northeastern Iran, and southern Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan). He was a renowned author of Ismaili philosophy and also composed poetry of great intellectual depth.

Chapter 21 Verse 91 of the Qur’an states that “She (Maryam / Mary) guarded her private parts, therefore We (Allah) breathed into her Our spirit and made her and her son a sign for all peoples.” Here is Khusraw’s taʾwil of this Qur’anic verse in Shish Fasl:

This is as God says (xxi, 91) in the story of Mary, peace be upon her! “The daughter of Imran who guarded her sexual organs, and We breathed into her of Our Spirit.” This means that Maryam did not turn her ears to the devils (Iblisan) with their speeches. This is because the sexual organ is like the ear, …  “She guarded her sexual organ” means that she did not turn her ear to those who only teach the zahir, formal side of the religion (zahir-sukhaniyan), disregarding the esoteric interpretation (ta’wil). (1949: 29)

Khusraw sought to uncover the symbolic meaning of the Qur’anic verse by using the framework of zahir and batin. (Whereas he values the batin very highly, it is important to note that he does not say that the zahir is without significance.) The Persian scholar symbolically related the female sexual organ to the ear. Mary was virginal, in Khusraw’s reading, because her listening maintained the inner purity of truth. Sexual chastity is esoterically interpreted as a metaphor for spiritual chastity. Mary’s disciplined hearing was not compromised by the noise of exoteric distractions. Within this context, the phrase “We (Allah) breathed into her Our spirit” (Qur’an, 21: 91) refers to divine spirit entering her through the ear.

Such symbolic attribution to the ear was not a new concept. Christian and Muslim theologians had discussed the Virgin Birth for centuries. How did the holy spirit enter Mary’s body? Was virginal conception possible? Vast literatures about Mary and Jesus wrestled with these questions. One belief that is almost unknown in the present but was prevalent until 500 years ago was the conceptio per aurem (conception through the ear). It states that divine essence entered Mary spiritually through the right ear (Salvador-Gonzalez, 2016). The first known reference to the idea of the aural conception was that by the fourth-century Christian saint, Ephrem the Syrian. This belief appears to have been widespread in eastern Christianity and in Europe. It was viewed mainly as a symbolic rather than a physical phenomenon. In the sixteenth century, the Church Council of Trent banned further mention of the idea and it almost completely disappeared – except for depictions in Middle Ages paintings that hang in museums.

Jesus is symbolically referred to as “the Word” in both the Bible and the Qur’an. The New Testament’s Book of John calls him “the Word made flesh” (1:14) and Islamic scripture says that he was “a Word (Kalima) from Allah” (Qur’an, 3:39). Mary says in her interaction with God’s messenger, Gabriel, “Let it be done to me according to Your Word” (Luke, 1:38). The sixth-century Armenian Gospel of the Infancy relates:

Just [as] the Virgin pronounced these words with entire humility, the Word of God entered into her through the ear, and the intimate nature of her body, with all her senses, was sanctified and purified as the gold in the crucible. She was converted into a holy temple, immaculate, mansion of the divine Word. And at the same time the Virgin’s pregnancy began. (Quoted in Salvador-Gonzalez, 2016: 114)

In this symbolic telling, God’s potent, spiritual Word inseminated in the instant that Mary heard it. Upon entering her ear, “Word became flesh” (John, 1:14).

The dominant interpretations of Mary’s virginity have been about its physical nature; however, what emerges is the primacy of her spiritual chasteness. For Sufis, she was “the woman unspoiled by worldly concern” (Schimmel, 1975: 35). Mary was virginal, in Khusraw’s esoteric reading, in the sense that her listening privileged the inner purity of truth: “she did not turn her ear to those who only teach the zahir” (1949: 29). Her supreme aural discipline in safeguarding herself from corrupted speech made her uniquely worthy to receive the supreme Word. Only the completely immaculate person could have this unique privilege. All this suggests that Mary had been carefully prepared to be the perfect medium for the sacred Word. Angels said to her: “Allah hath chosen thee and made thee pure, and hath preferred thee above (all) the women of creation” (Qur’an, 3:42).

Whereas the New Testament refers to Mary’s upbringing in a cursory manner, details appear in the Gospel of James and the Qur’an. They provide intersecting background accounts that narrate her own birth and childhood. Her mother Hannah (Anna) was thankful for conceiving and she dedicated her child to God. The emphasis in the Gospel of James is on Mary’s unique purity. Anna “made a sanctuary in her bed-chamber, and allowed nothing common or unclean to pass through her [Mary]” (Akyol, 2017: 109). She also beseeched God to protect her child from Satan’s influence (Qur’an, 2:36).

Then, at the age of three, Mary is dedicated by her parents to “the Temple of the Lord”, to live and worship there as a kind of nun, and Zachariah [Zakariya, who later fathered Yahya i.e. John the Baptist] becomes her caretaker. But Mary has heavenly caretakers, too, who provide her with miraculous nourishment. The Protoevangelium [i.e. the Gospel of James] notes … : “Mary was in the temple of the Lord as if she were a dove that dwelt there, and she received food from the hand of an angel.” (Akyol, 2017: 109).

These sources suggest that Mary had come under heavenly protection and care long before Gabriel made the announcement to her that she would give birth to Jesus. The goal of the particular mode of her nurturing was to foster spiritual purity. Her chaste upbringing as well as her discerned devotion to the inner truth had made Mary “the pure receptacle of the divine spirit” (Schimmel, 1975: 35).

Works Cited

Akyol, M. (2017) The Islamic Jesus: How the King of the Jews Became a Prophet of the Muslims. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin.

Khusraw, Nasir. (1949). Six Chapters or Shish Fasl, also Called Rawshana’i-nama (trans. W. Ivanow). Brill.

Salvador-Gonzalez, J. (2016) Per Aurem Intrat Christus in Mariam: An Iconographic Approach to the Conceptio per Aurem in Italian Trecento Painting from Patristic and Theological Sources, De Medio Aevo 9(1): 83-122.

Schimmel, Annemarie. (1975). Mystical dimensions of Islam. Univ of North Carolina Press.

Virani, Shafique. (2021).  Hierohistory in Qāḍī l-Nuʿmān’s Foundation of Symbolic Interpretation (Asās al-Taʾwīl): The Birth of Jesus. In Sami G. Massoud (ed.), Studies in Islamic Historiography: Essays in Honour of Professor Donald P. Little. Brill, pp. 147-69.

Karim H. Karim is Chancellor’s Professor at Carleton University. He is an interdisciplinary scholar who has served as Director of the Carleton Centre for the Study of Islam, the Institute of Ismaili Studies, and Carleton’s School of Journalism and Communication. Karim has published extensively on Ismaili and other topics and is a critically-acclaimed, prize-winning author. He organized the Second International Ismaili Studies Conference (2017). Dr. Karim has delivered distinguished lectures at venues around the world including keynote addresses for the Third International Ismaili Studies Conference (2021) and the Association for the Study of Ginans (2015; 2022). He and his wife have established the Karim and Rosemin Karim Prize to recognize under-studied aspects of the study of Ismailis. The Government of Canada has awarded recognition to Professor Karim for promoting cooperation between religious communities.

This article is an abridged version of “Speaking into the Ear: Fecund Truth’s Virgin Medium” (2021) by the author. It is available at: https://www.academia.edu/76255784/Speaking_into_the_Ear_Fecund_Truths_Virgin_Medium

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Nasir-i Khusraw’s Esoteric Interpretation of Jesus’s Virgin Birth