A Survey on the Content of Bahr al-Asrar

The emergence of the Quran among the Arabs led to the development of many sciences, including rhetoric, grammar, reading, history, interpretation and so forth. One of the fields of Quranic studies is interpretations and approaches that has been done in different periods of this world's major work. Mystical interpretations of the Holy Quran is one of these works that Iranian Muslims created in this field in different eras. This paper attempts to recognize the status of poetic and mystical interpretation of Bahr al-Asrar which is one of the most important and still being unrecognized works of the Qajar era. This interpretation is written by Mirza Muhammadtaghi Kermani known as Mozafar Alishah who is one of the famous mystics of early Qajar period and is an ancestor of the late Saeed Nafisi. Bahr al-Asrar interpretation or Sab al-Masani is a mystical interpretation written by Surah al-Hamd in Masnavi which takes about 4,000 distiches. Although this work has been printed several times by lithography and once printed by movable-type printing system, but for different reasons the prints are without scientific basis. In this Interpretation Mozafar Alishah describes Holy Surah al-Hamd in twenty Behers and expresses mystical moments in these Behers as he expressed the levels of existence. During these verses there are references in prose, and sometimes he uses the Quran, Imam's Hadiths and lyrics from great poets to emphasize the importance of his work. In this study the themes and content of this work were discussed, as the work and the interpreter were introduced.