An Analysis of Miracle: The Miraculousness of the Quran and its Aspects from the Viewpoint of Al-Fanari

Miraculousness or inimitability is one of the important issues of the Quran, which initiated from the second half of the second century (AH) and reached its full extent of growth and development until the eighth century (AH). Al-Fanari is one of the prominent figures in the field of interpretation sciences of the Quran who has studied and refined this important issue. Shams al-Din al-Fanari is the author of Ein al-A’yan Commentary with a mystical approach. In his view, a miracle is an extraordinary act that is accompanied by tahaddi (to challenges people to do something extraordinary) without meeting with any opposition, and it is different from keramat (an extraordinary thing that some ordinary people do and is not accompanied by challenging people to do something extraordinary) and erhas (the occurrence of extraordinary acts that take place before the claim of prophecy and as an introduction to it). Compared to the scholars before him, al-Fanari has two new approaches to miracle in his commentary: first, the miraculousness which belongs to the Quran itself, and second, the miraculousness which is related to prohibiting people from using the power of opposing the Quran, not from the opposition itself despite having the power. The findings of this study reveals that al-Fanari, in addition to being in agreement with other scholars in the field of miracles, has also had some novel ideas and thoughts, the most outstanding of which is a completely mystical analysis of the authorities of the Prophet of Islam (p.b.u.h.) and his power to present miracles, as well as an analysis of the nature of order with its five components.