A Comparative Study of the Scope of the Prophets' Knowledge of the Unseen in Tafsir al-Mizan and Tafhim al-Quran

Islamic thinkers have briefly accepted the prophets' knowledge of the unseen. Meanwhile, Muslim thinkers have long differed on the scope and quality of their knowledge of the unseen. The existence of verses denying and proving the prophets' knowledge of the unseen has increased this ancient conflict. In the present article, with a descriptive-analytical method, the approach of Tabatabayi and Abu al-A‘la Maududi, as the most prominent contemporary commentators of the two sects, towards the prophets' knowledge of the unseen has been studied. Examining the interpretations of these two scholars shows that they have a common opinion about the prophets' knowledge of the unseen in general. According to them, God-given revelation and knowledge is the source of the knowledge of the prophets. On the contrary, they do not have the same view in explaining the scope of the knowledge of the unseen. Tabatabayi puts together the verses that attribute the knowledge of the unseen to God and the verses that assign it to the prophets, and concludes that the prophets have extensive knowledge of the unseen by the permission of God. On the other hand, based on the verses of the first category, Maududi rejects the knowledge of the unseen from anyone other than God, and according to verses 26 and 27 of Surah Al-Jinn and the Efk Incident, as well as some narrations, he considers the prophets' knowledge of the unseen to be limited to their mission.