TEHRAN – British expert of Islamic studies Annabel Keeler’s “Sufi Hermeneutics: The Quran Commentary of Rashid al-Din Maybudi” has recently been released in Persian by Miras-e Maktub Institute in Tehran.

Rendered into Persian by Javad Qasemi in collaboration with the Tehran-based Meybodi Foundation, the book provides invaluable ground for a deeper understanding of Persian mystical poetry and prose and other major works of Sufi literature.

The English version was released in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies in 2007.

It also explores the interplay between scriptural exegesis and mystical doctrine in a twelfth-century Sufi commentary on the Holy Quran that was previously little-known outside the Persian-speaking world.

Keeler obtained a BA in Persian from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London in 1981, after which she came to Cambridge to read for a Ph.D. in Islamic studies, the subject of her thesis being a 12th century Persian Sufi commentary on the Quran. 

Her research interests are largely centered on the hermeneutics of Sufi Quran commentaries, those composed in both Arabic and Persian, and the investigation of ways in which mystics have expounded their doctrines through the interpretation of Quranic verses. 

Rashid ad-Din Meybodi was a 12-century Iranian Sunni scholar and mystic who wrote a monumental commentary on the Holy Quran whose title translates as “Unveiling of Mysteries and Provision of the Righteous”.  

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