In these excerpts, Baghawī provides interpretations of two Quranic verses pertaining to the heavenly court on the Day of Resurrection. Commenting on Q. 39:69 (“The earth will shine with the light of its Lord. . . .”), Baghawī presents reports explaining that God will manifest Himself (yatajallā) and illuminate the “open grounds of resurrection” (ʿaraṣāt al-qiyāma) with His light. Regarding the expression fī ẓulalin min al-ghamāmin Q. 2:210 (“God will come to them in canopies of clouds [fī ẓulalin min al-ghamām]”), Baghawī writes that God is in fact “shrouded in clouds, in ‘something like white fog’ (ka-hayʾat al-ḍabāb, abyaḍ).” He insists that the ẓulalimplied here connotes “canopies” or “awnings,” not “shrouds” or “shadows.” In his chapter comparing earthly justice with heavenly justice in the early Islamic imagination in Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts, Christian Lange uses this source to highlight medieval exegetes’ efforts to avoid anthropomorphic interpretations of the Quran by reading verses in abstract terms.
This source is part of the Online Companion to the book Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts, ed. Intisar A. Rabb and Abigail Krasner Balbale(ILSP/HUP 2017)—a collection of primary sources and other material used in and related to the book.