Synthesis: Sūrat Āl ʿImrān 55–64 (Six-Source Tafsīr Triangulation)

Sources: Ṭabarsī [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan]; Ṭūsī [tusi_al_tibyan]; Baḥrānī, al-Burhān [bahrani_al_burhan]; al-Qummī [qummi]; Ṭabāṭabāʾī, al-Mīzān [tabatabai_al_mizan]; An Enlightening Commentary [enlightening_commentary]. All six present.

The passage recounts the raising of Jesus and God's promise to exalt his followers (vv.55–58), rebuts his deification by the parallel with Adam (vv.59–60), issues the mubāhala (mutual imprecation) challenge to the Najrān Christians (v.61), affirms the true narrative and God's oneness (vv.62–63), and calls the People of the Book to "a common word" (v.64).

Convergence

1. The raising of Jesus (v.55). All sources read God's "gathering" and "raising" of Jesus as His rescue and exaltation; al-Qummī and al-Burhān share, almost verbatim, the al-Bāqir narrative — the twelve disciples, the youth on whom Jesus's likeness was cast and who was crucified, the betrayer, and the true sect of Shamʿūn (Simon). [qummi] [bahrani_al_burhan] Ṭabarsī adds the Prophetic ḥadīth (Bukhārī, Muslim) that Jesus did not die and will descend before the Resurrection. [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan]

2. "Jesus like Adam" (vv.59–60). All agree this rebuts "son of God": creating Jesus fatherless is no stranger than creating Adam without father or mother; the occasion is the Najrān delegation ("who is Jesus's father?" → "who is Adam's father?"), narrated identically by al-Qummī and al-Burhān. [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan] [tusi_al_tibyan] [qummi] [bahrani_al_burhan] [tabatabai_al_mizan] [enlightening_commentary]

3. The mubāhala (v.61) — the central convergence. Every source agrees the Prophet brought ʿAlī, Fāṭima, al-Ḥasan and al-Ḥusayn, and that "our sons" = al-Ḥasan and al-Ḥusayn, "our women" = Fāṭima, "ourselves" = ʿAlī; and that the Najrān Christians, recognising the truth, declined and accepted the jizya. [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan] [tusi_al_tibyan] [bahrani_al_burhan] [qummi] Notably al-Burhān adduces the Sunnī chains for this (Muslim's Ṣaḥīḥ, al-Thaʿlabī, Ibn al-Maghāzilī) alongside the Imāmī ones. [bahrani_al_burhan]

4. "A common word" (v.64). All read it as worshipping none but God and taking no lords besides Him; Ṭabarsī and al-Burhān cite the al-Ṣādiq/ʿAdī b. Ḥātim gloss that obeying the rabbis in making the unlawful lawful is taking them as lords. [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan] [tusi_al_tibyan] [bahrani_al_burhan]

Divergence

1. The depth of the Imāmī harvest from the mubāhala (v.61). All draw the conclusion that ʿAlī is the Prophet's "self" (hence his primacy) and Fāṭima the most excellent of women — but the degree differs sharply. al-Burhān assembles a large dossier: the manzila ḥadīth ("ʿAlī to me as Aaron to Moses"), the Khaybar banner, the People of the Cloak ("these are my Household"), al-Riḍā's debate with al-Maʾmūn on the election of the ʿitra, and Mūsā b. Jaʿfar's proof (to al-Rashīd) that the Prophet's progeny runs through Fāṭima just as Jesus is reckoned among the prophets' offspring through Mary. [bahrani_al_burhan] Ṭabarsī and Ṭūsī draw the same two conclusions (ʿAlī afḍal al-ṣaḥāba; Fāṭima's pre-eminence) more economically, and defend the inclusion of the under-age Ḥasan and Ḥusayn. [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan] [tusi_al_tibyan]

2. The mechanics of the "taking" of Jesus (v.55). Ṭabarsī and Ṭūsī canvass three readings — taking-up-alive (no death), a death of sleep, or inversion ("raising then gathering [by death later]"). [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan] [tusi_al_tibyan] al-Burhān gives al-Riḍā's distinctive account: Jesus alone was "raised alive, his soul taken between heaven and earth, then returned to him." [bahrani_al_burhan]

3. Who are "those who followed you" (v.55)? Ṭabarsī and Ṭūsī weigh "the believers / Muhammad's community" (al-Ḥasan, Qatāda — the stronger view) against "the Christians, above the Jews" (Ibn Zayd). [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan] [tusi_al_tibyan]

4. Doctrinal corollaries. Ṭabarsī and Ṭūsī repeatedly turn vv.56–57 into proofs against the Muʿtazilite "nullification" (iḥbāṭ) and the Mujbira (since God "pays in full" and "loves not the wrongdoers"). [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan] [tusi_al_tibyan] al-Burhān instead reads v.55's "purifying you" through al-Riḍā's Christology.

Synthesis

The passage's argumentative arc — Jesus rescued and exalted, his Adamic createdness refuting his deification, the imprecation that silences the Christians, and the call to a shared monotheism — is held in common by all six. The defining feature is the mubāhala (v.61), on which the convergence is total and striking: every source, and the Sunnī chains al-Burhān cites (Muslim, al-Thaʿlabī, Ibn al-Maghāzilī), identifies the People of the Cloak — ʿAlī, Fāṭima, al-Ḥasan, al-Ḥusayn — as the verse's "sons, women, selves." The divergence is one of elaboration rather than substance: the narration-collections (al-Qummī, al-Burhān) harvest from the event a full Imāmī theology — ʿAlī as the Prophet's very "self" and thus his superior in rank, the ʿitra's divine election above the umma (al-Riḍā), and the legitimacy of the Prophet's lineage through Fāṭima (Mūsā b. Jaʿfar's Jesus-through-Mary analogy) — while the philological tafsīrs (Ṭūsī, Ṭabarsī) reach the same conclusions about ʿAlī and Fāṭima more briefly, and devote their distinctive energy to the qirāʾāt of v.55, the anti-iḥbāṭ and anti-Jabrite proofs of vv.56–57, and the grammar of "Be, and he was." al-Mīzān and the Enlightening Commentary frame the imprecation within the verse's polemic against the Christians. A specialist should note that al-Burhān's very large mubāhala dossier (≈ 20 chains, Imāmī and Sunnī) was rendered representatively, and the qirāʾāt/grammar of Ṭabarsī and Ṭūsī for sense; the convergence on the People of the Cloak is the most strongly cross-attested point in the passage.