Ismaili Ta'wil of al-Qalam — The Pen: How 68:1 ('Nun — By the Pen and What They Inscribe') and 96:4-5 ('Who Taught by the Pen — Taught Humanity What It Did Not Know') Are Read in Ismaili Ta'wil as the Pen Being al-Qalam al-Awwal (The First Intellect), the Correlation Between the Cosmic Pen and the Da'wa's Role as Inscriber of Ta'wil Into the Mu'min's Batin (The Tablet), and Why Writing Is a Central Metaphor for Prophetic Transmission

In Ismaili ta'wil, al-Qalam (القَلَم — The Pen, The Reed; from *q-l-m*: to cut, to trim [as in trimming a reed to make a writing pen]; qalam = pen, reed-pen; in classical Arabic, the writing implement was a cut reed [qasab], hence the connection between qalam and the cut/trimmed reed; the Quranic pen: the Quran opens its very first revelation [96:1-5] with writing and knowledge: 'Recite in the name of your Lord who created — created the human being from a clot. Recite — and your Lord is the Most Generous. Who taught by the Pen — taught humanity what it did not know' [96:1-5]; Surah 68 is named after the Pen and opens with 'Nun — By the Pen and what they inscribe' [68:1]; the Pen appears in hadith as the first thing God created: 'the first thing God created was the Pen; He said to it: Write. It said: What shall I write? He said: Write the measure of everything until the Last Hour' [Abu Dawud]; the Pen wrote the decree [qadar] of all things on the Preserved Tablet [al-Lawh al-Mahfuz] before creation; the cosmic Pen and Tablet: Islamic cosmology developed the hadith's Pen into a full cosmic principle: [1] al-Qalam al-Awwal [the First Pen]: the first created being, which inscribed all of creation's events and knowledge onto: [2] al-Lawh al-Mahfuz [the Preserved Tablet]: the cosmic record that contains everything that will happen; the Pen/Tablet pair became a fundamental cosmological symbol: the Pen is active/masculine/principle; the Tablet is receptive/feminine/substance; the Pen writes; the Tablet receives; Ismaili ta'wil of al-Qalam: [1] al-Qalam as al-'Aql al-Awwal [the First Intellect]: in Ismaili cosmology, the cosmic Pen corresponds to al-'Aql al-Awwal [the First/Universal Intellect] — the first emanation from the divine principle; al-'Aql al-Awwal = al-Qalam al-Awwal; the Pen is not a literal writing implement but the principle of intelligent transmission — the capacity to know and transmit knowing; [2] the Tablet as al-Nafs al-Kulliyya [the Universal Soul]: corresponding to the Pen, the Tablet = al-Nafs al-Kulliyya [the Universal Soul] — the second emanation, which receives the intellect's inscription and transmits it further down the hierarchy; the Pen inscribes into the Tablet as the Intellect informs the Soul; [3] the da'wa as the cosmic writing: in the historical world, the da'wa structure enacts what the cosmic Pen-Tablet enacts in the heavenly world; the Imam and da'wa officers [the human 'aql of the community] inscribe ta'wil-knowledge into the mu'min's batin [the human nafs that receives]; [4] 96:4-5 'taught by the Pen — taught humanity what it did not know': the historical teaching by the Pen corresponds to the Imam's ta'lim; the Imam teaches what no one knows from zahiri sources — the batin knowledge that requires the Imam's transmission; [5] 'Nun' [68:1]: the mysterious letter Nun that precedes 'By the Pen' in 68:1 is itself subject to ta'wil; interpretations include: al-Nun as the ink-vessel [the source from which the Pen draws]; al-Nun as the Fish [nun in Arabic can mean fish — Islamic cosmological traditions describe a fish upon which the earth rests]; al-Nun as a cosmic symbol whose batin meaning exceeds any single identification) is Ismaili cosmology's most fundamental writing metaphor.