The Quranic Tree of Bitterness and Its Inverse
The tree of al-Zaqqum is named in three places in the Quran, but most vividly in two passages that the ta’wil tradition reads together. In Quran 37:62-66 God asks whether this is a better lodging or the tree of al-Zaqqum, which He has made a trial (fitna) for the wrongdoers — a tree that springs forth from the root of Hell-fire (asl al-jahim), whose fruit-clusters are as though they were the heads of devils (ru’us al-shayatin), of which the damned will eat until their bellies are filled. Quran 44:43-46 names it the food of the sinful (ta’am al-athim), declaring that, like molten brass or boiling oil, it seethes in the bellies as scalding water seethes. The zahir is plain: a tree of torment, the antithesis of the fruit-laden gardens promised to the righteous. The esoteric reading begins precisely from this antithesis, for in the batin the Quran does not waste a single image, and a cursed tree must answer to a blessed one.
That blessed counterpart is the shajara tayyiba of Quran 14:24-25, the good word likened to a good tree whose root is firm and whose branches are in the heaven, giving its fruit in every season by the leave of its Lord. In Ismaili and Dawoodi Bohra ta’wil the good tree is the prophetic mission and the chain of walayah: its root (asl) is the Prophet and the Wasi (Imam Ali), its trunk and branches the Imams and the ordered hudud al-din, its perpetual fruit the saving knowledge of tawhid and the recognition of the Imam of the age. Al-Zaqqum is the deliberate inverse of every term: its root is not in the heaven of guidance but in the depth of Jahim — the abyss of ignorance — and its branches reach not upward toward the celestial hierarchy but spread the falsehood of those who reject divine authority.
The Pseudo-Knowledge of Those Who Reject the Imam
If the good tree yields the sweet nourishment of the batin, al-Zaqqum yields its bitter parody: the zahir-only learning of those who take the outward letter of scripture while denying its inner meaning and refusing allegiance to its appointed interpreter. In the da’wa understanding, revelation (tanzil) without its authoritative interpretation (ta’wil) is fruit that looks edible but cannot sustain — knowledge severed from the Imam through whom alone the batin is opened. Such learning is the food of the athim, the one who sins by usurping the right to interpret God’s word without the divine warrant of nass and bay’a. Its fruit resembles the heads of devils because the devils (shayatin) in ta’wil are the leaders of misguidance, the a’immat al-dalal who head a counter-hierarchy mirroring and parodying the legitimate hudud; their teachings are the devil-headed clusters that the spiritually blind consume.
This is why the verse calls the tree a fitna, a trial: the pseudo-knowledge is seductive precisely because it wears the form of religion. It cites the same verses, performs the same outward rites, and claims the same scripture, yet it is barren of the living water of certain knowledge (‘ilm al-yaqin) that flows only through the Prophet and his legatees. To prefer it to the guidance of the Imam is to choose the bitter tree of Hell over the garden of walayah — to mistake the husk for the kernel and to be filled, as the verse says, while remaining forever unsatisfied.
The Nourishment of the Batin-Dead and the Inner Torment
The most striking ta’wil of the passage lies in its physiology of damnation. The damned eat until their bellies are filled, yet the food becomes molten brass seething within them. In the batin this is the condition of the spiritually dead (the batin-dead): souls that have forfeited the inner life conferred by recognition of the Imam and now feed only on the dead matter of literalism. They consume claims of knowledge and swell with the appearance of learning, but because that knowledge is cut off from its source it cannot generate the inner life of the soul; it sits in them as a torment rather than a nourishment, boiling — the restless anguish of a spirit estranged from the truth it pretends to possess. The fire of Jahim here is not first a place but a state: the inward burning of ignorance that has hardened against guidance.
For the Dawoodi Bohra reader this teaching is intensely practical and protective rather than merely polemical. It frames why ta’wil must always be received from the living da’wa and never improvised, why bay’a to the Imam (and, in the period of his seclusion, to his Dai) is the very root that makes one’s knowledge a tree of life rather than a tree of Zaqqum, and why outward observance divorced from inner allegiance is warned against so strongly. The blessed tree and the cursed tree are thus the two destinies set before every soul: to be grafted by walayah onto the firm root whose fruit is sweet in every season, or to feed, unknowingly, on the bitter fruit of the abyss.
See also: Tawil Esoteric Interpretation, Bayah And Walayah, Ismaili Cosmology Hudud Al Din, Ismaili Tawil Of Al Firdaws, Ismaili Tawil Of Al Sirat