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The nature of the Akhbārī/Uṣūlī dispute in late Ṣafawid Iran, Part 2: The conflict reassessed

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Andrew J. Newman
Andrew J. Newman
Affiliation:
Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, Oxford
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Extract

The main purpose of this two-part essay is to reconsider the interpretation Western scholarship has generally placed on the Akhbārī/Uṣūlī confrontation in Twelver Shī‘ism. To this end, Part 1 (BSOAS, LV, 1, 1991, 22–51) presented an edition and translation of the relevant section of ‘Abdallāh al-Samāhijī's twelfth/eighteenth-century treatise, ‘Munyat al-Mumārisīn’. The importance of this text to the present discussion is twofold. First, Western scholars have considered this treatise to be a summary of the main points of Akhbārī/Uṣūlī disagreement, the Akhbārī element generally being understood as having been given its earliest discrete form only a century earlier by Muḥammad Amīn al-Astarābādī; and secondly, discussion of al-Samāhijī's treatise has relied primarily on an abridged version of the text written nearly two centuries later.

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Articles
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Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 55 , Issue 2 , June 1992 , pp. 250 - 261
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Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1992

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References

1 Browne, E. G., A literary history of Persia (London, 1924, repr. 1953), iv, 374Google Scholar; Scarcia, Gianroberto, ‘Intorno alle controversie tra 'Ahbari e 'Usuli presso gli Imamiti di Persia’, Rivista degli Studi Orientali,33, 1958, 221–50, esp. 218 f.Google Scholar; Falaturi, Abdoljavad,‘Die Zwölfer-Schia aus der Sicht eines Schiiten: Probleme ihrer Untersuchung’, in (ed.) Grāf, E., Festschrift Werner Caskel (Leiden: Brill, 1969), 62–95Google Scholar. esp. 80–95. See also n. 4 of the first section of the present essay. On Browne's sources, see n. 5 below.

2 Madelung, Wilferd, ‘Imamism and Mu‘tazilite theology’, in Le Shi'isme Imamite (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1970), 20–21Google Scholar. Madelung's key source was the sixth/twelfth-century Kitāb al-Naqd of ‘Abd al-Jalīl al-Qazwīnī al-Rāzī, (ed.) Jalāl al-Dīn Husaynī, Urmawī (Tehran, 1331), 2, 17 fGoogle Scholar.. where the author specifically disassociated himself from Twelver Akhbārism. See also Madelung, , ‘Akhbāriyya’, EI(2nd ed.), sup. (Leiden: Brill, 1980), 56Google Scholar; n. 6 of the first section of the present essay.

3 See, for example, Calder, Norman, ‘The structure of authority in Imāmī Shī'ī jurisprudence’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1980), 23 In 18;Google ScholarArjomand, S. A., The Shadow of God and the Hidden Imam: religion, political order, and societal change in Shi'ite Iran from the beginning to 1890 (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 13, 145–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem (ed.). Authority and political culture in Shi'ism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988), 9; Momen, Moojan, An introduction to Shi'i Islam (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 117–18;, 33 In 12, 222–25Google Scholar; Kohlberg, Etan, ‘Akbārīya’, Encyclopedia Iranica (Leiden: Brill, 1985), I, 716–18Google Scholar; idem, ‘Aspects of Akhbārī thought in the seventeenth and eighteenth century’, in (ed.) Nehemia Levtzion and John O. Voll, Eighteenth-century renewal and reform in Islam (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1987), 133. See, however,Glassen, Erika, ‘Schah Ismail I. und die Theologen seiner Zeit’, Der Islam, 48/2, 1972, 267Google Scholar; ‘Hā’irī, Abdū'l Hādī, Shi'ism and constitutionalism in Iran (Leiden: Brill, 1977), 66–7Google Scholar. See also Madelung, ‘Akhbāriyya’, 56–7. Sachedina, A. A. alluded to earlier manifestations of the Akhbārī polemic, but, on the whole, followed the conventional interpretation of the dispute in his The Just Ruler in Shi'ite Islam: the comprehensive authority of the Jurist in Imāmite jurisprudence (Oxford: Oxford University press, 1988), 135–6, 199, but see also 19–21,161–2Google Scholar. In Russian, see Agakhi, A. M., ‘Znachenie protivoborstva religiozno-filosofskikh techenii “akhbārī” i “usūlī” v ideologicheskoi bor'be svoego vremeni', in (ed.) N. A., Kuznetsova, Iran: htoriya i Kul'tura v srednie veka i novoe vremya (Moscow: Oriental Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1980), 3–18Google Scholar. My thanks to Dr. Edmund Herzig for directing my attention to this latter article.

4 The other Twelver scholars identified as Akhbārīs in the secondary sources cited in the preceding notes include 'Alīb. Sulaymān al-Bahrānī (d. 1064/1653–54), Muhammad Taqī al-Majlisī (d. 1070/1659–60), ‘Abdallāh b. Muhammad al-Tūnī (d. 1071/1660–61), Khalīl b. Ghāzī al-Qazwīnī (d. 1088/1677), Muhsin Fayd al-Kāshānī (d. 1091/1680), Muhammad Tāhir b Muhammad Husayn al-Shīrāzī al-Qummī (d. 1098/1687), Muhammad b. al-Hasan al-Hurr al-'Amilī (d. 1104/1693), Ni'matallāh al-Jazā'iri (d. 1112/1710), al-Samāhijī himself, and Yūsuf al-Bahrānī (d. 1186/1772). On the posible inclusion of Sadr al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī (d. 1050/1640) in this list, see n. 8 below.

5 al-Baḥhrānī, Yūsūf, Lu'lu'at al-Baḥrayn (Najaf, 1969), 117–19;Google ScholarSulaymān Tunukābunī, Muḥammad b., Qisās al-‘Ulamā’ (Tehran, n.d.), 321–2Google Scholar, where he quoted al-Baḥrānī verbatim and, as he often did, without attribution. See also al-Iṣbahānī, Muḥammad Bāqir al-Khwānsārī, Rauḍāt al-Jannāt, (ed.) al-Kashfī, M. T. and Ismā'īliyān, A. (Tehran-Qum, 1390 –92), 1:120Google Scholar; al-Amīn, Muḥsin, A'yān al-Shī'a (Beirut, 1960 f.) 43:333Google Scholar.Browne, A literary history, reproduced the statement of al-Baḥrānī/Tunukābunī in his description of al-Astarābādī. See also n. 7 below, and on al-Bahrānī, see also n. 4 above.

6 Al-Khwānsārī, , Raudāt al-Jannāt, 8:203-4Google Scholar; al-Bahrānī, , Lu'lu'at al-Bahrayn, 445–6Google Scholar. See also Kohlberg,‘Akbārīya’, 718, and idem,‘Aspects of Akhbārī thought’, cited in n. 3 above, 145, 148–51; Madelung, ‘Akhbāriyya’ Algar, Hamid, Religion and the state in Iran: the role of the ulama in the Qajar period (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1969), 34–6Google Scholar. Cf. Momen, An introduction to Shi'i Islam, 33 In 13. The strict Uṣūlism of Yūsufs father Aḥmad may also have been an additional moderating influence on his son. On Aḥmad al-Baḥrānī, see al-Baḥrāni, 93–5. On Yūsuf, see also nn. 19, 35.

7 To the extent that Tunukābunī frequently echoed, if he did not repeat verbatim, al-Baḥrānī's descriptions, frequently without attribution, his evaluations are also clearly more problematic than otherwise.

8 See al-Khwānsārī, 1:136, 6:285–6, and 3:341–3, where he alluded to connexions between the early lmāmī ghulāt and the Akhbārīs, the Shaykhī and Baḥrānī movements, less by offering firm evidence of such connexions than by attempting to prove ‘guilt by association’. The supposed connexion between Akhbārism and the Shaykhi and Baḥrānī movements has been a feature of Western-language discussions of Akhbārism. See, for example, de Gobineau, M. le Comte, Les religions et les philosophies dans I'Asie Centrale (Paris, 1900), 31;Google ScholarHuart, Cl., ‘Shaikhi’, EI(Leyden: Brill, 1934), iv, 279–80Google Scholar; Scarcia, ‘Intorno alle controversie tra 'Ahbari e 'Usuli’, p. 220, n. 2; Arjomand, op. cit., 153, 252–3. See also Corbin, Henry, En Islam iranien, iv (Paris: Gallimard, 1972), 129, 249–52Google Scholar. See also Morris, James Winston, The Wisdom of the Throne: an introduction to the philosophy of Mulla Sadra (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), p. 47, n. 52Google Scholar, where Sadr al- Dīn al-Shīrāzī (d. 1050/1640) is said to have had Akhbārī tendencies. See also Arjomand, , The Shadow of God, 253Google Scholar.

Al-Amīn also resorted to brevity to express his distaste for Akhbārīs: his entry on al-Astarābādī is less than a page while al-Khwānsārī's is more than ten and includes lengthy citations from his work. See also n. 11

9 See ‘Alīal-Madanī, Sayyid, Kilāb Sulāfat al-’Asr (Cairo, 1324), 499Google Scholar. Al-Madanī completed this work in 1082/1671. See also al-Hasan al-Hurr al-'Āmilī, Sayyid Muhammad b., Kitāb Amal al-Āmil (Baghdad, 1385), 2:246, 244, 281, 310Google Scholar. As mentioned in n. 4 above, al-Hurr al-'Āmili himself is often described as an Akhbārī. See also n. 35. See also al-Mīrzā, ‘Abdallāh al-Isbahānī Afandī, Rivād al-‘Ulamā’ (Qum, 1401), 5:35–7Google Scholar. Afandī, a student of Muḥammad Bāqir al-Majlisī (d. 1110/1699), died c. 1130/1718. See also n. 11 in the present section. Such later Safawid-period clerics as Muḥammad Taqī al-Majlisī and Fayḍ al-Kāshāni, both often identified as Akhbārīs, had clearly read al-Fawā'id al-Madaniyya, and attached importance to al-Astarābadī's criticisms. See, for example, al-Khwānsārī, 1:136–7, 2:119; Madelung, ‘Akhbāriyya’; Kohlberg, ‘Akbārīya’, 718; idem, ‘Aspects of Akhbārī thought’, 136–8; Arjomand, , The Shadow of God, 146Google Scholar; Momen, Shi'ī Islam, and nn. 3,4 and 5 above. On the nature and extent of al-Kāshānīs and al-Majlisīs interest in Akhbārism and al-Astarābādī, however, see both the discussion below and, especially, my forthcoming paper on al-Kāshānī.

10 See, for example, Madelung, ,‘Akhbāriyya’, 56Google Scholar; Kohlberg, , ‘Aḳbārīya’, 717Google Scholar; idem, ‘Aspects of Akhbārī thought’, 133; Arjomand, , The Shadow of God, 145Google Scholar.

11 On Muḥammad Amīn, see the references cited in nn. 5 and 9 above. On Mīrzā Muḥammad, see al-Madanī, op. cit., 499; al-Ḥurr al-'Āmilī, 2:281; Afandī, 5:116; al-Baḥrānī, 119–120; al-Khwānsārī, 7:38. See also the biographical work of Muḥammad Ṭāhir, Muḥammad 'Alī b. (d. 1373/1954), Rayḥānat al-Adab (Tehran, 1328–33), 2:424–5Google Scholar, which, though not always a thoroughly reliable source, described Mīrzā Muḥammad as an ‘Uṣūlī faqīh'. Muḥammad b. 'Alī al-Ardabīlī–like the author of Riyād al-‘Ulamā’, al-Mirzā 'Abdallah Afandī, a student of Muḥammad Bāqiral-Majlisī–in his biographical sketch of Mīrzā Muḥammad copied the notice on him from an earlier biographical work without adding mention of any interest in Akhbārism or his having taught Muḥammad Amīn. See his Jāmi' al-Ruwāt (Iran, n.d.), 2:156. Al-Ardabīlī offered no entry at all on Muḥammad Amīn, either an indication of disapproval or the result of concentration on pre-Safawid Twelvers, entries on whom make up the bulk of the work. See also n. 32 below.

Muḥammad Amīn's evocation of his teacher's name in a treatise written only several years after the latter's death may have been an attempt to bolster the legitimacy of al-Fawā'id al-Madaniyya's criticisms. Such an effort would understandably have been necessary, given the treatise's harsh criticisms of both prominent earlier Twelver clerics and such more recent scholars as Zayn al-Dīn b. Alī al-‘Āmilī al-Shahīd al-Thānī (d. 965/1557) and Bahā’ al-Dīn Muḥammad al-‘Āmilī, Shaykh Bahā’ī (d. 1030/1622), on whom see further our discussion below.

12 These points have been outlined in such Western-language sources as those cited in n. 4 in the first section of this essay and nn. 1, 2 and 3 in the present section. The references in the original's number 23 to al-taqīya (dissimulation) do not appear to support Kohlberg's suggestion that altaqīya was a ‘major issue’ of contention between Akhbārīs and Uṣūlīs. See his ‘Some Imāmī Shī'ī Views on taqīyya’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 95/3, 1975, 397–8, 398, n18. See also idem, ‘Akbārīya’, 717. In the former, Kohlberg's source was Falaturi (op. cit., 84), who listed as his sole reference al-Fawā'id al-Madaniyya. Kohlberg's supporting reference on this issue in his more recent ‘Aspects of Akhbārī thought’ (135nlO) was al-Fawā'id al-Madaniyya itself. It may be that this issue was of concern only to individual Akhbārī clerics; clearly, however, the issue merits additional research. Interestingly, al-Khwānsārī dropped the references to al-taqīya in his later abridgement.

13 Al-Khwānsārī's text in the abridgement reads: 'The Akhbārīs permit seeking the ḥadīth even from an āmmī’. Al-'āmma, as in numbers 20 and 40, referred to the Sunnīs. In the original's numbers 12 and 24, however, al-'āmmī is clearly intended to refer to the ordinary–perhaps –lay’– believer.

14 Al-Astarābādī's criticisms of the increasing reliance on subjective rationalism by generations of Twelver legists are well known from the secondary sources. See especially the sources cited in nn. 2 and 3 above.

15 See, for example, Eliash, Joseph,‘Misconceptions regarding the juridical status of the Iranian ‘ulamā’ International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 10/1, 1979, 9-25CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and his translation of most of this khabar therein. See also Calder, Norman, ‘Judicial authority in Imāmī Shī'ī jurisprudence’ Bulletin of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies, 6/2, 1979, 104–5;CrossRefGoogle ScholarArjomand, , The Shadow of God, 51, 141–2;Google Scholar and Sachedina's references to this khabar in his The Just Ruler, 139–12, 166. Interestingly, as seen in the apparatus criticus of the Arabic text in the first section of the present essay, the Majlis manuscript of the original text also excluded the Qur'ān and ḥadith citations.

16 See also n. 32 below.

17 Al-Khwānsārīs alterations to numbers 35 and 36 have already been noted. In the abridgement' numbers 13 and 14—on al-karāha (aversion) and taqlīd al-mayyit—references to a ‘majority’ among the mujtahids were not present in the corresponding points in the original. The motives behind these and other alterations made by al-Khwānsārī—he appears to have added a point, number 12, not found in the original, for example—are more properly the subject of a separate study of al-Khwānsārī himself. His overt anti-Akhbārī proclivities have already been noted. See nn. 8, 12.

18 This may have some bearing on Kohlberg's suggestion that the legitimacy of the ‘Uthmānic Codex was an issue in this period, although Kohlberg suggested the question of legitimacy was a bone of contention between Akhbārīs and Uṣ ūlīs, not among Akhbārīs. The statement in number 16 that ‘the only individual who knows the Qur'ān is he to whom it was spoken’ may also be a reference to the Akhbārī position on this question. See Etan Kohlberg, , ‘Some notes on the Imāmite attitudes to the Qur'aān’, in (ed.) Stern, S. M. et al., Islamic philosophy and the classical tradition (Oxford: Cassirer, 1972), 217–18Google Scholar. See also n. 31 below.

19 See Madelung (‘Akhbāriyya’, 57), who characterized as ‘moderate’ 'Abdallāh al-Tūnī, al-Jazā'irī, and Yūsuf al-Baḥrānī’. See also the description of Kohlberg (‘Aḳbārīya’, 718) of those three and Muḥammad Taqī al-Majlisī as ‘moderate’. See also Kohlberg, ‘Aspects of Akhbārī thought’, 145, 148–51, and the description of Momen (Shi'i 118) of all four of these clerics as ‘either Akhbārī or favourable to the Akhbārī position’. See also the discussion below and nn. 4,31–3, 35.

20 Ja'far b. al-Ḥasan, al-Muḥaqqiq al-Hillī, Sharāi' al-Islām (Najaf, 1389/1969), 4:67–9; see also 1:344–5. See also his al-Mukhtaṣar al-Nāfi' (Najaf, 1383/1964), 283–4. Mashrūṭa is derived from the same trilateral root as sharā'iṭ.

21 Yūsuf, Al-Ḥasan b., al-Ḥillī, al-'Allāma, Qawāid al-Aḥkām (Qum, n.d.) 1:118–19, 2:200–2Google Scholar; idem, Mukhtalaf al-Shī'a, 2 vols. in 1 (Tehran, n.d.), 1:108–9. Cf. the discussion in Sachedina, The Just Ruler, 166.

22 al-Hillī, Al-Muḥaqqiq, Sharā‘I’ al-Islām, 1:164–5, 168Google Scholar; idem, al-Mukhtaṣar al-Nāfi', 87–8; al- ‘Allāma al-Ḥillī, Qawā'id al-Aḥkām, 1:57–9. See also Calder, Norman, ‘Zakāt in Imāmī Shī'ī jurisprudence from the tenth to the sixteenth century A.D.’, BSOAS, XLIV, 3, 1981, 476Google Scholar.

23 al-'Āmilī, Muḥammad b. Makkī, Al-Luma'a al-Dimashqiyya, (Qum, 1387/1967), 3:67Google Scholar. See alson. 34 in the first section of the present essay.

24 al-Karakī, Alī,‘Qāṭi'at al-Lajāj’, in Kalimāt al-Muḥaqqiīm (Qum, 1402), 173. 180Google Scholar. This essay, completed in 916/1510, predated by more than a decade al-Karakīs discussion of Friday prayer and al-jihād in his Jāmi' al-Maqāṣid of the faqīh as nā'ib 'āmm as cited by Calder, who noted the concept was further developed by al-Shahīd al-Thānī. See Calder, ‘Zakāt in Imāmī jurisprudence’, 478–80, and nn 28, 33. On the term al-imām al-jā'ir as reference to the early Ṣafawid shāhs, see my 'The myth of the clerical migration to Ṣafawid Iran: Arab Shī'ite opposition to 'Ali al-Karakī and ?afawid Shī'ism, Die Welt des Islams (forthcoming, 1993).

25 al-Karakī, ‘Al-Ja'farīyya fī'l-Ṣlāt’, Cairo, Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣrīyya, MS 217/2 Fiqh al-Shī'a, fol. 84a. On this essay, see al-Tehrānī, , al-Dhanī'a ilā Taṣānīf ai-Shī'a (Tehran and Najaf, 1353–98). 5:110–11Google Scholar.

26 Idem, Jāmi' al-Maqāṣid, Cairo, Dār al-Kutub al-MiṢīyya, MS 20306b, fol. 125a. On al- Karakīs position on these issues, see also my ‘The Myth of the clerical migration to Ṣafawid Iran’.

27 The original's number 25–already noted as having been dropped by al-Khwānsārī–suggests that by al-Samāhijīs time both Akhbārīs and Uṣūlīs agreed al-Karakī and al-Shahī al-Thānī were Uṣūlīs. See also references to these earlier scholars in numbers 31 and 39.

28 Calder, ,‘Judicial authority’, 105Google Scholar; idem,‘Khums in Imāmī Shī'ī jurisprudence from the tenth to the sixteenth century A.D.’, BSOAS, XLV, 1, 1982, 44–5, citing al-Shahīd al-Thānī's al-Rauḍat al-Bahiyya. Here also the Shaykh explicitly equated al-zakāt, he described faqīh shar'i as nā'ib al-Imām in the occultation, implicitly equating these with nā'ib 'āmm of the Imām. See Calder, , ‘Zakāt’, 477–9Google Scholar.

29 Muḥammad Bāqir b. Muḥammad al-Husaynī Dāmād, Mīr, Kitāb al-Qabasāt, (ed.) Mehdi, Mu?aqqiq, (Tehran, 1356/1977), introduction, 39Google Scholar. Mīr Dāmād's contemporary Shaykh Bahā'ī espoused similar views. See my ‘Towards a reconsideration of the “Isfahān School of Philosophy”: Shaykh Bahā'ī and the role of the Ṣafawid ‘ulamā’, Studia Iranka, 15/2, 1986, esp. 191–6.

30 All three of these rationalist clerics had close court connexions and favoured an expanded role for the fuqahā in community affairs during the occultation. On al-Karakī and his support for the extreme manner of the early Ṣafawids' association with the faith, see my ‘The myth of the clerical migration to Ṣafawid Iran’. On Shaykh Bahā'ī and Mīr Dāmād, see my ‘Towards a reconsideration’, passim, esp. 181, and nn. 41, 92, 94. On the court connexions of Shaykh Bahā'ī's father Shaykh Ḥusayn (d. 984/1576), see ibid, 169–71. The latter's subsequent unease with and repudiation of these connexions is discussed in my ‘The myth of the clerical migration to Ṣafawid Iran’.

31 Al-Ḥurr al-'Āmilī himself had described Muḥammad Amīn, Fayḍ al-Kāshānī, and Muḥammad Ṭāhir al-Qummī each as ‘mutakallim (theologian), faqīh, muhaddith ’, assessments repeated by his non-Akhbārī contemporary Afandī. Al-Hurr al-'Āmilī described Khalīl al-Qazwīnī in the same terms, although Afandī called him ‘mutakallim Uṣūlī’. See al-'Āurr al-'Āmilī, 2:246, 112, 305, 277–8; Afandī, 5:35, 2:261, 5:180, 111. Al-Samāhijī did not designate as mujtahid-muḥaddith the three Ṣafawid-period clerics often identified as ‘moderate’ Akhbārīs in Western sources–Muḥammad Taqī al-Majlisī, al-Tūnī, and al-Jazā'irī. Indeed, al-Ḥurr al-'Āmilī and Afandī classified al-Majlisī as a ‘mutakallim faqīh’ and al-Tūnī as a ‘faqīh’. Afandī described al-Jazā'irī as a ‘faqīh muḥaddith’. See al-Ḥurr al-'Amilī, 2:252, 163, 336; Afandī, 5:47, 3:237, 5:253. See also nn. 19, 35. On al-Majlisī see also my forthcoming paper on al-Kāshānī. The ‘cautious and moderate’ approach to the issue of the legitimacy of ‘Uthmānic Codex of the Qur'ān taken by al-Kāshānī, noted by Kohlberg, which was likely at least in part to have been a reaction to the position of extreme Akhbārīs on this question, further suggests the appropriateness of designating al-Kāshānī as mujtahid-muḥaddith. See n. 18 above and Kohlberg, ‘Some notes on the Imāmite attitudes to the Qur'ān’, 217–18.

32 It has been noted that, like the authors of contemporaneous biographies, al-Samāhijī did not accord al-Astarābādī any special distinction within the broader Akhbārī movement and that in number 34 he depicted Muḥammad Amīn as out of step with the majority of Akhbārīs on the issue of tā'khīr al-bayān. Like those biographers, al-Samāhijī too did not name al-Astarābadī's teacher Mīrzā Muḥammad as an Akhbārī. A further indication of Muḥammad Amīn's ‘moderation’ may be his defensive reaction to the charge that he relied on akhbār al-a?ād. In al-Fawā'idal-Madaniyya al-Astarābādī cited his Uṣūlī contemporary Shaykh Bahā'ī as having said that most Twelver clerics had used such akhbār if the narrator were righteous and his allegiance to the faith were clear–the position of the mujtahid in numbers 5 and 29–and identified himself with Shaykh Bahā;'īs methodology. See Muḥammad Amīn al-Astarābādi, Al-Fawā'id al-Madaniyya (Iran, n.d.), 53 f, also cited by al-Khwānsārī, 1:126–7. See also nn. 11 and 33.

33 In this period, therefore, ‘pure’ Akhbārīs may have supported, if not originated, the arguments against collection and distribution of al-khums and al-zakāt during the occultation referred to in al-Tehrāni, 1:94, 4:380, 230. In his kharāj essay of 924/1518, in rebuttal of that of al-Karakī discussed above, Sulaymān al-Qaṭīfī (d. after 945/1539), by identifying the nā'ib as ḥākim al-shar', with whom he equated the Hidden Imām's sufarā (sg. safir)–the last of whom had disappeared in 329/941–refused to identify the faqīh as nā'ib al-Imām in the occultation. Such a refusal represented a clear repudiation of both the Uṣūlī-inspired concept of nā'ib āmm and its corollary that the faqīh was entitled to receive shares of al-zakāt during the occultation. See al-Qaṭīfī, , ‘Al-Sirāj āl-Wahhāj’, in Kalimāt al-Muḥaqqiqīn (Qum, 1402), 309–10Google Scholar; Calder, , ‘Zakat’ esp. 475 f.Google Scholar; see also n. 19 in the first section of the present essay, and nn. 15, 19, 24, 28, and 35 in the present section. On al-Qaṭīfī's rejection of the other two pillars of the UṢūlī polemic–rationalist jurisprudence and accommodation with the established political institution–see my ‘The myth of the clerical migration to ?afawid Iran’. Cf. Arjomand, , The Shadow of God, 231, 125–7Google Scholar. Further confirming his ‘moderate’ status, Amīn al-Astarābādī's relationship with the political institution was less than consistently aloof: although he apparently distanced himself from the Ṣafawid court, al-Astarābādī dedicated his Persian-language ‘Dāneshnāmeh-yi Shāhī’–completed after his al-Fawā'idal-Madaniyya–to one of the Indian Qutbshāh rulers. See al-Tehrānī, 8:46; see n. 32 above.

34 Al-Samāhijī's reference to al-Ḥurr al-'Āmilī implies that he had studied with the latter. Thus he ought to have known some of al-Ḥurr al-'Āmilī's ‘pure’ Akhbārī students in Mashad. However, al-Samāhijī named none of these individuals. Scholars often did not name their opponents. See, for example, my ‘Towards a reconsideration’, 182–5.

35 Of the Ṣafawid-period Akhbārsī, Kohlberg (‘Aḳbārīya’, 718) identified as ‘pure’ only al-Samāhijī himself, following al-Baḥrānī's classification. Elsewhere, Kohlberg (‘Aspects of Akhbārī thought’, 146) described al-Samāhijī as among the ‘more extreme’ Akhbārīs who maintained that the ‘role of the religious scholar***was superfluous altogether’. In addition to the present reference, al-Samāhijī's mention of his own preference for the mujtahids position on al-ibāha (permissibility) in number 37, his support of the performance of Friday congregational prayer dring the occultation–which undoubtedly envisaged a role for the faqīh in the service–and his acceptance of the court-appointed position of Shaykh al-Islām in the Ṣafawid capital, further suggest the inappropriateness of labelling him a ‘pure’ or otherwise ‘extreme’ Akhbārī. Muḥammad Tahir al-Qummī—classified as a mujtahid-muhaddith by al-Samāhijī and earlier biographers–and al-Ḥurr al-'Āmilī—called a mujtahid-muḥaddith by al-Samāhiī—also supported the performance of Friday prayer in the occultation. By contrast, 'Abdallāh al-Tūnī and al-Qazwīnī the latter classified as mujtahid-muhaddith by al-Samāhijī and al-Ḥurr al-'Āmilī, and the former called a ‘moderate’ Akhbārlī in the secondary sources but a faqīh by his contempoaries (see nn. 19, 31 above), opposed it. On essays on this question by these scholars, see al-Tehrānī, 15: 74, 72, 79, 74, 71. See also n. 33. Madelung (‘Akhbārīyya’), classified Yūsuf al-Baḥrānī himself as initially ‘pure’ but noted his later moderation. See also Kohlberg, ‘Aspects’, 145; n. 2, in part 1 of this paper, and n. 19 above. Al-Baḥrānīs status as a ‘moderate’ is also suggested by his position on al-khums and Friday prayer during the occultation in his al-Ḥadā'iq, on which see Sachedina, The Just Ruler, 244, 203. Al-Samāhijīs reference to his teacher al-Maḥūzī in number 39 as having held the same opinion on istiṣḥāb as such a well-known rationalist scholar as al-Sayyid al-Murtaḍā suggest al-Ma?ūzīs status as a ‘moderate’. See n. 2, part 1 of the present paper.

36 Mullā Qāsim, a contemporary of 'Abbās II (1052–77/1642–66), who argued that the Ṣafawid shāhs were illegitimate rulers and ought to be replaced by mujtahids, may have been an example of this element. On Mullā Qāsim, named in the travel account of the Frenchman Jean Chardin who lived in Iran from 1664 to 1670 and again from 1671 to 1677, see Lambton, A. K. S., ‘Quis custodiel custodes: some reflections on the Persian theory of government’, Studia Islamica, 6, 1956, 132Google Scholar; idem, State and government in medieval Islam: an introduction to the study of Islamic political theory: the jurists (London: Oxford University Press, 1981), 282; Arjomand, The Shadow of God, 185, 200. There is no reference to an individual of this name in the biographies listed in nn. 5 and 9 above.