Rula Jurdi Abisaab Converting Persia Religion A PDF
Rula Jurdi Abisaab Converting Persia Religion A PDF
Rula Jurdi Abisaab Converting Persia Religion A PDF
The right of Rula Jurdi Abisaab to be identified as the author of this work has been
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Acknowledgments ix
Maps
1. Safavid Persia, 15011722 xi
2. Jabal Amil (South Lebanon) in the Modern Period xii
Introduction 1
To Remedy the Shah from Mania: Ritual Purity and Friday Prayer 37
Conversion and Consent in Herat 39
Normalizing Sunnism? 41
The Cleric Against the King 45
Replacing the King 48
Afterthoughts 50
Summary and Conclusions 51
Conclusion 139
Appendices
I. The Amili Ulama of Safavid Iran, 15011736CE 147
II. Posts and Activities of the Emigr Amili Ulama 153
III. The Intellectual Production of the Emigr Amili Ulama 156
Notes 175
Bibliography 221
Index 235
Acknowledgments
MY INTEREST IN DRAWING historical links between Arab and Persian Shiite societies
originated at Yale University in the seminars of Abbas Amanat, my dissertation
advisor. Amanat offered me distinct intellectual motivation, encouragement and
friendship, which helped me find the voice of the historian. I am indebted to Said
Amir Arjomand and Hossein Modarressi, who commented on and reoriented facets
of this work in its dissertation form. My discussions with Rifaat Abou el-Hajj helped
shape the theoretical framework of this study. Willem Floor offered critical insights
and suggestions on some aspects of this work. Rudi Matthee also made valuable
comments on the work and raised important questions. Any shortcomings in this
work are solely my responsibility.
Thanks to the Iranian Heritage Foundation, which supported my scholarship and
the preparation of this monograph for publication. The current work, though based
on the dissertation, underwent thorough revisions and critical alterations resulting
in the elimination of one chapter and the addition of a new one and five central
sections. In the process, I have departed from some of the assumptions made in the
dissertation in the light of new research and in connection to the debates and
theoretical underpinnings of the current historiography on Safavid Persia. I am
grateful to several Iranian and Lebanese scholars who assisted me in obtaining copies
of the manuscripts I needed and bringing new sources to my attention. These scholars
are Sayyid Hasan al-Amin, Sayyid Jawad Shahrestani in Qum, Sayyid Ali Shahrestani
in Mashhad, Sayyid Ahmad al-Husayni at the Marashi library in Qum, and Dr.
Kamran Fani and his assistant Fahimeh Khallaqi at Dairat al-Maarif Tashayyu in
Tehran. I am also thankful to Aqa Hasan Ansari, Nezam Mafi, Sadeq Sajjadi, Sayyid
Muhammad Ali Rawdati in Isfahan, and Rasul Jafariyan in Qum who, despite his
x Converting Persia
illness, met with me and advised me on a number of Amili works. I would also like
to thank Ali Naqi Munzavi, Ali Rafii, A. Hairi at Majlis Library, and Vali Nasr. I
am especially thankful to Jane Joyce who edited sections of this work and offered
important suggestions as to its organization and style.
Parvaneh Khallaqi, Menouchehr Khoshnood and Fereshteh Kashani who hosted
me in Tehran made my intellectual and personal experiences of Iran exceptional
and deeply rewarding. I am thankful to my sisters Adelle, Hiba and Jinan for their
unrelenting support and love. Malek, my partner, took a semester off his graduate
studies to accompany me to Iran. Without him neither the trip experiences nor life
to that matter would be the same.
MAP ONE
MAP TWO
Introduction
IN THE LAST THREE decades, Islam with its varied Sunnite and Shiite colorings has
figured as an international socio-political phenomenon with significant legal and
doctrinal dimensions. A plethora of studies probing resurgent facets of Islam and
its culturally distinct manifestations have searched relentlessly into the past for
the origins of this turbulent phenomenon. Since the unfolding of the Islamic
revolution in Iran in 197980, the Shiite world, clergy and lay society, have been
transformed forever. A striking feature of this transformation was the unprecedented
political power wrested by the Shiite ulama and their hegemony over a vital
medium of legal ideas, as they proceeded to reinterpret a sharia-based society and
redefine the foundations of its modern Islamic state and political outlook.
Safavid history became a focal point of investigation for modern scholars exploring
questions of empire, nation, religious community and conversion, clerical leadership
and relations among Muslims, Christians and Jews. In modern narratives on clerical
and revolutionary Islam and their relevance to Persian society, Iranian and Arab
nationalists and Islamists alike have given the Safavid period (15011736CE) a central
place.1 These narratives are largely rooted in culturalist interpretations, which glorify
Arab agency in converting Iran to mainstream Shiism or treat legalistic Islam as a
cultural intrusion, an imposition of an Arab normative basis of worship by migr
clerics on Persian society.2 They purport that legalistic Islam, unlike gnosticism and
philosophy, was alien to Persian culture and its forms of intellectual inquiry. My
work challenges such interpretations of religious transformation in Persia. My study
also comes to life when juxtaposed against the political zeal invested by Muslim
activists today in the renewal of Islamic law and the unprecedented power that clerics
have assumed in recent decades. The debates among both Shiite and Sunnite
2 Converting Persia
reformists and militants over the nature of political authority in Islam, find some of
their formative elements in sixteenth and seventeenth-century Iran.
Few if any studies have attempted to delineate the dynamic processes of exchange
between Arab and Persian scholars and the contribution of their respective social
matrices to the development of Islamic political theory and juridical concepts before
the age of European expansion and colonialism. Moreover, most scholars of Islamic
law continue to treat ideas, particularly legal ideas, as developing outside the realm
of social relations and severed from the loci of power.3 Religious thought is seen as
reproducing itself from within the clerical establishment where an insulated
community of legal experts seems to function outside the medium of history. My
study, in contrast, probes into the internal social and political transformations that
shaped the juridical concepts of the Syrian ulama of Jabal Amil and the utility of
their scholarship to the young Shiite state envisaged by the Safavid monarchs in
the early sixteenth century. I delineate the changes the Syrian clerics made in the
Islamic theory of government, their varied reinterpretations of law and reinvention
of religious legitimacy for state and society. Doctrinal and legal works on heterodoxy,
Sunnite-Shiite polemic, Sufi practices, the convening of Friday prayer, religious
seclusion, the meat slaughtered by Christians and Jews, alongside philosophical
works on the nature of the world and Gods relationship to it are all brought to
bear on larger questions of social and political history. The theoretical framework
of this work had drawn much inspiration from the epistemic foundation of Husayn
Muroehs Al-Nazaat al-Madiyya fi al-Falsafa al-Arabiyya al-Islamiyya, which shifts
the focus from culture to social process, investigating the transmission of knowledge
from one civilization/culture to another, in this case from the Arab to the Persian,
in the light of the internal structural and historical forces within the hosting society
(Persia). Muroeh rejected attempts to understand the emergence of new
philosophical, scientific and legal concepts in their own terms, as ruled by personal
differences among scholars or institutional changes exerted from above. Instead,
he focused attention on the incremental material-social developments, particularly
class arrangements and conflicts, which shaped the production of ideas during
different historical periods. I use class in the pre-modern period to denote a human
grouping whose members are engaged in similar economic-occupational activities,
have a comparable position vis--vis the means of production, but who nonetheless
draw upon a variety of social experiences and factional, religious, ethnic or regional
identities that can and do undermine class. I also benefited from Rifaat Abou El-
Hajs treatment of the nature of the transfer of scholarship from one locale to another
less as one of importation and more as one that meets local needs, thereby becoming
for some historians a creative, but projected, means for understanding their society
and by extension themselves, that is in defining their identity.4 In addition, I have
found the treatment of tradition in the works of Eric Hobsbawm and Terrence
Ranger illuminating. By understanding the dynamic and multilayered notions of
tradition, as changing rather than static, I cautioned myself against self-
descriptions of tradition-based juridical concepts and rulings advanced by Safavid
Introduction 3
theologians. Customarily, theologians invoked past rulings and framed their
argument in terms of conformity to clerical tradition or the texts of foundational
Shiite ulama, even while advancing new legal opinions and juridical concepts.
Their opinions and concepts, however, assumed new meanings derived from novel
historical experiences and ideological positions.
The Safavid period (15011736CE) is of great significance to historians of Islam
in that it captures the imperial adoption and institutionalization of Shiism in Persia.
This study examines the historical circumstances which made Safavid Persia in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the home of leading Arab ulama who hoped
to suppress folk and heterodox notions of Shiism and define orthodoxy on the
basis of Jafari legal parameters and clerical consensus. I focus attention on nine
Safavid theologians of an Amili background who led glamorous careers and/or
produced works of great import and relevance to Persian society in particular and
the Shiite world at large. The scholars were Ali b. Abd al-Ali al-Karaki (d. 940AH/
1533CE), Husayn b. Abd al-Samad (d. 984AH/1576CE), Husayn al-Mujtahid (d.
1001AH/1592CE), Baha al-Din al-Amili (d. 1030AH/1621CE), Mir Damad (d.
1041AH/16312CE), Ahmad b. Zayn al-Abidin (d. 1054AH/1644CE), Lutfullah al-
Maysi (d. 1032AH/16223CE), Ali b. Muhammad b. al-Hasan b. Zayn al-Din al-
Amili (d. 11034AH/1691CE) and Muhammad al-Hurr al-Amili (d. 1111AH/
1699CE). Except for Ali b. Muhammad b. al-Hasan b. Zayn al-Din, all of the above
theologians enjoyed close ties with the Safavid court, occupied the highest religious
offices in Persia and created the principal tools for the routinization of Safavid rule
irrespective of whether they inherently accepted its legitimacy or contrived to
challenge it in time. Based on legal and doctrinal works, biographical prcis,
personal history, Safavid chronicles, travel accounts and Ottoman Arab literature,
I highlight the social order in which the clerics lived, the rivalries they experienced,
and the alliances they forged with the Persian notables and the military elite, known
as the Qizilbash.5 The clerics efforts at establishing a distinct system of Shiite
ideas and legal practices found justification not in the Arab cultural background of
the Amilis but rather in the Persian social ambit that nurtured and reworked those
ideas. Their scholarship and careers spoke directly to Safavid legitimacy, imperial
sovereignty, state structure, religious policy, popular dissent and the social struggles
among the administrative-military elites.
Beyond the scholastic-social ties that bound the founders of the madrasas of Jabal
Amil and their disciples together, there was a marked network of kinship relations,
both consanguinal and marital, that reinforced the solidarity and elitism of this
community. Access to sharia knowledge tended to concentrate in tightly knit family
groups and became the esteemed possession of their immediate descendants. By
the early sixteenth century, Jabal Amil became the foremost center for Shiite
learning, and an accrediting institution, producing and influencing hundreds of
theologians who lived or settled in Syria, Mecca, Iraq, Persia and India.
The Amili ulamas migration to Persia became one expression of the dramatic
changes in Jabal Amils political stability, the meager recruitment of Amili jurists
4 Converting Persia
in the Ottoman teaching system, the clerics frustrated hopes of implementing the
Jafari rulings (ahkam) and legal punishments (hudud) in their locales, and their
ambitions in recasting their social role in Shiite society.6
Unlike Qatifi and Iraqi Shiite scholars at the time, the Amilis were prepared to
transform Shiism from a religion of the community to that of the state, proposing
significant modifications in political theory and becoming highly equipped to
circumvent Ottoman and Uzbek propaganda and ideological expansion. They
espoused, to differing degrees, a close affinity with secular sovereignty. This is
best illustrated in their distinct approaches toward Friday prayer (salat al-Juma).
Whereas Friday prayer and the sermon succeeding it were systematically convened
among Sunnite Muslims from early Islamic times, Shiites have for most of their
history made a half-hearted commitment to its performance during the absence of
the Imam. The early Safavid Shahs understood the extent to which the convening
of Friday prayer was fundamentally tied to the legitimacy and sovereignty of the
ruler and attempted, for the first time in Shiite history, to institute it. The enactment
of Friday prayer, which required the presence of a jurist further aimed at restoring
the Shiite community to political normalcy concomitant with state formation.
Whether as rationalists (usulis), who favored the use of rational inference in deriving
legal rulings, or as traditionists (akhbaris), who relied solely on traditions for
religious guidance, leading Amili scholars participated effectively in governmental
offices and strengthened the foundation of Safavid rule without abandoning their
aspiration for a total recovery of Imamate authority. By the mid seventeenth century,
conventional Amili jurists faced a strong competition from new intellectual hybrids,
namely, the Sufi bent and philosophically bent scholars who joined in the heated
struggles over the legal status of Friday prayer.
The terms Shiism and Sunnism underwent significant shifts from the early
Safavid period until the mid sixteenth century, as well as in the late seventeenth
century. I have tried to delineate some of these shifts and to account for several
competing versions of Shiism under the early Safavids. Yet, we need more in-depth
studies on this question. Willem Floor accurately noted that, apart from the fact that
there are neither precise data on the entire population nor of its ethnic or religious
distribution, one also does not exactly know what the term Moslim meant in those
days.7 Large sectors of non-sedentary populations including the Turkoman Qizilbash
expressed shamanistic beliefs and ritual cannibalism at odds with urban clerical
Shiism. As for Sunnism, it continued to appeal to important social groups in early
Safavid society and to find use among political elites. Several traditions of Sunnism
and Shiism overlapped, including the ahl al-bayt devotionalism. Yet, mostly due to
the Safavid-Ottoman political rivalry, Safavid religious servicemen encouraged and
popularized the vilification of Sunnite symbols and drew stronger ritualistic and
doctrinal boundaries between sharia-based Shiism and sharia-based Sunnism.
Far from remaining self-absorbed legal experts, the Amili jurists mediated their
views effectively through a network of students and followers who translated their
juridical rulings into Persian and state officials who turned them into decrees. The
Introduction 5
ulamas doctrinal, legal and philosophical works reflected alterations in the
monarchs sources of legitimacy, measure of control over the Qizilbash,
centralization efforts, economic stability, depopulation and forced migration aimed
at thwarting Ottoman invasions in frontier areas heavily inhabited by Christians.
The clerics writings also reflected internal class conflicts, expressed in distinct
ideological terms. At the time of Shah Tahmasb, but mainly under Shah Abbas, the
translation and abridgment of major Shiite texts of doctrine and positive law from
Arabic into Persian carried the legal-political debates from the exclusive circles of
theologians to a vast community of low-ranking scholars, political figures,
merchants and artisans.
Safavid jurists solicited, in addition to the clientship of a learned Persian elite, a
following among the lower strata of Safavid society. Like other state-appointed
officials, the Amilis saw themselves collectively as the custodians of a defined
orthodoxy, encouraging not merely an explicit knowledge of doctrine but a
systematic enactment of ritual. They built new bridges and supplied pertinent
justifications for how an exegetic use of the past in Twelver Shiite history is relevant
to the present. Concomitant with the dissemination of Shiite creed was a process
of Persianization on class and state levels; that is the consolidation of an idiosyncratic
Iranian Shiism. Perhaps the most indicative feature of Persianization was the almost
complete eclipse of Amilism as a scholastic-ethnic phenomenon at the Safavid
court in the mid seventeenth century and the emergence of an eclectic body of
Iranian ulama who carried the legal discourses to wider circles of scholars and
politically charged domains.
As the Amili theologians ascended the highest ranks of the Safavid religious
establishment, they had to define their approaches to both popular and high
Sufism, to the folk religious beliefs and rituals that thrived in guild sectors.8 In a
dialectic of opposition and co-optation, state-backed jurists were able to score
important victories against heterodoxy and popular Sufism, both of which were
presented as a moral discordance to Shiite legalism. By the end of Safavid rule,
much of the archetypal austerity, miraculous (karamat) powers and spiritual
excellence known to the Sufis became the claimed grace of the guardians of the
sharia and its officially uncontested interpreters. Here I draw upon the studies of
Abdol Hosein Zarrinkoob, particularly in Dunbala-yi Justuju-yi Tasavvuf dar Iran,
but further explore Sufi adoptions of the legal discourse and highlight diversity
within clerical and Sufi circles in changing historical contexts. In the meantime,
influential religious leaders had wrested new sources of power through the Shahs
patronage, the consolidation of religious endowments (waqf), and the acquisition
of economic grants and immunities from taxation. They never, however, acted
independently or determined the Safavids policies as such. Rather, they
accommodated the sovereigns agendas while simultaneously manipulating the
judicial domain and reworking vital social alliances to achieve some autonomy
and political power.
1
Sufi Regalia and Legal Banners
During the fourteenth century CE, leaders like Sultan Junayd and Haydar of
the Turkoman Safavid clan (Safavid Empire: 9071135AH/15011736CE) tried to
strengthen their base by calling men to arms in Anatolia.2 The clans Sunnite ancestor
Safi al-Din (d. 735AH/1334CE) was a local Sufi divine, and the site of his Sufi order,
Ardabil, in northwest Iran, became first a shrine and later the center of the tribes
political and military activities. When the Safavids accepted Shiite Islam late in
the fourteenth century CE, they espoused a fervent but unrefined Shiism, bestowing
on their religious guides claims to prophetic ability and divine authority. The
Safavids military, political and religious objectives coalesced in the reign of the
first Safavid Shah, Ismail I (907930AH/15011524CE), who introduced central
changes in the Persian court and its administrative branches. To achieve his goals,
Ismail I relied on Turkoman military forces known as the Qizilbash (redheads,
so called from their distinctive crimson cone-shaped, twelve-gored hats; each gore
represented one of the twelve Shiite Imams). After Ismails investiture, the
Qizilbash embellished the military base and political outlook of his young Empire.3
Soon after Shah Ismail I ascended the throne, he mandated that all regions
under Safavid control accept Twelver Shiism.4 His immediate successors also
persevered in their efforts to convert Persias numerous tribal groups and social
classes to Twelver Shiism by trying, though not always successfully, to suppress
millenarianism, shamanism and popular Sufi expressions. The Shahs especially
wanted the ruling classes to adopt a literate urban Shiite doctrine, which lends
itself to legal regulation and state structure. This form of Shiism was distinct from
mystical and folk Shiism evident in the Safavids own background and that of the
Turkoman nomads in the west.5 To achieve this aim, Shah Ismail I and his son
Shah Tahmasb (930984AH/15241576CE) invited renowned Twelver Shiite ulama
(religious scholars and jurists) from Arabic-speaking countries Iraq, Bahrain and
Jabal Amil in Syria to reinforce the Shiite ulama already in Persia.6 The early
Safavid Shahs purposely placed these erudite migr teachers and jurists in
important religious and quasi-administrative positions to disseminate their well-
defined Islamic creed based on the Shiite School of law or madhhab. Gradually a
regional Shiite identity emerged. The Qizilbash and emigrant ulamas interactions,
particularly those from Jabal Amil in Syria, as well as their separate and joint
clashes with the Persian nobles are discussed below.
Although often diverted by internecine and external challenges to their power,
the early Safavid royalty welcomed the Arab jurists and divines, of whom the
foremost scholars from Jabal Amil are collectively called the Amilis. The Safavid
monarchs realized that Shiite intellectuals held Amili scholarship in high regard,
yet the decision to patronize these Syrian clerics rested on the belief that the Amilis
would provide a much-needed source of legitimacy for imperial sovereignty. For
their part, the Amilis consented to such sovereignty, and eagerly sought Safavid
patronage. They accumulated significant power and prestige and achieved positions
in such civic-religious institutions as shaykh al-Islam, the highest religious dignitary
of the important cities, and pish-namaz, prayer leaders for the royal court and the
Sufi Regalia and Legal Banners 9
great city mosques. Amili scholars and their Iranian descendants also served as
custodians of religious practice (vakil-i halaliyyat), judges (qadis), expounders of
Islamic law (muftis), ministers (viziers), professors of theology (mudarris), and even
administrators and heads of religious endowments (sadrs). (See Appendix II) Over
several generations in Persia, the Amilis and their descendants taught in madrasas
(schools) and transmitted their knowledge to an ever-increasing network of students
and followers.7 For the entire Safavid period (to the seventeenth century CE), at
least 158 scholars (alim) are identifiable as first, second and third-generation Syrian
emigrants to Safavid Persia.8
Clerical discipline and orthodox Shiism with its detailed legal ordinances
coincided with the Safavids political vision and gave the empire its formative image.
However, the Persian environment in which the Amilis gained wide acclaim was
significantly different from their remote Syrian homeland at the periphery of the
Ottoman Empire. The rustic early Amilis encountered continuing turbulence in
the branches of the royal family and disputes, intrigues and competition among
and with both the courtiers and the elite classes. The first Amilis also found the
synergetic Safavid religious milieu and the fluid exchange of ideas among
philosophers, sectarians and mystics discomforting. The Amilis nonetheless
envisioned the Safavids as the temporal rulers who would make it possible for
Shiism to become an overtly expressed, assertive faith rather than a marginal sect.
Based on the tracts the Amilis wrote, the decrees (fatwas) they issued and the
religious and legal questions they deliberated, the Amilis strove to wed Twelver
Shiism to the increasingly vigorous Safavid state. Among the ulama, a professional
class of mujtahid(s), or jurisconsults, quickly demonstrated that they were eager to
please their superiors and to promote their own status. The Amili mujtahids tried
to uproot heterodox precepts and patterns of conduct among the populace and to
redefine the jurisconsults role in society. At the same time, they expressed an
unprecedented willingness to support temporal authority and Shiite statehood.
Not all the Amilis received equal treatment from the Shahs, and at times the migr
mujtahids competed among themselves for a Shahs favors. By the end of the
seventeenth century CE, the Persian populace showed mixed feelings of devotion
to some mujtahids alongside ridicule and disdain for others.
Among the influential scholars of the Safavid Empire during the first half of the
sixteenth century, three Amilis in particular contributed to the development of the
Safavid religious order and clerical leadership. Respectively, they are Nur al-Din
Abul-Hasan Ali b. al-Husayn b. Abd al-Ali al-Karaki (d. 940AH/1533CE), also
known as al-Muhaqqiq al-Thani, but referred to most often as al-Karaki; Husayn
b. Abd al-Samad al-Harithi al-Jubai (d. 984AH/1576CE), known as Husayn b.
Abd al-Samad; and al-Karakis maternal grandson Husayn al-Mujtahid (d. 1001AH/
15923CE), known as al-Mujtahid. Of them, no Amili court scholar wielded greater
power than al-Muhaqqiq al-Karaki, given the difficult tasks he encountered as a
pioneer and his successful endorsement of legal opinions that engendered both
controversy among the local elite and resistance from Arab and Persian ulama. By
10 Converting Persia
the later sixteenth century CE, Safavid society, deeply shaped by Twelver Shiism,
exhibited several integrated themes: the Shahs had focused their political and
dynastic aspirations; the initially resistant elites had begun to incorporate clerical
Shiism; and the ulama of Amili origin would appropriate elements of Persias
heterodox milieu to empower themselves and inculcate popular conformity to
clerical rulings across ethnic and class divisions. The Safavids, with the Amilis as
their agents, decisively imprinted Persias doctrinal precepts and juridical practices
and brought about political changes in Persian society that are subject to debate
even today.
Allaholahis and other esoteric sects who clearly were not orthodox Moslem
either, if at all Among the remaining Moslem population were Sunnis or
Shiites of various hues. However, what did these terms mean in the 1500s
and how did their meaning change over time?21
Likewise, there was the Safavid heterodox-Sufi veneration of Ali and the Twelve
Imams as distinct from the fully developed and articulated doctrinal, sharia-based
Shiism of the Iraqi or Amili ulama.22 Rosemary Stanfield showed that several major
12 Converting Persia
beginning of the sixteenth century CE, at the time of Khaqan Mansur, father of the
last Timurid ruler, Sultan Husayn Bayqara (875911AH/14701506CE), the Persian
schools of Ghiyathiyya, Sultaniyya, Ikhlasiyya, Madraseh-yi Sultani, Madraseh-i
Mahd-i Ulya Goharshad and others in Herat instructed their students in the general
religious subjects of positive law (furu), jurisprudence (usul) and Tradition, but
mostly in philosophy-theosophy, dogmatic theology, logic, mathematics, astrology
and puzzles.36 This was at variance with the intellectual make-up of Persian and
Arab Shiite scholars, trained in Shiite dogma and law at conventional schools
(madrasas) whether in Jabal Amil, Najaf or Mashhad. These scholars approached
Islamic belief from a juridical standpoint. Notwithstanding, the Persian elites initial
resistance to the clerical leadership of Arab jurists did not arise from intellectual or
cultural variations. A complex set of socio-political and economic factors brought
together Persian notables and a few Arab ulama against the Amili court jurists.
Under Shah Ismail I, Persian notables exerted their considerable political
influence to check the power of the Turkoman Qizilbash amirs.37 With the Shahs
approval, an Iranophile policy prevented the Qizilbash from seizing all power.
Of the five principal state posts under Shah Ismail I, Qizilbash officers were to
occupy the top two, which imbued their holders with extraordinary power:
commander-in-chief of the army (amir al-umara) and head of the royal life guards
(qurchibashi). The Persian aristocracy was given the other two posts of super minister
(vazir) and sadr.38
The attempt of the Safavid Shahs to curtail the power of the Qizilbash in
administrative offices dates to 915AH/1509CE, the time of death of Shaykh Najm
al-Din Masud Rashti, named the first Persian deputy (vakil), who functioned as
both commander-in-chief and grand vizier. Another Persian, Yar Ahmad Khuzani,
better known as Najm-i Thani, succeeded Najm al-Din and simultaneously assumed
both the military and civil functions of his offices.39 The Qizilbash were displeased
when they found themselves in the service of an ambitious and independent deputy
like Najm al-Din.40 As Floor noted, Shah Ismail tried to appease the Qizilbash
amirs by splitting the office of vikalat into two following the military defeats in 1512
and 1514CE of the Safavid army against the Uzbeks and the Ottomans.41 As soon
as the Qizilbash detected that the Shah had become receptive to the aspirations of
the second Persian vakil, Mirza Shah Husayn Isfahani, they had Isfahani murdered
in 929AH/1523CE.42
Shah Ismails son Tahmasb was only ten years old when he ascended the throne
in 930AH/1524CE, and he neglected state affairs. From 932 until after 937AH
(1526 to 15301CE), Persia experienced the Qizilbash wars involving the Rumlu,
Ustajalu, Tekellu and Shamlu tribes.43 Into 937AH/1526CE, these inter-tribal
conflicts grew in intensity and magnitude and spread from northwest Persia to
neighboring territories, the most central of which was Khurasan.44 At court, the
Qizilbash, not the Shah, wielded effective political power from 930 until 940AH
(1524 to 1533CE).45 They demanded that Shah Tahmasb discontinue his fathers
policy of recruiting Persians into the highest civil ranks, and their supremacy
Sufi Regalia and Legal Banners 15
was shown in their firm seizure of the office of vikalat, which played a decisive
role in electing the sadr.46 Only in 940AH/1533CE was Shah Tahmasb able to wrest
his imperial prerogatives from the Qizilbash and gradually reinstate his command
over state affairs, which he maintained for 40 years.47 As I will illustrate in this
chapter, this historical period coincided with the eminence of al-Karaki at the
Safavid court. This reality forces us to reexamine a dominant view in the secondary
literature on the Safavids that the Qizilbash and the Amilis were enemies with
irreconcilable ideological and political differences.
In addition to their internal affairs, the early Safavid Shahs contended with
the Ottomans in the west and the Uzbek tribe in eastern Persia. The Uzbeks had
become a threatening force in Transoxiana around 901AH/1495CE, under the
leadership of Muhammad Shaibani Khan. The Uzbeks wanted to annex Khurasan
and other territories controlled by the then ruling rival Timurid tribe and regain
Herat, Khurasans capital city. During Shah Tahmasbs reign, between 930 and
947AH (1524 to 1540CE), Safavid military contingents constantly warred with
the Uzbeks and ultimately thwarted their expeditions.
Well before securing the Uzbeks total retreat, the sixteen-year-old Shah Tahmasb
had marched west to Baghdad in 936AH/1529CE to crush a revolt encouraged by
the Ottomans.48 Later, in 955AH/1548CE and again in 961AH/1554CE, Shah
Tahmasb faced attacks by the Ottomans under Sultan Suleiman (r. 927974AH/
15201566CE). When it became clear that neither side had achieved a decisive
victory, the Safavids and Ottomans concluded the Amasya treaty on 8 Rajab 962AH/
29 May 1555CE. This first official peace between them lasted until 986AH/1578CE.49
Another member of the Persian aristocratic class, Mir Ghiyath al-Din al-Dashtaki
al-Shirazi (d. 948AH/1540CE) had been joint sadr with Amir Nimatullah al-Hilli.
For some time after al-Hillis exile, Giyath al-Din was the sole sadr, and he strove to
balance Turkoman Qizilbash and Persians in the highest state offices while also
attempting to prevent the Qizilbash from seizing all power. He soon got off on the
wrong foot with Shaikh Ali, that is al-Karaki.67 The Dashtakis, apparently originally
Sunnites, were believed to have carried into Safavid times no more than a veneer
of dissimulating Shiism.68 Around the late fifteenth century CE, the Dashtakis
started to integrate Shiite hadith in their writings instead of relying exclusively on
Sunnite sources.69
Given the well-known Sunnite origins of the Dashtaki family, it is noteworthy
that Mir Ghiyath al-Din occupied the sadarat and was charged with some religious
functions. For one, the Shah ordered him to send a reply to the Ottoman sultan
who had condemned the Safavid tabarraiyan practice of vilifying the first three
Sunnite caliphs, Umar, Abu Bakr and Uthman. Mir Ghiyath al-Din was to expound
to the sultan the justification for prostrating to the Shah, when the Ottomans found
permissible prostration only to God.70 The propositions that Ghiyath al-Din gave
supporting the former practice were devoid of an adept Shiite jurists conventional
legalistic or hadith-based arguments. He also found prostration to the Shah
analogous to the angels prostration to Adam when God revealed it to them to do
so. In contrast, al-Karaki showed no compunction about denouncing prostration
altogether, insisting that it encouraged Sunnites to view Shiism as non-Islamic
and by implication heretical. Al-Karakis argument, however, did not have a lasting
impact, for the practice of zamin-bus and atabeh-bus (kneeling and prostrating)
continued.71
Like other notables, Ghiyath al-Din, who had called al-Karaki an ignoramus,
must have resented his intrusion in matters the sadrs once governed and regulated.
He disagreed with al-Karaki on a number of legal questions relating to practical
religious observances, especially the direction of prayer (qibla), which al-Karaki
had altered in the regions of Iraq, Arab and Khurasan.72 Mir Ghiyath al-Din insisted
that designating the qibla fell within the expertise of mathematicians, not jurists.
Arguing from what seemed a legal and logical position, he declared that al-Karakis
attempt to change the qibla in all the mosques of Iraq Ajam with the full approval
of Shah Tahmasb, even if proven correct, could not be delivered without a geometric
illustration that would display all the calculations and provide justification for
what did not fall within al-Karakis expertise. Although al-Karaki emerged
unscathed in these debates, Ghiyath al-Din did not find al-Karakis legal opinions
acceptable let alone binding.73 Mir Ghiyath al-Din, like several Persian aristocrats
rejected al-Karakis claims to authoritative religious leadership. Tellingly, on the
qibla issue, Shah Tahmasb upheld al-Karakis viewpoint, and the Shah eventually
dismissed Ghiyath al-Din from office in 939AH/1532CE.74
During the same year, and as a sign of al-Karakis eminence at the court, Shah
Tahmasb issued a royal decree (farman) declaring him the deputy (naib) of the
Sufi Regalia and Legal Banners 19
Imam and giving him the title Seal of the Jurisconsults (khatam al-mujtahidin).75
Al-Karaki reinforced the legal rules of religious observances with such rigor and
alacrity and went to such extreme limits in disseminating the Imami madhhab that
some nicknamed him the inventor of Shiite religion.76 With Mir Ghiyath al-Din
removed, the office of sadr was then conferred, in accordance with the wishes of
the Seal of Jurisconsults (that is al-Karaki), on Mir Muizz al-Din Muhammad
Isfahani (938944AH/15312 to 15378CE), who was a paragon of scholarship and
a practical man.77 Before the advent of Mir Muizz al-Din, al-Karaki acted as the
interim sole sadr with full authority to appoint deputies and agents. These
developments point to the shifting social boundaries between the aristocratic and
the clerical elite. They also reflect the unstable fluctuating nature of the sadarat
during the early reign of Shah Tahmasb. After the Shah had wrested control from
the Qizilbash in 940AH/1533CE, the Persian aristocracy firmly regained the office
of sadr. Mir Muizz al-Din remained sadr for six years and was succeeded by Mir
Shams al-Din Asadullah Marashi Shushtari, who remained in office until his death
in 963AH/15556CE.
Despite their varied religious backgrounds and beliefs, al-Karaki and the Turkoman
Qizilbash seem to have coalesced at several occasions to promote their interests within
the world of court maneuvers and intrigues. In 936AH/1532CE, shortly following al-
Karakis dispute with Ghiyath al-Din, the Turkoman leader Chuha Sultan was
appointed the tutor of Bahram Mirza, the son of Shah Tahmasb. On his trip from
Herat to Isfahan stopping by at Yazd, Chuha Sultan was accompanied by al-Karaki,
and the two arrived together at Isfahan.78 As military men, the Turkoman amirs would
not have viewed with suspicion al-Karakis influence on filing the religious ranks,
for they had competed only once with the Persian aristocracy over the post of shaykh
al-Islam.79 On the other hand, the Qizilbash struggled relentlessly with the Persian
vakils over political influence. They tried to undermine the vakils function, except in
the case of Najm al-Din Abd al-Baqi (d. 920AH/1514CE) mostly because he devoted
more time to religious matters than to secular administration.80 The sadrs, however,
having seen how the Shah invested al-Karaki with power, titles and economic grants,
were in the more difficult position of a professional class whose territory had been
trespassed upon.81 The Persian historian and notable Qadi Ahmad Ghaffari (d. 975AH/
15678CE) expressed the deep-seated resentment his aristocratic class had for the
Amili clerics and questioned their imprudent requisition of the title ulama, the
learned.82 In comparison, the Turkoman historian Hasan-i Beg Rumlu cast al-Karaki
in a favorable light, and ranked him above Ghiyath al-Din, the Persian sadr.83 Iskandar
Beg Munshi, another Turkoman historian, showed great admiration and respect
toward Amili ulama, with the exception of al-Karakis grandson, Husayn al-Mujtahid,
whose excessive assumption of honorific titles triggered only Munshis mild criticism.
While Shah Tahmasb seemed determined to promote the Syrian Amili clerics, it
is unlikely that he was solely or independently successful at that.84 On the one
hand, he felt secure in strengthening the position of the early Amilis, who had no
ties to the powerful and contending groups in Safavid society and who easily became
20 Converting Persia
loyal supporters. (Even so, al-Karaki played on Tahmasbs fears and inexperience.)
On the other hand, the young Tahmasbs decisions about religious policies and
their political implications facilitated the goals of both the Qizilbash and al-Karaki,
odd allies as they were. The most decisive of these choices was the extent to which
Shah Tahmasb succumbed to the scriptural and legal regulations of religious life
and distanced himself from the more heterodox and millenarian features of his
Sufi upbringing.85 Nonetheless, Shah Tahmasbs resistance to the Persian notables
pressures clearly meant that the Qizilbash implicitly if not actively endorsed the
Shahs movement toward an Amili-fostered Twelver Shiism. Curiously, the
Qizilbash amirs did not foresee the long-term effect of clerical Shiism and the way
in which it gradually eroded their own mystical and heterodox milieu. It is also
important to note that the Qizilbash did not act as one unified ethnic group. Rather,
the high-ranking leaders became gradually more open to mainstream Shiism (as I
will show in my discussion of the period of Shah Ismail II) even when the general
tribal populace expressed diverse anti-clerical sentiments. This can be explained
by the fact that the Qizilbash amirs had a vested interest in preserving the empire
and were themselves organs of the new state. Even if they had initially rejected
orthodox Islam, the amirs started to entertain elements of it or contradictory
heterodox and orthodox doctrines simultaneously. They felt a sharia-based Islam
could be of good service to their political careers. Unlike millenarian, mystical, or
shamanistic precepts, clerical Islam can develop a wide, stable, legitimate and
consensual basis for the state.
Al-Karakis life and other Amilis experiences in general do not support the
idea that they stood ethnically apart from Persian society or were a non-assimilative
group.86 That idea pays little attention to the Safavid Persian social landscape in
which the immigrant Amilis lived and to which their legal decisions responded.
Tensions between the Arab and Persian scholars were an outcome, frequently but
not always stated in ethnic terms, of their competition to influence policy decisions
and obtain posts at court. Indicative of al-Karakis efforts to build ties of friendship
and professional support among the Persian aristocrats was his nomination of Mir
Muizz al-Din Muhammad Isfahani and later Mir Asadullah Shushtari for the
sadarat. Al-Karaki also forged important ties with Persian families through inter-
marriage; at least two of his daughters married into the Astarabadi family.87 Among
the Astarabadis, al-Karaki had friends, students and followers in juridical method.
Let the Qizilbash be present in the mosque fully armed, encircling the
worshippers; if anyone makes a move when the khutba (formal address in a
mosque) is recited, the Qizilbash will be able to contain the situation.90
Clearly, the Shah found the performance of Friday prayer in his name a central
step toward the reinforcement of state authority.
Al-Karaki was among the earliest Shiite clerics to lift the prohibition against the
convening of Friday prayer, encouraging full participation in this ritual. In 921AH/
1515CE, he defended his position, emphasizing the merits of Friday worship and its
special place in Islamic tradition. Notwithstanding, he made it optional (al-wujub al-
takhyiri) rather than obligatory (al-wujub al-ayni) for one to observe Friday prayer.
He declared that congregational prayer must be held by a designated mujtahid who
is qualified to act as the general deputy of the Hidden Imam.91 Only in the presence
of such a mujtahid or the Imam himself is it absolutely necessary for Shiites to perform
Friday prayer.92 Al-Karaki insisted the mujtahid does not need a special appointment
from the Hidden Imam to perform Friday prayer. A general deputyship is sufficient.
Nowhere did al-Karaki state that the sovereign should identify the deputy of the
Imam. Only a high-ranking cleric and legal expert can determine who is qualified to
be the general deputy of the Imam. In retrospect, al-Karaki extended to the jurist a
socio-political base somewhat independent from the sovereign.
Al-Karakis views about Friday prayer were unpopular among his fellow
theologians. The latter refused to acknowledge the Safavid state and insisted that
Friday prayer should not be performed until the advent of the Hidden Imam.
Curiously, Arab and Persian scholars at the Safavid court and outside publicly
challenged al-Karakis views on Friday prayer. Possibly, al-Karakis emphasis on
the pivotal role of the jurist in convening Friday prayer angered the sadrs. The
latter feared clerics would promote their exclusive rights in performing Friday
prayer, and hence strengthen their ties to the monarch and the public. Ultimately,
22 Converting Persia
al-Karaki was attempting to embellish the cleric with the power of legitimizing the
Safavid Empire and validating its religious foundations. The opposition he incurred
perhaps explains why Friday prayer was not widely practiced during his time and
remained in abeyance several decades after his death.93
The agricultural estates of Kabisa and Dawalib adjacent to the river of the
holy Najaf the cultivated lands of Umm al-Azmat and the Khain al-Wad
lands of Ramahiyya that he [al-Karaki] has brought into cultivation be made
endowment (waqf) for him, and for his descendents after him, according to
the correct procedure of the Sacred Law as specified in the deed of
endowment The officials must give the above sum priority over all receipts
and drafts and not pay a single dinar to anyone until it has reached his
deputies (vukala).107
in Kashan, where he delivered regular teaching sessions.110 As for his brother Hasan,
no biographical records are present for him in the major Safavid chronicles or
biographical dictionaries, raising the question: was there a deliberate effort after
al-Karakis death to curtail the influence of his family and to avoid making his
position a hereditary post? Complaints about al-Karakis influence may have caused
the Shah to distance himself for some time from al-Karakis successors.
following among artisans.123 Al-Karaki resented the fact that the blasphemous
guildsman acted as a legal authority, issuing opinions and rulings, which were
binding to his followers. Any person joining the ranks of the guild or taking up a
craft must meet the approval of this man and take the oath of allegiance. Al-Karaki,
who was by then the seal of jurisconsults, declared such activity a violation of the
sharia and described the guildsman as a cursed adulterer and liar.124 In this and
other instances, there is a consistent identification between guild and Sufi orders.
The jurists were struggling to provide religious guidance for the urban lower classes
whose artisans and guildsmen drew upon popular Sufi creed and possibly the
futuvvat heritage. Notably, al-Karaki directed a subtle criticism at government
officials for their inexcusable leniency toward guilds leaders given their obvious
disdain for clerics. The Safavid rulers used various methods to control the guilds,
but clearly, as al-Karakis complaints show, the rulers interfered little in the guilds
internal religious practices, since their primary concern was fiscal.125
On another occasion, al-Karaki openly chastised two Sufi groups, the Qalandaris
and the Marinis, alongside the artisans for following spiritual leaders who
undermined the sacred law.126 These leaders, al-Karaki stated, had declared licit what
God had otherwise forbidden, such as the shaving of beards, mustaches and eyebrows.
Al-Karaki encouraged his community to ostracize these leaders and humiliate them
publicly. Shaykh Hasan, the son of al-Muhaqqiq al-Karaki, also took up the crusade
against the Sufis in his work The Chief Proposition on the Infidelity of the Misguided
(Umdat al-Maqal fi Kufr Ahl al-Dalal). He first expounded then denounced the doctrines
of the incarnation of God (hulul) in the bodies of Gnostics (arifs), the belief that God
is the soul of existence and that every existing being is God. He branded the advocates
of such doctrines with infidelity, adultery and blasphemy.127
Apparently, the struggle between the clerics on the one hand and futuvvat
Tradition and popular Sufism on the other had just started. During this struggle,
the ulama felt it necessary to emphasize devotional literature alongside observance
of sharia. They gradually developed parallel and competing religious symbolisms
that carried some of the attraction of the futuvvat narratives.
shaykh al-Islam. They must have become well versed in the Persian language. Al-
Karaki traveled considerably within the empire and relied on a network of Persian
students and agents to transport his rulings to numerous towns and cities. He visited
Herat, Kashan and Tabriz mostly for the purpose of disseminating the Shiite creed
and ensuring conformity with the Shiite cchool of law, known as the Jafari.135 In
Kashan, he paid great attention to public affairs, adjudicating in diverse matters,
mediating between feuding parties, and executing his rulings.136
Safavid sources shed further light on the method in which al-Karakis opinions
became authoritative and binding in remote parts of the empire. Shah Tahmasb
decreed to all provincial governors to adopt the religious directives of al-Karaki,
whom he described as the deputy of the Imam.137 For his part, al-Karaki provided
the governors with a manual (dustur al-amal) instructing them on various socio-
economic matters, particularly the collection and administration of land tax. He set
the legal punishments (hudud) and encouraged the performance of Friday prayer.138
He specifically called for the appointment of a prayer leader in every village and city
and gave him clear instructions as how to carry out his tasks. By force or by the
power of conviction, many embraced religious learning and adhered to Shiite ritual.
During the reign of Shah Ismail, one of the provincial Safavid rulers commanded
the translation of Al-Alfiyya, a classic compendium of Shiite law written by al-
Shahid, from Arabic into Persian.139 The court historian, Khwandamir, noted that
al-Karakis commentary on the Al-Alfiyya and his own treatise on worship and
ablution, known as Al-Risala al-Jafariyya, were widespread among Persians.140
Serious translation efforts ensued among Persian scholars, the most noteworthy of
whom was Ali b. al-Hasan al-Zawari (alive around 947AH/1540CE), a student of
al-Karaki.141 Al-Zawari focused on Shiite doctrinal works, Tradition, Quranic
exegesis and popular literature. He translated various works into Persian, such as
Al-Ihtijaj by al-Fadil b. Hasan al-Tabarsi (d. 548AH/1153CE), Al-Itiqad by Ibn Babuya
al-Qummi (d. 381AH/991CE), and Tafsir al-Quran, attributed to Imam Hasan al-
Askari, and Sharh al-Arbain Hadithan by al-Shahid. Al-Zawari also wrote a
commentary on the popular work Nahj al-Balagha by al-Sharif al-Murtada.142
Similarly, under Shah Tahmasb, Mir Sayyid Husayn al-Mujtahid (d. 1001AH/
15923CE), the grandson of al-Karaki, was directly involved in arbitration among
the populace and the local elite alike. He held court hearings among the army
personnel.143 He issued injunctions on a wide array of topics and registered his
rulings as part of the official ascriptions. As Willem Floor noted, the shaykh al-Islam
wielded great power and delegated authority not only in the capital city but in the
provinces as well.144 Sanson wrote that the shaykh al-Islam was the Judge that
dispatches most business. He is Chief of the Law-Colleges, and constantly reads
upon it his Subaltern Officers every Wednesday and Saturday.145
Simplified and concise legal manuals, translated into Persian and short enough to
be committed to memory, became essential guides for a systematic application of
Shiite precepts in everyday life. Al-Karakis Jami al-Maqasid, for instance, was at the
time the most accessible commentary on the legal work Qawaid al-Ahkam by al-Allama
Sufi Regalia and Legal Banners 29
al-Hilli.146 During the sixteenth century, Amili clerics like al-Karaki, Abd al-Ali (d.
993AH/1585CE) and Hasan, his sons, Mir Sayyid Husayn, his grandson, Ali b. Hilal
al-Karaki, known as al-Minshar (d. 984AH/1577CE), and Husayn b. Abd al-Samad
al-Jubai al-Amili (d. 984AH/1576CE) devoted much attention to positive law (furu),
particularly acts of worship (ibadat) and contracts (uqud). But by far the most extensive
legal works circled around ritual purity and worship, ablution (wudu), direction of
prayer, and Friday prayer. (See Appendix III) Almost all the works on Shiite Tradition
produced by the mid sixteenth century were authored by Husayn b. Abd al-Samad.
Equally significant during the early Safavid reign was the composition of original
polemical works against Sunnism and Sufism. Except for Husayn b. Abd al-Samad
who expressed a marked interest in literature, ethics and classical Sufism, the Amili
scholars were jurists par excellence who defined their religious outlook and profession
in legalistic terms. (See Appendix III)
Afterthoughts
By the time al-Karaki died in 940AH/1533CE, the words and actions of Amili jurists
bore great moral, social and political weight. Before the year 940AH/1533CE ended,
an otherwise unknown migr prayer leader (pish-namaz) at the imperial camp of
Shah Tahmasb, Sayyid Muhammad Jabal Amili (d. 968AH/1560CE), saw the
Prophet in a dream portending that if the Shah were to interdict prohibited acts, he
would achieve a victorious conquest of his enemies regions.147 (Although the
historian Munshi gave no details, he noted that during 939940AH/153334CE
Shah Tahmasb was in Herat intending to invade Transoxiana to defeat the Uzbeks
and subjugate their leader, Ubayd Khan.148 In the same year, the Shah received the
alarming news that Sultan Suleiman had invaded Azerbaijan and Persian Iraq,
which forced him to direct his military expeditions westward.) When Sayyid
Muhammad Jabal Amili related his dream to the Safavid royalty, courtiers and
viziers, they decided to act upon it but could not understand what those prohibited
acts were to which the Prophet was referring in the dream. They hoped to be guided
by another vision or sign. The following night, a distinguished notable saw in a
dream humans and demons prostrating to the Tenth Imam, Mir Hadi Musavi
Muhtasib Ali al-Hadi (d. 254AH/868CE), holding his hand and repenting for
alcohol drinking, adultery and homosexuality. When the distinguished notable
narrated his dream to the Safavid princes, they professed repentance from such
practices among themselves and among government officials. They then issued a
command prohibiting alcohol, gambling and other similar acts.149 They further
decreed that the large amount allotted annually to the taverns, gambling houses,
brothels and places serving electuary (a fermented medicinal paste or drink made
in part with honey and herbs) would be deducted from coffers of the collective
provinces and offices.
By the end of al-Karakis life, he had overseen the recognition in the Safavid
court and Persian society of both Twelver Shiism and its immigrant communities
30 Converting Persia
of Amili, Iraqi and Bahraini ulama. Through his calculated exposition of Twelver
scholarship on hadith and law, al-Karaki had instituted roles at the Shahs court
and in society for the migr scholars that deftly combined their religious duties
and privileges with temporal roles. Consequently, some Twelver Shiite mujtahids
became esteemed and powerful religious and political figures in Persia, and some
even were deemed to reflect the political prerogatives of the Shahs.
Al-Karaki explicitly intended to extract Shiism from its scholastic puritanism and
confinement at the communal level as well as its marginalization within a Sunnite
state structure, explaining in part why Shah Ismail I took notice of him. The new
empire needed clerics who could wed Shiism to Safavid statehood and provide
stability and a standard system of religious worship. To develop a sharia-based society,
the Safavids needed to standardize religious practice and to vest religious scholars
with imperial authority; neither the Qizilbash nor the erudite Persian notables were
suitable for this task.150 Aside from attesting to the gradual empowerment of Shiite
clerics as exclusive legitimators and guardians of imperial sovereignty, these
developments illustrate the utility of juridical Islam to the Safavid monarchs.
2
The Mujtahids Navigate
the Sovereigns World
Aims of a Polemic
The interconnected doctrines of baraa, or dissociation from ones enemies, and
walaya, allegiance toward the house of Ali and Fatima, were well developed in
Imami Shiism by the late eighth century CE.16 Jafar al-Sadiq, the sixth Imam,
considered allegiance to him and his followers incumbent upon Shiite believers
alongside enmity toward their opponents.17 The statements made at Ghadir Khum,
the most significant Shiite tradition, delineates the dissociation-enmity theme
particularly in the Prophets statement: He who follows me follows Ali. God!
befriend those who befriend him and oppose those who oppose him (man kuntu
mawlah fa-Ali mawlah, wali man walah wa-adi man adah).18 This theme takes a new
meaning after the rise of the Safavid Empire and its political duels with the Ottomans
to the west. Under Sunnite Caliphs, Shiites professed at times open Alid allegiance
but could hardly dissociate themselves from Sunnite rulers. The Safavids drama-
tized and invented a number of Shiite rituals that emphasized differences rather
34 Converting Persia
Indeed, cursing the first two Caliphs for their alleged usurpation of Alis rights
was not a tenet of the Shiite faith but a feature of its dogma. Yet, the Aleppine
The Mujtahids Navigate the Sovereigns World 35
scholar pointed to a leading thirteenth-century Shiite scholar, al-Muhaqqiq al-
Hilli, who had endorsed the cursing of the first two Caliphs. Husayn explained
then that Shiite scholars legitimized cursing on the basis of rational inference,
namely, ijtihad. The Shiites cursed Abu Bakr and Umar because they believed
both have mistreated Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet, and committed injustices
against Ali.24 Shiites also accuse Umar of violating the Prophets rulings by
prohibiting temporary marriage and marriage during pilgrimage, and punishing
anyone who practiced them. As for Uthman, the third Caliph, he appointed wanton
officials for the administration of Muslim affairs and committed abominable acts
like alcohol drinking and crime.25 Husayn then states that the Aleppine scholar
converted from Sunnism to Shiism and cursed the enemies of the House of the
Prophet in general and the three in particular, God damn them!26
Husayns defense of ijtihad had important political dimensions. At the time, the
four Sunnite schools of law, the Hanafite, which the Ottomans upheld, and the
Shafiite, the Hanbalite and the Malikite, all restricted or prohibited the use of
ijtihad as a method for deriving a legal opinion. Historically, a jurist who uses
rationalist methods of argumentation and is known as a mujtahid infers a legal
precept on the basis of four sources, namely, the Quran, Tradition, the consensus
of the Shiite jurists and Imams (ijma), and reason (aql).27 Whereas the Shiite legal
practices have emphasized rational inference, Sunnism had for the most part restrict-
ed its use to a few major scholars of the early Islamic period.28 Husayn, explained
that Sunnite scholars have used ijtihad at different instances but denounced the
Shiite ulama for using it.29 He defended the Jafari school of law against Ottoman
Sunnism and rejected the foundations of Sunnite political thought, presenting it as
a usurpation of the rights of Imam Ali and his descendants through Fatima.
It is unclear what the direct context and exact motives are for recounting and
documenting this debate at this historical period. Overall, Husayns exposition
served as a model for Safavid religious guides and learned members of society. It
provided the Safavids with tools of doctrinal defense of Shiism and a knowledge
of the central and classical arguments used by Shiite ulama against Sunnism,
particularly for the purpose of religious conversion. It is also noteworthy that
Husayns ideas reflected his and the Safavids interest in consent and personal
conviction as a basis for conversion. Coercion and political pressure would only
serve a short-term purpose in securing Safavid overlordship over Persia.30
The integration of the Syrian Shiite clerics of Jabal Amil into Safavid society and
the Persian aristocracys resistance to their ascendancy in the religious ranks marked
the early period of Shah Tahmasbs reign. Meanwhile, the social status and economic
36 Converting Persia
To Remedy the Shah From Mania: Ritual Purity and Friday Prayer
Shah Tahmasb encouraged finely drawn statements on religious issues. From
childhood he suffered from a sometimes-debilitating obsession with cleanliness
and ritual purity. Mindful of the Shahs disturbed psychological state, Husayn and
other ulama produced legal works explicating Shiite rituals of prayer and purity.
Around 969970AH/15623CE, Shah Tahmasb asked Husayn to write a work on
38 Converting Persia
In choosing Bahrain and not Persia as his abode for the next life, Husayn showed
great ambiguity about his relationship and his sons potential one with the Safavid
Empire and the Shahs. His poem showed his deep discontent with the Shahs
lifestyle and his sense of alienation from Safavid society. He sought spiritual and
scholastic retreat in Bahrain.63 Moreover, Husayn expressed a widespread view
that the wealthier Mughal court offered greater material rewards for scholars than
the Safavid one. Poets, within whose ranks Husayn counted Bahai, thrived under
the Mughals. Despite the fact that the Safavids in general and Shah Tahmasb in
particular were generous patrons, several poets turned to the Mughal court.64
Despite his misgivings about the Shahs, Husayn long hoped Shiite jurists would
administer and shape the religious order of their societies. Historical circumstances
favored Husayns stance. Aside from his devotion to the verification of Tradition,
Husayn emphasized multiple religious guides, which helped the prospects of a
rigorous and expanding clerical leadership in Safavid Persia.
Normalizing Sunnism?
After Shah Tahmasbs death in 984AH/1576CE, all the Turkoman tribes except the
Ustajalu upheld his fourth son Prince Ismail II (r. 984985AH/15761578CE) as his
successor. Within the royal family, Tahmasbs daughter Princess Pari Khanom, a group
of her followers and her Circassian maternal uncle Shamkhal Sultan also endorsed
Ismail IIs succession to the throne.65 Shah Ismail II at once determined to overturn
a number of religious policies advocated by his predecessors. Embarking on a new
political venture, he tried to halt anti-Sunnite propaganda, so popular under his
father, and adopted a reconciliatory approach toward Sunnism. Several explanations
exist for Shah Ismail IIs attempted reinstatement of Sunnism. One theory precariously
suggests that his dependence on drugs, apparently begun during his eighteen-year
imprisonment as a youth in the fortress of Qahqaha under his fathers order, caused
him severe mental and psychological impairments and led him to oppose the previous
Safavid policies. Another argument also based on psychological motives, posits that
Ismail IIs change of policy was a manifestation of hostility toward his father and
thus toward the latters efforts at spreading Twelver Shiism.66 A few scholars
challenged the above assumptions, suggesting that Ismail II resented the Shiite
clerics increasing power and sought to minimize it through the readmission of
42 Converting Persia
Sunnism to Persia.67 This view has merit when tied to two additional factors: first,
the Shahs rapprochement with the Ottomans for various economic and political
considerations; second, the opposition of a few Qizilbash factions to the Shahs
economic policy, which encouraged them to coalesce with the clerics against him.
Together, prominent Qizilbash leaders and the clerics used the Shahs political
moderation toward Sunnism to accuse him of reneging on the empires commitment
to Shiism and as such to discredit his rule. In this respect, even the historical state-
ments preserved by court historians on the reign of Ismail II and the causes of his
death, are hardly objective. They must be understood as statements of what the ruling
elite and the succeeding Shahs accepted to be the official story of Shah Ismail II.
There is no decisive evidence that the Shah wanted a full readmission of Sunnism
into Persia. He wanted to comply with Ottoman demands in the Amasya peace
treaty in 962AH/1555CE, possibly in order to win concessions from the Ottomans
and foster good relations with the Sultan.68 Sunnite rivals often objected to the
defamation of Sunnite emblems and ritual cursing of the first three Caliphs.69 In
response, Ismail II cooperated with Persian notables of Sunnite leanings to
normalize Sunnism among his subjects by suppressing militant Shiite ideas
(ghuluww) and halting the tabarraiyan practice (a retinue that publicly denounces
the first two Caliphs and Aisha, the wife of the Prophet). This position coincided
with an internal struggle at court between Shah Ismail II and powerful Qizilbash
amirs, most notably the Ustajalu, over his economic policies and political-
administrative restructuring of land grants (suyurghals). The Shah dealt a severe
blow to the Ustajalu military leaders.70 He divided and withdrew land grants, and
neglected affairs of state and was indecisive in the appointment of state officers.71
Already, the Shah attempted to reshuffle land allotments of sayyids and sequester
land grants from the ulama to weaken and undermine them.72 The early Safavid
sovereigns extended to the ulama immunities from taxation in the form of land
grants (suyurghals), which benefited whole families of scholars through a kind of
prescriptive right.73 By the late Safavid period, the high-ranking ulama continued
to have access to such grants which sustained their powerbase.74 As Bert Fragner
explained, Safavid sovereigns struggled to achieve state centralization by preventing
any major sector of society from accumulating large land grants.75 It is important
to clarify, however, that centralization was never truly achieved and was only
practiced in limited bureaucratic and economic domains.76
Influential Qizilbash amirs were clearly partial to the confrontation between the
Shah and the ulama for they sided with the latter.77 Nonetheless, several Qizilbash
amirs who expressed their commitment to Twelver Shiism manipulated the Shahs
favorable views toward Sunnism in order to discredit him. They developed a viable
opposition to him among the sayyids and the clerics. Safavid sovereigns refrained
from taking drastic political measures against powerful Qizilbash leaders during
their early reign or without building solid counter-alliances with one or more
Qizilbash faction. For instance, Shah Abbas I (r. 995AH/1587CE1038AH/1629CE)
took three years to subjugate the Qizilbash mainly by relying on Georgian,
The Mujtahids Navigate the Sovereigns World 43
Armenian and Circassian army commanders and councils integrated into the
Safavid system as royal slaves (ghulaman).78 More importantly, much diplomatic
communiqu and subtle maneuvering took place between Shah Abbas and Yaqub
Khan, a powerful Qizilbash officer of the tribe of Zul-Qadr who governed Shiraz
and the province of Fars before the Shah decided to execute him.79 Shah Ismail II,
however, alienated several members of the elite during the first few months of his
reign and did not secure the military and bureaucratic support capable of subduing
his Qizilbash opponents. Without having any overwhelming support from a major
Qizilbash constituency, the Shah proceeded to dispossess several Ustajalu leaders
and eliminated others including the governor of Herat who was the guardian of
prince Abbas.80 A short while after ascending the throne, the Tekellu and the
Turkomans, who were among the Shahs strongest supporters, started to plot against
him. This forced the Shah to try and rebuild bridges with the Ustajalus.81 The official
narrative has it that the Tekellu and the Turkomans turned against the Shah due to
his desire to reinstate Sunnism, but the actual historical picture is more complicated.
Evidently, the Qizilbash feared that political moderation toward Sunnism would
promote the political and economic interests of aristocratic Persian families,
particularly the notables of Qazvin. Already under the administration of the crypto-
Sunnite sadr Mirza Makhdum, a number of Qazvinis received monetary grants for
verifying that they have never cursed the Companions of the Prophet.82 None of
the Persian notables seemed part of the campaign against Shah Ismail II, which, in
turn, shows that the Qizilbash felt exposed and somewhat undermined by the Shahs
attempt to surround himself with Tajik competitors who, unlike them, mildly
consented to ritual cursing. Extreme expressions of Shiism were not a defining
ideological trait for them as a class.
Even before Shah Ismail II rose to power, a number of ulama had cultivated
good ties with the Qizilbash amirs. Under Shah Tahmasb the ulama played a
mediatory role between him and a Qizilbash official who fell from the favor of his
perfect guide (murshid-i kamil), that is the Shah.83 In another example, during an
insurrection in Gilan in 979AH/157172CE, Bektash Beg, the son of the governor of
Gilan Allah Quli Sultan, was accused of dereliction of duty. The Qizilbash Sufis,
who normally acted collectively to punish a miscreant in their ranks, forbade him
to enter the palace gates. For three months, Bektash Beg waited to no avail at the
palace gates, imploring the Shah for forgiveness. Finally, a few sayyids and ulama
interceded on his behalf during the month of Ramadan and succeeded in gaining
the forgiveness of the Shah who offered him permission to leave the palace in
peace. The Shah did not harm him and his tribe was only able to put Bektash Beg
to death after the Shahs death. The ulama had some sway with the Shah and the
Qizilbash to undertake let alone succeed in their mediatory role.
Safavid sources conveniently implicate the new sadr, Mirza (Mir) Makhdum al-
Sharifi, a Persian notable and descendant of a scholarly-oriented family, in the pro-
Sunnite measures, which Shah Ismail took. Shiite texts depict Mir Makhdum as
the archenemy of Shiism whose evil enticements affected Ismail IIs beliefs and
44 Converting Persia
outlook.84 Mir Makhdum was the grandson of Qazi Jahan Sayfi Husayni Qazvini
(d. 974AH/1566CE), who was grand vizier during Shah Tahmasbs reign.85 He also
claimed descent from a reputed Sunnite scholar, Sayyid Sharif Jurjani (d. 824AH/
1413CE).86 Mir Makhdums principal scholastic training was the study of Tradition
and exegesis of the Quran. Mir Makhdum succeeded in nurturing a good
relationship with Shah Ismail II, from whom he received half of the post of sadr;
the other half went to the chief (naqib), Shah Inayatullah Isfahani, who had been
the chaplain of the army (qazi-yi muaskar) under Shah Tahmasb.87 With Mir
Makhdums assistance, Shah Ismail II strove to reverse some of Shiisms excessive
practices widespread among the populace since the early days of Safavid rule,
especially the defamation of Aisha and the ritual cursing of the first three Caliphs,
Abu Bakr, Umar and Uthman.88 In place of zealot Shiite scholars like the
Astarabadis, now linked by marriage with al-Karakis, the Shah appointed Sunnite
notables such as Mowlana Mirza Jan Shirazi and Mir Makhdum Lala to significant
posts. On several occasions, Shah Ismail II openly sided with Sunnite positions
against the deliberations of the Shiite clergy, thus undermining their position and
exposing them to ridicule. The majority of the Shiite ulama avoided a confrontation
with the Shah but discreetly resisted his policies.89 The Qalandari Sufis became
loyal supporters of Ismail II. The mere mention of the Qalandaris ignited great
hatred among the clerics due to their heterodox Islamic beliefs. The Amili ulama,
including al-Karaki, issued fatwas that proclaimed the Qalandaris religiously
deviant and called for severe retribution against them.90
Despite the suspicion that he was a dissimulating Sunnite, Mir Makhdum was
an eloquent preacher, whose sermons drew large crowds in the Haydariyya
Mosque at Qazvin.91 Neither Shah Tahmasb nor any major group of the local elite
took measures against him, indicating that his religious identity was not contentious
as long as Mir Makhdum expressed loyalty to the Safavids and upheld their
authority. Sunnite notables remained a visible force at court.92 No systematic
exclusion of their affluent members from the states administrative ranks occurred,
and an unspoken agreement existed that as long as they did not express their views
overtly, no real harm would befall them. It was only when Mir Makhdum exceeded
reasonable bounds in regard to his Sunnite beliefs and made no effort to conceal
them that he was eventually unmasked as a Sunnite and dismissed from office.93
Even later, when the majority of the Qizilbash suspected Mir Makhdum of being
a Sunni at heart, he survived alleged murder plots.94 He fled Safavid territories
and sought refuge in the Ottoman Empire as a self-declared Sunnite, and became
the grand jurist of Mecca.95 In a most illuminating section of his autobiographical
work, An Offensive in Refutation of the Shiites (Al-Nawaqid fi al-Radd ala al-Rawafid),
Mir Makhdum depicts Abd al-Ali, al-Karakis son, as a mediocre mujtahid but
admits that Abd al-Ali:
Evidently, Abd al-Ali al-Karaki shunned extremism and the ritual cursing of
Sunnite Caliphs, which his father had endorsed. Mir Abd al-Ali was inclined, at
least initially, to give his daughter in marriage to Mir Makhdum. The latter blamed
the Shiite community for preventing the marriage and for chastising Abd al-Ali
for his rash decision. For his part, Abd al-Ali had convinced Shah [Tahmasb] to
appoint him [Mir Makhdum] as supreme judge for all the Persian provinces.97
representatives of the doctors of religion and the law, led by Mir Seyyed Hoseyn
Jabal Ameli the mojtahed [that is Mir Husayn], at the request of the amirs went
to the palace, washed the Shahs body according to the dictates of canon law,
and buried it at Yort Sirvani, between the harem garden and the palace.99
From at least 979AH/15712CE, Mir Husayn was one of the few ulama upon
whom Shah Tahmasb bestowed exceptional privileges. Eager to show both his newly
acquired noblesse and his descent from the line of the Prophet (siyada), Mir Husayn
advanced his scholarly credentials and legacy as a descendant of al-Karaki and
manipulated social pedigree to his benefit. He commanded the court secretaries to
inscribe a list of titles for his seal that was attached to legal documents. Among
these titles were the following:
The leader of the verifiers of the truth, the authority of those versed in the
fine points of the law, the inheritor of the world of the Prophets and
Messengers, the Seal of the mojtaheds.100
46 Converting Persia
No one dared openly criticize Mir Husayn for either his notorious assumption of
pompous titles or his claim to supreme ijtihad.101 Shah Tahmasb so respected the
status of sayyids that several occupied the highest ranks in his service and some
also attained a degree of intimacy never before reached by anyone in the service
of any prince.102 Similarly, during Shah Ismail IIs enthronement ceremony, sayyids,
ulama and mujtahids were the first to follow the royal princes in the ceremony of
kissing the Shahs feet. Walking behind them were other high-ranking amirs, the
Qizilbash nobility, the viziers and other member of the bureaucracy.103
Shah Ismail II believed that Mir Sayyid Husayn and the Astarabadis turned the
Qizilbash against him.104 Well aware of the status which several Amili ulama had
obtained in his father Shah Tahmasbs time, Shah Ismail II protested: They [the
ulama] had, with flattery and hypocrisy deceived my father; I will not be deceived
by them.105 He ordered all of Mir Husayns books impounded and sealed and
evicted Mir Husayn from his residential quarters.106 The Shah viewed with distrust
another Amili scholar, the court scribe (katib) Mir Seyyed Ali, the son of al-Karaki.
Shah Ismail II made an attempt against Abd al-Alis life, after which the latter
fled from Qazvin to Hamadan.
Unlike Abd al-Ali, Mir Husayn was not intimidated and he remained in Qazvin
and strengthened his position presumably under the protection of a few powerful
Qizilbash amirs and royal princes. Mir Husayn became the confidant of some
courtiers who approached him with all the knotty problems, which no one could
solve, not even the royal princes; his requests were invariably accorded.107 More
important, however, he enjoyed excellent relations with some Qizilbash leaders
and collaborated with them at some point to remove Ismail II from power. This
explains why the Shah could not eliminate him easily. For instance, Shah Ismail II
severely punished most performers of ritual cursing by mutilating their bodies,
but he could not exact a similar punishment on Mir Husayn.108
Mir Makhdum resented the fact that: The hearts of the Qizilbash inclined toward
him [Mir Husayn], for until now he is an obeyed mujtahid in their eyes.109 Mir
Makhdum was most disdainful of Mir Husayns claims to be the general deputy of
the Hidden Imam. In a statement verging on hyperbole, he claimed Mir Husayn
had issued more than 20,000 false opinions (fatwas) that no one can understand
but him!.110 Evidently, Shiite and Sunnite ulama alike voiced their resistance to
Amili claims to authoritative ijtihad validated by Shah Tahmasb himself.
Mir Husayn espoused Shiite extremism and invested much effort in repudiating
Sunnite political emblems. He felt that Sunnite beliefs were still upheld by the laity
and took upon himself the task of refuting the heresies of the Sunnites.111 In two
slightly different tracts, Mir Husayn verified the date of Umars death and how
Shiite believers should commemorate it. He highlights a rare Shiite Tradition,
related by Ahmad b. Ishaq al-Qummi, a close companion of Ali b. Muhammad,
Abul-Hasan al-Askari (d. 254AH/868CE), the Tenth Imam, through two Shiite
followers, Abul-Ala al-Hamadhani al-Wasiti and Yahya b. Muhammad b. Jarih
al-Baghdadi. Apparently, after Abul-Ala and Yahya disagreed on a question
The Mujtahids Navigate the Sovereigns World 47
relating to oration, they decided to consult Ahmad al-Qummi.112 When Ahmad
came out to meet Abul-Ala and Yahya in his house in Qum, he was dressed up
festively and the smell of amber came out of his wrapper. Ahmad explained that it
was the ninth day of the month of Rabi al-Awwal, a day of celebration for the
death of the Caliph Umar. Ahmad noted that the Twelfth Imam had asked his
servants to dress up in new clothes, within their modest means, on that day.
Using this rare account, Mir Husayn promoted Shiism as a natural extension of
Muhammads prophecy and as the fulfillment of divine will. He emphasized the
obligation and centrality of dissociation (from ones enemies) to Shiite
eschatological traditions.113 He tells his readers that the Prophet predicted that the
ninth of Rabi al-Awwal will bring good tidings and triumph to the house of the
Prophet, Ali and Fatima and their progeny.114 On this day, God will destroy Imam
Alis enemies, fulfill Fatimas prayers, and accept the deeds of loyal Shiites. God
had also predicted that on such a day a hypocrite (meaning Umar) will obstruct
Gods way, burn His book, change His teachings, undermine His Imam, disown
the Prophets daughter and benefit from illegal inheritance. Umar is presented as
the forger of the Quran who pleased Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians. More
importantly, Mir Husayn suggests that the Caliph Umar plotted to assassinate
Imam Ali.
Mir Husayn incorporates the day of Umars death into a Shiite eschatological
order. He argues that when Umar died, God ordered His angels and those who
love the Prophet to celebrate it. He also commanded His honorary scribes to lift
their pens as not to record any human sins in honor of the Prophet and Imam Ali,
his legatee (wasi).115 God will increase the fortunes of those who celebrate this day
and save them from hell!
The defamation of the first three Caliphs, particularly Umar, marked both the
clerical official apparatus of Shiism and popular shamanistic tendencies among
Safavid subjects. Mir Husayn clearly suggests the interdependence of dissociation
from and cursing of Sunnite figures in Shiite faith. It is misleading to assume,
however, that Mir Husayns position is simply a formulation of a well-established
practice among Shiites. Occasional and spontaneous Shiite cursing of Sunnite
Caliphs is at variance with institutionalized ritual cursing, which occurs routinely
in public and becomes a defining character of a faith. State instigated cursing was
less an expression of sectarian hostilities, than a function of political conflict. The
Safavids aimed to denormalize Sunnism and draw sharper lines between it and
Shiism among their subjects. This was a major development from the post-Mongol
period, where Persians, Turkomans and Arabs have indiscriminately drawn upon
both in defining their religious identity. Internally and externally, the Safavids
benefited from the maintenance of a rejectionist, militant, dramatized approach
toward Sunnism.
For their part, the ulama also adapted elements of folk religion present among
Qizilbash and Persian Sufis alike. As Alexander Morton pointed out, the chub-i
tariq appropriated by the Safavid jurists had clear Qizilbash origins.116 The latter
48 Converting Persia
considered chub-i tariq an effective way to control Shiite practice and reach the
widest popular base.117 The chub-i tariq was led by the khalifa who started his ritual
by praising God and Shah Tahmasb. After an hour of Sufi dhikr, followed by the
chanting of Ismails and Tahmasbs poems, everyone present at the Shahs court,
particularly qurchis, were called one by one to make a contribution of money. These
men would then come to the center of the room and stretch themselves on the
ground in front of the Shah. The khalifa gave each one of them a blow on the behind,
then kissed their heads and feet, and kissed the stick.118
A more subtle and complex exchange among various religious groups, including
the jurists, continued to develop throughout the Safavid period. The Shiite ulama
cultivated a pietistic popular tradition, which linked them to saintly and Sufi figures.
Bahai appropriated elements of dervishism and Sufism in his writings even as he
continued to denounce messianism and heterodoxy. Bahai also liked to paint an
image of his forefathers in Jabal Amil as austere worshippers who, not unlike Sufi
saints, had reached high spiritual ranks (maqamat) and performed miracles (karamat).119
He related that one severe winter day in the Amili town of Juba, his grandfather,
Shams al-Din, realized there was no food for his children. The heavy snow blocked
the roads and prevented him from seeking help. The children were crying out of
hunger when Shams al-Din said to his wife: Comfort the children and let us pray to
God to feed us. The woman gathered some snow and her husband put it in the hot
oven saying: This is the bread I am baking for you. As Shams al-Din prayed, God
illuminated his way and turned the snow into bread loafs in less than an hour!
I will never renounce it [tabarraiyyun]. Even if the Shah were to kill me, let
him do so; then our successors will say: Another Yazid had killed another
Husayn who committed no sin, and they will curse him the way they cursed
the first damned ignoble Yazid!120
The Mujtahids Navigate the Sovereigns World 49
Mir Husayns entanglement in the empires internal political affairs went further
than defending the Shiite creed to searching for possible replacements for Shah
Ismail II. Mir Husayn apparently favored a nephew of the Shah, Sultan Ibrahim
Mirza, a most talented and cultured man, an artist, outstanding musician and
poet, and he secretly endorsed him as an alternative candidate for the throne.121
Mir Husayns plans formed at a time when the Qizilbash were already disconcerted
by both the Shahs deviation from the path of his forefathers and his severe measures
against many royal princes and officials. As an example, Shah Ismail II reprimanded
Bolgar Khalifa, who occupied the high position of khalifat al-khulafa, and castigated
him as a simple-minded Turk for having argued in support of the ritual cursing
of the three Caliphs, another indication that Mir Husayn and the Qizilbash had
found a common cause. Some of the Shahs loyal officers informed him that Bolgar
Khalifa had been made to memorize this argument in the presence of Sultan Ibrahim
Mirza, Mir Sayyid Husayn the mujtahid and Khwaja Afzal. The Shah felt his position
was increasingly precarious, and he knew that the ulama, led by Mir Husayn and
allied to the Qizilbash amirs, and some royal members and their adherents among
the Persian notables were advocating Sultan Ibrahim Mirza as his own replacement.
The Ustajalu Qizilbash, whose regions Shah Ismail II essentially razed for their
support of Haydar Mirza, were but one constituency estranged from the Shah.122
The Shahs economic policy, which rested on sequestering land grants from the
sayyids and the Shiite ulama, alienated other malcontents.123
Resistance to Shah Ismail II, overtly projected against Mir Makhdum, grew
stronger, especially when twelve royal guards (qurchis) exacted a deadly beating on
the curser (tabarrai), Darvish Qanbar, who interrupted Mir Makhdums Friday sermon
by reciting two verses encouraging cursing.124 The incident stirred up such anger
and grief among the populace that the Qizilbashs already shaken loyalty to the Shah
waned. In a last attempt to hold the reins of power and appease both the Qizilbash
and his people, the Shah arrested Mir Makhdum. Furthermore, during his own
assemblies, the Shah refrained from any discussion of religious affairs. This may
indicate that the Shah was reconsidering his policies and trying to appease the
Qizilbash. Yet, this change of heart came somewhat late. A group of Turkoman and
Tekellu Qizilbash amirs were already plotting to remove him and enthrone Sultan
Hasan Mirza, a son of Muhammad Khudabanda, who was residing in Tehran.125
Suspecting conspiracies against him, the Shah took severe measures toward family
members he supposed were aspiring to the throne. On the Shahs command, Prince
Ibrahim Mirza was murdered in Qazvin.126 Then, on pure conjecture, the Shah put to
death several of his cousins and all his brothers except one, Prince Mohammad
Khudabanda. The Shahs timely death from poison or intoxication saved Prince
Khudabandas son Abbas Mirza, the future Shah Abbas I, from assassination at the
Shahs request by Ali Quli Khan, the governor-general of Herat.127 In circumstances
that remain largely vague, the Shah was found dead. Few attributed it to natural
causes, but many believed he was poisoned either by the princess Pari Khanom or
by some Qizilbash amirs who had grown weary of his actions.128
50 Converting Persia
Afterthoughts
Indeed, the clerics strove to expunge heterodoxy and Sufism from Twelver Shiite
practices but, interestingly, they also nurtured some of the popular ghuluww
practices that overlapped with Qizilbash religious background, such as anti-Sunnite
ritual cursing and the beating ritual-confession. This evidence forces scholars in
the field to present a more nuanced and multifaceted picture of religion in Safavid
Persia, which takes into account class divisions and transformation among the
Qizilbash and the clerics alike, and Safavid statehood. It is unlikely that the Qizilbash
Sufi warriors remained unchanged on the doctrinal level by new class distinctions
and military power vested in a centralized state. The Amili clerics on their part
could not simply impose their version of legalistic Shiism without a measure of
consent at the state and popular levels. Co-opting a few elements of popular Sufism
and heterodoxy allowed the clerics to strengthen their own political positions and
legitimize imperial sovereignty. Legalistic Shiism became an internal Safavid affair,
thus acquiring an unmistakably Persian character. Much of the secondary literature
views the association between the Amilis and the Safavid state as an intrusion of
ethnic and intellectual dimensions. The writings of Jean Calmard and Kathryn
Babayan, which reflect this approach, treat Arab legalistic Shiism as mechanically
imposed on the indigenous spiritual landscape of Persia rather than being, more
accurately, a product of a social process within Persian society.130 Unfortunately,
Calmard and Babayans views were based on Andrew Newmans precarious
observations about clerical migration, and on a limited and selective examination
of the early Safavid sources.131 Calmard denies the clerical migration of Arab Shiite
ulama to Iran, maintaining that Ali al-Karaki (d. 940AH/1534CE) was the only
Arab Imami mujtahid who associated himself with the Safavid court.132 Babayan
also felt that the Arab theologians as a whole refused to immigrate to Persia on the
The Mujtahids Navigate the Sovereigns World 51
basis of their rejection of the mystical and heterodox Islamic beliefs harbored by
the Qizilbash.
In reality, however, the Amili ulama openly coveted Safavid religious posts and
lent support to a Persian rather than an Arab need for doctrinal certification and
for clerical discipline. In Jabal Amil these scholars played a modest role in their
communities, struggled to earn a living, and rarely debated the legitimacy of
convening Friday prayer, the direction of prayer or the prerogatives of a mujtahid;
all of which are strongly tied to the project of statehood in Persia. Under the Safavids,
the Amilis had to adapt to Persias political climate and lend support to its Shiite
state in ways they had never experienced or known before while they were living
in Jabal Amil. As the coming chapters illustrate, the building of a stable state
projecting religious coherence necessitated the appropriation of the clerical Shiism
of the Amilis. It is inaccurate to assume that the Qizilbash or the ulama were each
bound by a constant set of beliefs or practices or remained mutually exclusive.
Rather, members of the two groups, depending on their class interests and socio-
political goals, were transformed by the Safavid experience. Each appropriated
elements from the other that aimed to strengthen their political positions and
relations to the state.
The period of Shah Tahmasb also brings to the fore clear contests over the
performance of Friday prayer. Whereas al-Karaki had argued that observing Friday
prayer was optional for Shiite Muslims, Husayn considered it obligatory to observe
Friday prayer on the basis of infamous Shiite and Sunnite traditions. He succeeded
in reinstating Friday prayer, largely because he downplayed the role of the jurist
in performing this ritual. Professional jurists drew significant social status and
political influence from administering Friday prayer.133 Husayns views seemed to
have quelled the fears of Persian courtiers and even future sovereigns as to the
scope of authority of the cleric. Husayn was also more successful than al-Karaki in
convincing the ruler that holding Friday prayer was a powerful statement against
the Ottomans. It confirmed the Islamic character of the Safavid Empire. The complex
evolution of Shiism from a communal faith to a state religion along with the empires
need for deflecting Uzbek and Ottoman Sunnite propaganda, called for a conceptual
transformation in the Shiites approach toward temporal authority. The literature
surrounding Friday prayer owes some part to Ottoman-Safavid struggles and the
Safavids concern with their religious image and political stature.134
During the reign of Shah Tahmasb and Shah Ismail II, a few Qizilbash amirs
promoted Amili clerics and accepted their ascendancy in ranks of religious service
to undermine the Persian sadrs and bureaucrats, and boost their own political interests.
A few aligned themselves with Amili legalism in an attempt to confirm their
commitment and defense of Twelver Shiism as the empires foundation and religious
identity. Despite the fact that the Qizilbash emerged from a heterodox, Sufi form of
folk Shiism, as they assumed power in the Safavid state they began to nurture diverse,
often contradictory approaches to Shiism on the basis of political interest and social
class. A number of their amirs became gradually receptive to a legally regulated
Shiism, which the Amilis espoused. At the same time, the Amilis were aware of the
need to co-opt on a limited basis popular features of Twelver Shiism.135
The Amili clerical elite also underwent significant alteration. Its association with
the Safavid Shahs rendered almost pointless for it the central Shiite belief in the
suspension of temporal authority in the absence of the Mahdi (appointed one).
The Amilis promulgated legal and doctrinal points to serve three worldly purposes:
to legitimize the states authority over the Shahs divine rights; to provide ideological
Shiite links that validated the concepts of state and society; and to promote at least
a partial autonomy for the clerical elite. For its part, Amili legalism shaped the
character of Persian society in as much as this society was ready, historically
speaking, to undergo socio-political transformation, under the contingencies of
Safavid statehood. From heterodoxy and popular Imamism to clerically controlled
Shiism, the Amili ideas reflected the course of religion in early modern Iran.
3
Shah Abbas and Imperial Reign as
Clerical Discipline, 15871629CE
Qezelbash down in size, and instituting the silk monopoly and taking other
measures to get more control over trade. In this way he was able to claim a
larger share of the economic surplus generated by the economy.17
Abbas was called the prince of traders due to his efforts in building a solid com-
mercial base in Isfahan. Leading merchants managed the elites capital and shaped
guild business as Floor showed.18 Through the export monopoly of raw silk, elite
and state interference in the market became most pronounced and formalized
under Shah Abbas.19 These features had important political implications, for Shah
Abbas, more so than earlier Safavid sovereigns, derived complex and subtle forms
of ideological control over important social sectors in Persia.
debates were another platform where questions of sovereignty and state authority
were played out.
To Benefit the Learned and the Lay: Shiite Books under Shah Abbas
Beyond the clerical class, specialized legal compendiums and tracts on Shiite
doctrines and rituals were inaccessible. This is particularly true since the largest
percentage of juridical works, including Amili works, was in Arabic.33 For this
reason, the early Safavids and their jurists felt that simplified and concise fiqh
manuals, translated into Persian and short enough to be committed to memory,
were essential for religious and political integration. Several Amili commentaries
on canonical legal texts went on to become authoritative in their own right. Acts of
worship (ibadat) works continued with the same thrust from the early Safavid
period to the time of Shah Abbas. In fact, under the latter there was an increased
interest in spreading and reinforcing Shiite Tradition. Except for Husayn b. Abd
al-Samads works, little interest in collections of Tradition appeared at the time of
Shah Ismail and Shah Tahmasb. (See appendix III) Shaykh Bahai, Mir Damad
and Ahmad b. Zayn al-Abidin al-Alawi, better known as Ahmad Alavi, the student
and brother-in-law of Mir Damad, each produced works on Tradition. Bahai
compiled concise legal works, which gained great popularity, such as Al-Habl al-
Matin fi Ahkam al-Din and Mashriq al-Shamsayn wa Iksir al-Saadatayn. It was also at
the time of Shah Abbas that a new Persian translation of Muhammad b. Yaqub al-
Kulaynis (d. 329AH/941CE) monumental Usul al-Kafi fi Ilm al-Din was laid down.34
By far the most popular legal compendium was Bahais Jamii Abbasi, commissioned
by Shah Abbas. It touched on questions of Islamic ritual, the Imams proper dates
of birth and death, pious endowments, charity, sale, marriage, divorce, vows,
atonement and penal law.35 In a conscious attempt to deliver to Persian society a
token of a Persianized Shiism, Shah Abbas ordered that Jamii Abbasi be delivered
in a clear, comprehensible language in order that all people, the learned and the
lay, would seek benefit from it.36 Unlike the ulamas specialized tracts, the works
commissioned by Shah Abbas serve a socially diverse readership. In this sense,
Jamii Abbasi was a watershed in the popularization of Shiite legal literature, an
exercise in political cohesion and homogenization across the empire. Until the end
of the seventeenth century, the clerics invested much of their efforts in organizing
smaller collections and manuals of hadith with commentaries, particularly on
chapters of Ibn Babuyas Usul al-Kafi and Man la Yahduruh al-Faqih and Shaykh
Tusis Tahdhib and Al-Istibsar.
Mir Damad also had his share of commentaries on Shiite collections of Tradition,
namely Al-Taliqa ala Kitab al-Kafi and Al-Usul min al-Kafi. He also wrote a
commentary on Al-Istibsar.37 Like a few state-appointed clerics, Mir Damad
expressed a keen interest in philosophy (hikmat), dogmatic theology (kalam), and
mathematics. (See appendix III) Except for Husayn b. Abd al-Samad, who
entertained literary and Sufi predilections, the early migr scholars of Syria were
Shah Abbas and Imperial Reign as Clerical Discipline 59
jurists par excellence. Works drawing on the high learned tradition of Sufism also
appear with Bahai and Mirza Ahmad al-Husayni, the brother of Habibullah, the
Safavid sadr and great grandson of al-Karaki. Bahai also wrote a work titled Milal
va Nihal, identifying and discussing Sufi groups.38 Around fifteen mathematical
works were laid down by Bahai and Amili descendants. These were Bahais
brother, Abd al-Samad (d. 1020AH/1613CE), his nephew, Husayn b. Abd al-Samad,
and his students, Najib al-Din, Ali b. Muhammad al-Jubayli al-Amili and Jawad
b. Sad al-Amili. Bahais Bahr al-Hisab, his largest arithmetical book and its
summary, Khulasat al-Hisab, became authoritative textbooks.39
Whereas polemical treatises in refutation of Sunnism and Sufism dominated
the early and mid sixteenth century, around four works refuting Christianity and
Judaism surfaced during the reign of Shah Abbas. (See appendix III) These works
were written by the court scholar, Ahmad Alavi. Ahmad devoted one polemical
work to the refutation of Sufism. Due to the fact that popular Sufi groups were
effectively suppressed and marginalized by Shah Abbas, the clerics seemed to have
turned their focus away from them, at least for the time being. It is noteworthy that
the seventeenth century CE witnessed the appearance of the first Safavid Amili
treatise devoted to the akhbari-usuli controversy produced by Husyan b. Shihab al-
Din al-Karaki (d. 1076AH/1656CE). (See appendix III) This is indicative of the
crystallization of internal political divisions and juridical disagreements among
the ulama that carried important implications for the clerical and secular elites, the
sovereigns, and Safavid society at large. Arjomand suggested that the Persian
clerical estate and its core of sayyids adopted traditionism to counter the Shiite
mujtahids bid for hierocratic domination. 40 The Persian notables blended
traditionism with Gnostic philosophy advocating innerworldly salvation through
the hermeneutic comprehension of the sacred texts.41
Afflicted by the Company of Kings: The Bahai is who I am, and great
is my worth!
Shaykh Bahai was born in Balabak proper in 953AH/1546CE to the northeast of the
Amili hometown Juba in Jabal Amil.42 He was around six or seven years old when
his father migrated from Jabal Amil to Persia.43 As such, he grew up as a Persian
who drew upon his Amili descent and intellectual social experience. A grim view of
public office and scholastic leadership embroiled in competition and royal whims
remained vivid through his writings. He proclaimed: If my father had not come to
Persia, I would not have been afflicted with the company of the Shah.44 The kings
companion, he confessed, though envied by the elite and commoners alike, is doomed
because: The wielder of power is like the rider of a lion, for when it seems that the
lion is the riders horse in reality the rider is the lions horse!45
Bahai also expressed his wish to live simply in a manner reminiscent of his
fathers teacher, al-Shahid al-Thani, who built his own house, attended to his
vineyard at night and tutored his students during the day. In his Kashkul, Bahai
60 Converting Persia
[Shah Abbas d]rew into the regiments of musketeers many unemployed men,
providing, as Floor noted, relief to the lower classes from their lawless
activities.75
Were not natives of the region and some of their sentiments are suspect so
they shouldnt be placed in these frontier areas.76
Today the good things are permitted you, and the food of those who were
given the Book is permitted to you, and permitted to them is your food.
Likewise believing women in wedlock, and in wedlock women of them who
were given the Book before you, if you give them their wages, in wedlock
and not in licence, or as taking lovers.85
The prevalent Sunnite interpretation of this verse is that God has made it
permissible for Muslims to eat the dhabaih of the People of the Book.86 Sunnite
accounts and legal arguments emphasize the fact that the Companions of the
Prophet ate the food of Christians in Syria and raised no religious objections to it.
Sunnite sources acknowledge, however, that Imam Ali b. Abi Talib advised against
eating the dhabaih of the Syrian Arab clan of Taghlib or intermarrying with their
women. The Sunnite position considers this prohibition applicable only in
connection with this clan, whose proper adherence to Christianity was doubtful.
Not all the Shiite ulama agreed on the legal jurisdiction of the meat slaughtered
by Christians and Jews. A few made it permissible for a Muslim to eat the meat
slaughtered by Christians and Jews if they invoked Gods name (tasmiya) upon
slaughtering.87 Bahai argued, however, that due to their restricted definition of
tasmiya, major Shiite jurists eventually endorsed the absolute impermissibility of
this meat with or without invoking Gods name.88 They argued that when Christians
mentioned God upon slaughtering the animal, they actually meant the father of
Christ, and when the Jews did the same they were denoting His friend. Therefore,
neither form of invocation was considered adequate because neither was a reference
to the true God of the Muslims.89
Bahai further explained that most Sunnites derive their view of the licitness of
the meat of Christians and Jews from an account relating that the Prophet ate from
the meat slaughtered by a Jewish woman. Shiites, however, do not consider this
account sound or widespread among them.90
In theory at least, the Safavid Shiite clerics took a more restrictive approach to
the meat of Christians and Jews than did the Ottoman Sunnite clerics.
Notwithstanding, Shiite jurists have constantly advanced new arguments and
justifications for their rulings and we know at least one leading Shiite scholar of
the tenth century, Ibn Babuya al-Qummi (d. 381AH/991CE), who accepted the
Sunnite position. Based on a few sound accounts related from the Imams, Ibn Babuya
argued in favor of the permissibility of consuming the meat slaughtered by Jews,
Christians or Zoroastrians if Gods name was invoked upon slaughtering. Bahai
noted that the nature of invoking Gods name should be investigated further and
that Ibn Babuyas position does not necessarily contradict the dominant Shiite
accounts on its absolute impermissibility. Bahai felt that when an accurate definition
of tasmiya is provided, Ibn Babuyas opinion would converge with the prevalent
66 Converting Persia
In the same vein, one finds a number of Bahais rulings to be flexible on Shiite acts
of worship and daily conduct.96 Bahai identified a list of food items consumed by
Christian Georgians and permitted to Muslims living amongst them or in their
company. He ruled that Muslims were not religiously obliged to forbid Christians
from eating pigs meat or drinking wine. Moreover, Muslims who happen to live
around Christians, or find a benefit for Islam in that, may commingle freely with
them. It was also permissible for Muslims to dissimulate by falsely claiming to eat
pigs meat and drink wine. Indeed, Bahai put clear limits on such dissimulation by
declaring it impermissible for Muslims to consume pigs meat or wine for whatever
benefit. Otherwise, they would lose their reward by weakening their Islamic faith.97
Similarly, Bahai expounded the unique conditions under which it is possible to
consider grape syrup, honey or vinegar to be religiously pure, if offered to a Muslim
by a Georgian.98 Unfortunately, Bahais rulings on the food items and handicrafts of
Georgian Christians are not dated and do not account for the motives surrounding
their issuance. Did Shah Abbas hope some of these clerical rulings would promote
social integration in depopulated areas, particularly those with a Christian majority?
For now, suffice to note, that Bahais rulings encourage the social adaptation of a
Muslim minority to a majority of Georgian Christians, and promote flexible economic
relations for the benefit of their region or city. Shah Abbass leading clerics were
called upon to furnish a solid legal foundation for imperial plans in the face of Ottoman
opposition, and that restructuring of the empire due to depopulation policies furthered
the utility of Shiite legalism for the Safavids. It provided them with a manual, a
practical approach to the organization of social relations among their subjects.
In retrospect, the demand for legalism directly related to political control from
above and the gradual diffusion of social discipline from below. There was a need
to guide the socio-religious choices of the common Persians according to the newly
established doctrine. This explains the conspicuous time jurists spent discussing
and debating questions that seem to us trivial. For example, the governor of Gilan
felt it necessary to obtain a clear stand from Bahai on two contradictory legal rulings
pertaining to fasting, which had caused some confusion among the Gilani ulama.99
Bahai argued that tooth picking was not permissible during fasting, but he
explained that fasting is not always void when one picks ones teeth. He noted that
in case a small portion of the food remaining (between the teeth) had accidentally
reached the stomach, one would still fulfill the conditions of fasting.100
The thrust to produce and implement standardized Shiite edicts and rulings
was not simply a clerical enterprise. Rather, it was a way to create normative patterns
68 Converting Persia
that encouraged conformity to the imperial order of Shah Abbas. Ones faith was
designed around an expanding and constantly revised body of rituals, the
management of which fell to the jurists. Shiite legalism was put to particular
political uses, while conformity to clerical edicts became a gauge for social discipline.
Legal rulings and edicts were constantly recast and needed justification, a process
encouraged in the Jafari school of law, namely ijtihad and the invalidity of the
opinion of a dead mujtahid.
Bahai and Mir Damad, possibly due to their similar intellectual training and
Amili ancestry, enjoyed cordial bonds even when they cherished divergent views
of a legal and philosophical nature. Ahmad b. Zayn al-Abidin al-Amili (d. 1054AH/
1644CE), the student and brother-in-law of Mir Damad, elucidated some of these
disagreements, taking the side of his teacher and relative, Mir Damad, against
Bahai, in the most vehement and zealous manner.111 Mir Abul-Vali Inju, the Safavid
sadr, disagreed with Bahai over a juridical matter during their trip to Georgia with
Shah Abbas.112 To resolve the matter, they decided to solicit the legal opinion of
Mir Damad, who was residing at the time in Isfahan. Mir Damad took the side of
Abul-Vali Inju and refuted Bahais conclusions.
A late and probably apocryphal anecdote highlights the way the ulama perceived
the relations between the Safavid monarch, Bahai and the eminent jurist and
philosopher, Mir Muhammad Baqir Astarabadi, best known as Mir Damad (d.
1040AH/163132CE), rather than how these relations were realistically cast. One
story has it that during one of his promenades accompanied by both Bahai and
Mir Damad, the Shah was tempted to test the depth of their friendship and loyalty
to each other.113 Mir Damads horse was moving slowly, fatigued by its riders heavy
weight, while Bahais horse at the head of the procession was running lightly, as if
carrying a feather. The Shah approached Mir Damad, who was riding at the rear of
the procession, and said: Do you see how that Shaykh in the front is fiddling with
his horse instead of strolling like you, politely and respectfully among these people?
Mir Damad replied: The horse, driven with passion for its rider, is unable to walk
slowly. Dont you realize who is riding it? The Shah then rode up to Bahai and
said: Our Shaykh, can you see behind you how the body of this Sayyid had fatigued
the horse and worn it due to his obesity when a commanding scholar should instead
be like you, physically fit and consuming of little food? Bahai answered: No,
Shah, for the fatigue which appears on the horses face is due to his inability to
carry the weight of knowledge which giant mountains, with all their strength,
cannot carry. When the Shah heard him, he dismounted his horse, knelt down on
his knees and smeared his face with sand, thanking God for granting his empire
scholars who are devoid of envy and rivalry!114
This anecdotal piece emerges in the ulama circles to underscore the
indispensable role of the jurists to the imperial monarch and his respect for them.
The anecdote is also significant in the way it portrays the demeanor of Shah
Abbas, who was keen on nurturing a level of controlled competition and concord
among his scholars. The story also emphasizes the unity and pietist tradition of
the jurists, and possibly reflecting a sense of solidarity which some believed
existed among scholars of Amili descent. On the other hand, the story hints at
the rarity of friendship among high-ranking clerics who usually competed for
the Shahs favors and for professional ascendancy.
Shah Abbas and Imperial Reign as Clerical Discipline 71
Mir Damad (d. 1041AH/16312CE): The Cleric as Philosopher
Shams al-Din Muhammad, a sayyid and notable from Astarabad, married two of
al-Karakis daughters, one of whom begot Muhammad Baqir, known as Mir Damad.
Though born in Astarabad, Mir Damad was raised in Mashhad. Shams al-Din, his
father, remained in the eyes of Persian historians and scholars the damad, or the
son-in-law, of al-Karaki.115 This title transferred from Shams al-Din to his son,
Muhammad Baqir, who came to be known as Mir Damad. Biographical literature
emphasizes Amili traits in his legalistic training, for he had studied with his
maternal uncle, Abd al-Ali, and Nur al-Din Ali b. Abil-Hasan al-Musawi al-Amili
in Mashhad. 116 Mir Damads Amili descent, though devoid of any cultural
significance, functioned as a scholastic status, an intellectual pedigree esteemed
by Safavid society. Mir Damads acquisition of the theological disciplines and his
ambitions to become a mujtahid were coupled with a phenomenal progress in the
rational sciences and philosophical studies.117 Facilitated by his family standing
and wealth, Mir Damad became well versed in the Persian philosophical traditions
through the study circles of Mir Fakhr al-Din Muhammad Sammaki Astarabadi
during the reign of Shah Muhammad Khudabanda (r. 985AH/1578CE995AH/
1587CE).118 Mir Damads philosophical predilections were well established by
988AH/1580CE, that is before he entered the service of Shah Abbas, yet he laid
down his major philosophical works after his association with the Shah.119 Shah
Abbas took particular interest in the philosophical inquiries of a few Indian scholars
who wanted to know the reasons why the body of Moses withstood the fire that
swept the hilltop when God appeared to him. He commanded Mir Damad to
expound these reasons in Al-Jadhawat. In 1023AH/1614CE, the same year that he
composed his work Al-Sab al-Shidad on the principles of religion, Mir Damad related
in Al-Risala al-Khaliyya his metaphysical thoughts about a spiritual vision he had
in Isfahan.120 His late work Al-Qabasat, completed in 1034AH/1625CE, is considered
the hallmark of his philosophical thought.
Mir Damad attended to standard legal matters such as worship, foster relations
(rida) and divorce (talaq), all of which catered to wide social sectors. On the question
of Friday prayer, he suggested that its convening was legitimate during the presence
of a mujtahid, who held a general vicegerency (niyaba amma) as the deputy of the
Imam.121 The mujtahid is he who combines the sciences of ijtihad and the conditions
for delivering legal opinion (ifta).122 Friday prayer can be convened only in the
presence of the just ruler (al-sultan al-adil), who is the infallible Imam or someone
appointed on his behalf specifically for that purpose or someone who qualifies to
be his general deputy. Without this condition, Friday prayer must not be observed.
Mir Damad encouraged Shiites to join other believers in the noon prayer but asked
them to avoid Friday prayer until such time as it was proper to convene it. Mir
Damad declared that it is unmerited in the eyes of God to observe Friday prayer in
the absence of the above conditions. As such, a few [prayers] in a year are better
than plenty borne out of innovation! (bida).123
72 Converting Persia
Mir Damad and Bahai gave both jurists and society the option to observe Friday
prayer or avoid it. This was the same position advanced by al-Karaki, though under
different circumstances. In the case of Bahai, his opinion diverged from that of his
father, Husayn b. Abd al-Samad, reflecting the complex social and political changes
that had transformed Persian society and its ruling elite from the late sixteenth
century CE to the early seventeenth century CE. Bahai felt that it was favorable
(istihbab) to hold Friday prayer and added that its observance was obligatory only
when all the conditions tied to it are provided.124 Two of Bahais students expressed
similar views.125 Only Shaykh Lutfullah al-Maysi al-Amili (d. 1032AH/162223CE),
esteemed jurist of Isfahan, along with a lesser-known scholar of the period, Abdullah
b. al-Husayn al-Tustari (d. 1021AH/1612CE), called for the necessity of convening
Friday prayer.126
Mir Damad preserved a dimension of clerical autonomy and claims for
hierocratic authority without dauntlessly menacing the Shahs sovereignty.127 He
withheld approval of the theocratic foundations of the Safavid state but justified
its historical and temporal dimensions. Mir Damad continued a Safavid-born
tradition of allowing the Shiite jurist to reverse centuries of political detachment
from temporal authority. Shah Abbas would negotiate with his clerics nothing less
than the legality of Friday prayer. This, Mir Damad consented to but rejected the
unconditional or universal endorsement of Friday prayer as an emblem of Safavid
Imamate theocracy. In the multilateral discussions of Friday prayer, Mir Damad
denied the mujtahids a comprehensive political authority in the absence of the
universal sovereign, the Imam.
positions. For Sadra, as for Mir Damad, one cannot conceive the reality of existence;
it must be intuited at the subjective level, inwardly. Sadra suggests that conceiving
of existence does not in itself lend proof to its actualization in reality.137 Pure
Existence is in the mind only and can only be known through direct intuition
(mushahada, hudur).
In order to delineate the relationship of Mir Damads thought to the social forces
of his time, it is useful to compare it to Suhravardis. Suhravardis notion of
intermediary agents (wasait), as Husayn Muroeh argued, seem pre-revolutionary
during the twelfth century CE inasmuch as they reflected social stratification, and
vertical and horizontal distinctions in the historical world and the belief that all
living things are tied essentially and eternally to movement.138 Suhravardi also
departed from scriptural cosmology when he rejected the createdness of the world.
He believed that the world was eternal, with no beginning in time. Furthermore,
he professed that the line of prophecy was endless; the world does not exist without
a Prophet-Imam.139 Suhravardi expressed these thoughts at a time when the Syrian
sultanate in Aleppo could only claim a local, temporary power largely based on
shifting military fortunes. In the aftermath of the erosion of Caliphal legitimacy in
Baghdad under the Abbasids (r. 236AH/850CE654AH/1256CE), Suhravardis ideas
reflected total disregard for supremacy of ruler over ruled and advocated the
possibility of reversing history at any moment through a prophecy-Imamate that
essentially negates history (the existing polity). The clerical spokesmen for the
Aleppine authorities also found disquieting Suhravardis attempt to substitute light
for existence and to hold that light is equally and essentially shared by all beings.140
Suhravardi would explain that the difference between ones being and Gods being
is not in the essence/quality but simply in quantity, a difference between perfect
and less perfect. As such, the attempt to perceive the difference between temporal
rulers and their subjects quantitatively rather than qualitatively weakened all claims
of divine privilege for the ruling dynasty.141
Suhravardis conceptions of Gods relation to the world evolved in the wake of
multiple ruling bodies and volatile and transitional hierarchies of power in the
medieval Islamic period. In contrast, the apex of the reign of Shah Abbas in the
seventeenth century CE brings a thrust for centralization of the state, which was
capable of harnessing multiple economic sources, and became better situated than
its predecessors to dominate the socially and ideologically diverse groups within
the ruling elite.142 Several complex and indirect levels of separation between society
and the Shah emerged during the early seventeenth century CE. Given these levels
of separation and the multifold sources of Safavid legitimacy and state power under
Abbas, Mir Damad recast Suhravardian views in ways deemed realistic for a
member of a clerical aristocracy allied to the state, yet struggling to achieve
autonomy. This autonomy is tied to the preservation of a post-historical universal
Imami sovereignty for which mujtahids like Mir Damad act as witnesses and legatees.
On the whole, Suhravardis ideas seemed more radical and subversive to his rulers
even if they were indeed coupled with his declaration that existence is a mental
Shah Abbas and Imperial Reign as Clerical Discipline 75
category to which nothing corresponds in reality.143 It is also important to note
that Imamological concepts (Imam as the pole of being and witness of God and
without whom no human society can exist) proposed by Suhravardi could not be
reconciled at any level with the ideological foundations the Abbasid Caliphate, or
the basis of rule for the Aleppine provincial leaders.144 Such concepts were, however,
partly adapted to the Shiite basis of the Safavid Empire.
Several contemporary and modern scholars alike noted the difficult if not
impossible style of Mir Damads writing.145 This fact is not accidental. Rather it
reflects Mir Damads attempt to make philosophical tools and methods of thinking
inaccessible to the public and subtle enough to merit the approval of the monarch.
Through an abstract and individualistic medium of thought like philosophy, Mir
Damads views were somewhat impeachable to both the Shah and the theologians.146
This fact may explain why Mir Damad was never portrayed as a dissenter but
rather as a model for public religious conduct and a tool of social discipline and
conformity to the state. An anecdote has it that Sadra saw his deceased teacher,
Mir Damad, in a dream and asked him:
But the difference between Mir Damad and Sadra was not simply a matter of style or
language. Sadra did not belong to the clerical elite. Rather, he experienced clerical
opposition and was forced to desert the scholarly centers of major cities to pursue his
philosophical writings.148 It is misleading to assume, however, that Mir Damad aimed
to reconcile philosophy and the sharia. In fact, he tactfully prevented philosophical
rationalism and mystical intuition from being judged clerically and vice versa. True,
he defended the primary and irreversible function of the sharia in human society
and validated it philosophically. But ultimately, his concept of huduth dahri jettisoned
the confrontation between a clerical interpretation of the scriptures and philosophical/
intuitive knowledge of the Divine and the world. He simply compartmentalized
philosophy and sharia through the very notion of perpetuity discussed above,
with each realm being bound by its own set of laws. Sadras views, in contrast, openly
challenged the scriptural worldview. As Fazlur Rahman correctly noted, Sadras
argument for the self-emergence and self-origination of the content of the world-
process renders God rather superfluous.149 Furthermore, Sadra saw movement
occurring not only in the category of substance, in its increase or decrease, but rather
in the substance itself.150 Again, this is further rationalization of philosophical thought
based on the view that change occurs from within living entities, including humans
at all levels, not from without. Mir Damad doesnt posit such a position, but remains
76 Converting Persia
rather faithful to the idea that change occurs from without, that is with one emanation
flowing and changing what is below it. For Sadra, movement is the certain known
reality, which occurs in the physical and spiritual world alike.151
To be sure, Sadras shift in belief from the primary reality of quiddity (essential
properties and intelligible qualities of a thing) to the primary reality of existence
was a rather significant departure from the Quranic emphasis on the transcendental
nature of God and the fundamental separation between God and humans.152 Sadra
saw this separation as artificial and stated that existence takes infinite forms but
remains one and the same from eternity to eternity. Much like Sufi notions of Oneness
with God, Sadras views were not tolerated by official Safavid clerics and spokesmen.
Furthermore, Sadra took a radical step away from theosophical idealism when
he purported that the human soul undergoes transformation through its interaction
with various levels of the material and intelligible orders.153 The images of the
material world and its changing realities are central to the essence/identity of the
human soul. Sadra as such empowers all humans with comparable abilities to arrive
at higher truths through distinct forces of physical change and remembrance of
the original archetypal essences. Within this context, Heavenly rewards and
punishments of Hell do not correspond to an actual physical domicile. The scriptural
foundation for human salvation and certitude become as such irrelevant. Heaven
and Hell are situated inwardly within the soul and are reached esoterically. Sadra
also tied more closely questions about human souls and the knowledge of God to
Imamology.154 He purported that a Shiite believer cannot connect to the Imam of
his age through any particular concrete institution of this world, which clearly
marginalized Safavid authority and deemed null its assumed links to the Twelve
Imams. The Twelfth Imam is hidden to the senses but present in the heart of the
faithful: he is the mystical pole of being.155
who rules either on the basis of exoteric [meaning of the scriptures] and is as
such the sultan [temporal ruler], or someone who rules on the basis of the
esoteric [meaning of the scriptures] like the scholar/sage, or someone who
rules on the basis of both [the exoteric and esoteric] like the Prophet or a man
who takes his place.162
Mir Damad refers to the Quranic verses of al-Rad, al-Naba and al-Mubahala,
alongside the Tradition to confirm the elevated level of Imam Ali as the successor to
Prophet Muhammad.163 He takes a relativistic look at the sharia when he denies the
existence of evil as an independent entity. Evil (shar), he argued, is the absence of
existence or absence of a perfection of existence or absence of perfection in an existing
being.164 What society labels evil, in reference to injustice or adultery, is a construction
and as such has no absolute reality. Evil, then, describes the person who is lacking
in justice, uprightness or goodness, or it simply describes the standpoint of civic
political law (al-siyasa al-madaniyya) whose order is disrupted due to such
imperfection.165 Notwithstanding, Mir Damad does not advocate different levels of
legal judgment, nor does he distinguish between divine laws and clerical rulings in
the administration of justice and the role of state supervision. This implies that
78 Converting Persia
mujtahids remain indispensable tools for the translation of these laws. He considered
the fear of divine retribution, necessary for preventing the commitment of abominable
acts.166 One is still rewarded or punished for ones freely willed acts even if one is not
the absolute, highest cause of such acts.167 Mir Damad also advocates the idea of the
necessity of some evil in particularities, for the immense good of the whole. As
such, punishment, whether corporal or psychological, and inflicting pain on the
few can bring overall benefit and public good.168 In retrospect, as long as Mir Damad
supported the states foundation and demand for legal discipline, Shah Abbas would
hardly oppose his philosophical inquiries.169
Much like classic Sufis, Mir Damad embraced a spiritual journey outside the
parameters set by the scriptures and the sharia.170 During the month of Shaban
1023AH/1614CE, Mir Damads spiritual retreat and internal reflection gave way to
a mystical experience where he was transported to a realm of Gods presence. By
moving away and above the laws of nature, laws of scriptures, and the binarisms
of faith and infidelity transmigrated from his body, he achieved certitude.171 Here
and elsewhere, philosophy and rationalism were subordinated to illumination and
spiritual practices.172 Mir Damads spiritual journey, accomplished through an inner
illumination and ratiocination, offered a challenging model to the idea of prophetic
agency, and brought out the possibility of a superior world to the historical one,
the seat of political reality. The journey also confirmed that real certitude was not
attained through the established institutions of faith or politics.
These contradictory conceptions in Mir Damads thought lead us to believe that
he only extended the privilege of such journeys to the select and the elite. As for the
rest, the sharia would do. Mir Damad did not allow illumination or rationalism to
become sources of social discipline or the basis for the relationship between the
monarch and his imperial subjects. On a personal level, these constructs also reflect
Mir Damads desire to seek spiritual fulfillment not through agency or the clerical
profession but rather through individualized, theosophical-mystical pursuits. Even
if Mir Damads concepts lend themselves to an oppositional politics undermining
the state or seem to negate his function as cleric, in reality such politics proved inept
and enclosed upon itself.173 As S. A. Arjomand accurately asserted, gnostic Shiism,
practiced by Mir Damad, implied radical political indifferentism. It entailed not
the rejection of temporary sovereignty but the radical devaluation of earthly
sovereignty.174 Even Sadra, who was more politically confrontational than Mir
Damad, did not attempt to declass philosophy or publicize theosophical experiences.
Shunned by the literalist jurists, he still harbored disdain for popular Sufis.175
In conclusion, Mir Damad laid down his principal philosophical ideas at a time
when socio-economic relations became more complex, thus assuming a more rigid
hierarchical structure that translated into sharper social and cognitive boundaries
with distinct forms of dominance and subordination.176 Moreover, political forces
in Persia have also achieved complexity at the time of Shah Abbas, producing
distinct ideological trends, which may seem at one given historical moment
contradictory to the social reality that cradled them. In fact, however, the
Shah Abbas and Imperial Reign as Clerical Discipline 79
contradiction seems of a dialectical nature paving the way for a new reality
altogether, which takes full form during the mid seventeenth century CE. On the
one hand, Mir Damads philosophical arguments found justification for the temporal
and legal dimensions of Safavid rule. On the other hand, this rule seemed
replaceable and open to controversy within the larger scheme of his cosmology
and metaphysics. One can discern these tensions in the relationship among the
shifting frameworks of eternity perpetuity and time. The changing context of these
cosmogonic-ontological realms may suggest that a historical polity can be the
fulfillment of the Divine Will or a temporary negation of it.
even more strongly to Portugal claims. For more than a century, Portugal maintained
a naval base monitoring the activities in the Persian Gulf and a strategically
important commercial outpost.184 The Persians became mostly apprehensive of
Portugals seizure of the Bahrain islands against its promise in the treaty concluded
in 921AH/1515CE to assist Persia in recovering the islands from the Arab Jabrid
rulers. The Portuguese owned and overlooked the islands for 80 years.185 They
repeatedly resorted to trickery and guile, breaching their oaths and promises to
the princes of Hormuz.186 Floor suggested that security at sea was an important
issue for the Safavids rather than European expansion per se. He noted that:
the area around Bandar Abbas had become unsafe due to piracy by the Arabs
from Nakhilu who had differences with the Captains of Hormuz, despite the
fact that the latter had ravaged the littoral as far as Basra. The Portuguese
fleet seized any native craft without a Portuguese pass. This may have been
part of the conflict with Perisa which slowly but surely was retaking the
various islands controlled by the Portuguese (Bahrain [1602], Qeshm [1620]).187
and under a royal command, he left for Isfahan and resided within the precincts of
the mosque of Meydan-i Naqsh-i Jahan facing the royal palace. In the flourishing
city of Isfahan, he led an active life as a prayer leader and instructor of hadith and
jurisprudence.203 His expenses were defrayed from the revenues of the royal
household.204 In further deference to him, the Shah married one of his daughters
and built him a mosque and a school, which, until our days, still bears his name.
Lutfullahs family also received royal pensions and stipends. Jafar, Lutfullahs son,
also entered the service of the Shah.
Lutfullah was the only state cleric of Shah Abbass times who upheld the view
that it was necessary and incumbent on every Shiite to observe Friday prayer during
Occultation. He used to perform Friday prayer in his mosque.205 In contrast to al-
Karaki, he laid no claims to exclusive or general ijtihad, nor for that matter did he
link the performance of Friday prayer to the presence of a deputized mujtahid
appointed by the Imam, as Bahai and Mir Damad had argued. Lutfullah prided
himself on implementing proper rules of worship in both Qazvin and Isfahan and
expressed a great devotion to the Safavid Empire, which he described as an Alid
dynasty of pure descent. He declared that the Safavids exalted sovereignty is but
an extension of the sovereignty of the Mahdi and hoped the Shah would prevail
over his Uzbek and Ottoman foes.206
made a negative appraisal of the rulings of other Arab (Amili) scholars including
the late al-Shahid. 222 He accused Lutfullah of abrogating the sacred law by
committing an innovation and fabricating sources in a number of religious practices.
More specifically, the guildsman took Lutfullah to task over the question of seclusion
(itikaf) and its conditions, arguing that it must be performed in the Masjid-i Jami
of Isfahan which is congregational (suitable for holding Friday prayer) and central
to the city, rather than in Lutfullahs new mosque.223
The mosque of Lutfullah became a sign of the imperial redefinition of Isfahans
urban space. By introducing this mosque into his precincts, Shah Abbas hoped to
balance and compensate for the importance of Masjid-i Jami. Lutfullah denounced
his critics, embellished his distinguished rapport with the Shah, and confirmed
the congregational quality of his own mosque:
For it has become widely known in Khurasan and Iraq that the sovereign of
this empire and of its [spiritual, religious] hopes had built a congregational
mosque in Isfahan to so and so, until many of the inhabitants of these remote
countries and prosperous towns, upon arriving to Isfahan would ask about
us in the following manner: Where is the shaykh for whom the Shah had
built a new congregational mosque, that we may be graced by him and become
his slaves?.224
This is by far the clearest and most direct statement confirming Shah Abbass
intention to build Lutfullah a congregational mosque, which could hold one or
two thousand people and a school.225 Accompanied by Lutfullah on one of his trips,
the Shah addressed him:
orally with this clear statement: I want to build you a congregational mosque
which can fit from a thousand to two thousand people, facing my house that
Turks, slaves and every other willing person including myself, may come to
you!226
One striking feature of Lutfullahs conflict with the Isfahani craftsmen is its racial
undertones. Lutfullah would express in his treatise Al-Itikafiyya (seclusion, spiritual
retreat) his deep gratitude to God for making him an Arab scholar, for the Arabs
were the fountainhead of the purist progeny, and for creating him a Twelver Shiite
rather than a member of the Shuubiyya or the Rattaniyya or their supporters.227 He
asked God to bless and honor the Arab Prophet and his noble family. He invoked
his Arabness to discredit his rivals whom he cast as Shuubis, those who glorify the
Persian civilization and consider it superior to its Arab counterpart. Lutfullah found
his critics religious knowledge wanting and claimed that they, being non-Arab, could
never attain such knowledge anyway. Lutfullahs boasting about his Arab descent
carried a double entendre, of exalting Shah Abbas who used to glory in his putative
Arab descent, and to defame his rivals.228 The latter in turn had consciously devalued
Shah Abbas and Imperial Reign as Clerical Discipline 85
Lutfullahs Arab descent and by that indirectly ridiculed the Shahs attempts to claim
one. In response, Lutfullah lavished honorary titles on Amili scholars, especially
Bahai and Mir Damad. He treated the Amilis as exemplars and models for pious
and authoritative religious leadership. Evidently, this defense of the Amilis is a
response to the way the Isfahani guildsmen discredited them.229
The exchange of racial slander was in essence an expression of a social struggle
between the disadvantaged artisans and guildsmen of the old meydan and the elite
of the new meydan, over resources, business and prestige. The class and occupational
content of this confrontation is telling. Lutfullah described the common people (awam)
as despicable and ignorant and lumped them with the debased (andhal).230 As for the
craftsmen (ahl al-sanai and ahl al-hiraf), they were inferior and short of the ranks of
the learned. They claim legal knowledge through approximation and conjecture,
without relying on the information of the Traditionists or mujtahids. 231 Underscoring
his own noble pedigree, he urged his readers to turn to men of his caliber in religious
matters because they carry the nobility, perfection, intelligence and virtue through a
long line of descent from one century to another since ancient times!232 It is worth
pointing out too that Lutfullah included merchants among the ignorant commoners,
hinting at the fact that a number of them had disregarded his rulings on seclusion as
well, and rejected the congregational qualities of his mosque.
Despite disagreement among Shiite jurists surrounding the conditions of
spiritual seclusion, Lutfullah stated that seclusion was normally held during the
last ten days of the month of Ramadan, known as ihya or ahya (nights spent in
prayer).233 The Isfahani craftsmen and merchants in question objected to four
conditions under which Lutfullah performed seclusion.234 These were holding
seclusion, first in his newly built mosque, second during the last ten days of the
month of Ramadan, third during retreat and devotion to prayer (darb al-qubba) and
fourth during the nights of ahya, presumably popularized by al-Karaki.235
Based on a hadith by Imam Jafar al-Sadiq, Lutfullah argued that seclusion was
lawful in the mosques of al-Kufa, al-Basra, Mecca and Medina. Some jurists, he
noted, misunderstood the hadith to mean that seclusion can only be held in these
few mosques. Later scholars, including Lutfullah, however, counted other mosques
as equally suitable for holding seclusion.236 He insisted that the legal conditions
that he set for seclusion were consistent with the position of leading Shiite
scholars.237 More importantly, however, Lutfullah implied that holding seclusion
also served Safavid sovereignty. Performed during ahya and other single or
combined nights referred to as al-ifrad or al-jam, and during religious festivals,
seclusion helps Safavid subjects overcome evil temptations and ultimately protect
the Safavid Alid dynasty and Musawi Sultanate... and [help] subjugate all Uzbek
and Ottoman enemies and other Sunnites.238 Clearly, Lutfullah is extending a
political function to seclusion as a regulatory source of political discipline among
Shiite subjects resulting in the perseverance of the empire. Apparently, the Shah
didnt need much convincing. He supported the performance of seclusion by
Lutfullah in Qazvin and Isfahan.
86 Converting Persia
through the political career of Mirza Muhammad Taqi, better known as Saru Taqi,
who served as grand vizier under Shah Safi and Shah Abbas from 1044AH/1634CE
until 1055AH/1645CE.3 Saru Taqi was one of the major proponents of the states
policy to accelerate the growth of crown estates (khassah), which supported the
sovereigns personal expenses and obstructed the feudal division of land.4 Mirza
Taqi showed great ability in managing the civil administration and increasing the
Shahs funds and carrying his orders, including a close supervision of provincial
governors.5 The decrease in frontier wars and military campaigns against external
foes, particularly against the Ottomans, made Shah Safi agree to the increase of
crown estates at the expense of the mamalik (provinces). It was precisely in these
terms that Saru Taqi made his case to Shah Safi to transform several mamalik to
crown land. He explained that at a time of political stability and peace with the
Ottomans there was no justification for maintaining all the provincial governors
and their extensive courts and armies.6 A lot of money was converted from provinces
like Fars, Qazvin, Gilan, Mazandaran, Yazd, Kirman and parts of Azerbaijan and
Khurasan into crown estates.7 We do not know how this policy influenced the local
economies of these provinces or the relationship of merchants and peasants to the
provincial governors and the state. We merely know that the Qizilbash emirs who
had held provincial governorships as military fiefs (tiyul) since early Safavid days
were outraged and awaited the opportunity to act against this policy.8 The tiyul
was the grant of the tax yield or a portion of it from a particular area, which in
principle lacked a hereditary character and was granted in return for a service. As
the upkeep of the provincial armies and their finances decreased, they became
more prone to invading neighboring regions for booty and rebelled more often.9
Sufficiently worried about Saru Taqis political designs, a number of Qizilbash
officers including Beglerbegis succeeded in assassinating him in 1055CE.10
The promotion of crown land led to a rise in the fortunes and influence of key
state administrators such as the stewards of the royal court (nazir-i buyutat) and
financiers at the level of treasurer of the royal household, and the stewards financial
assistants.11 Even if the post of treasurer of the royal household never overtook that
of the treasurer of the revenues (mustawfi al-mamalik), as Floor noted, it became
more influential. The grand viziers were, however, a diverse group largely drawn
from competing constituencies of the ghulaman, the Persian clerical-administrative
classes including sayyids, and to a lesser extent from Turkoman and Kurdish
Qizilbash leaders. Like Georgian, Armenian, and Circassian court officials, the
Qizilbash did not rely on their tribes standing to acquire state posts. Rather, during
this period they derived power from the criteria of fidelity and competence as
determined by their relationship to the Shah.12 Meanwhile, the grand vizier
controlled much of the central bureaucracy and acted somewhat independently of
the Shah in appointments to state offices.13 In a Persian painting, dating from
1133AH/17201CE, a turbaned grand vizier rather than the Shah dominates the
festive setting of the New Year, Nowruz.14 In addition to the grand viziers increasing
influence, a number of his associates and servicemen staffed the bureaucracy. This
Safavid Mistrust, Popular Protest and the Rationalists Retreat 91
is not to imply that the grand vizier became the sole and unchallenged authority at
court. Rather, he struggled to protect his position from major units and subunits
within the administrative elite, such as the steward of the royal court, the secretary-
general of the royal secretariat (nazir-i daftar-i humayun), the treasurer of the royal
household, the treasurer-general (mustawfi al-mamalik), the major military com-
manders and court eunuchs.15 This situation was somewhat helpful to the monarchs
who occasionally manipulated these divisions to shift support from one subgroup
to another to empower themselves. The Shah, however, could not recover his full
authority over the state or exert the type of control which Shah Abbas enjoyed.16
Believed to have been long addicted to opium, and developing excessive wine-
drinking habits, Shah Safi lost control over state affairs.17 In a dramatic shift from
the times of Shah Abbas, the relations between the Safavid Empire and the Indian
Mughals deteriorated to the extent of total severance of ties in 1046AH/1636CE.
Furthermore, Persia lost additional territories to the Ottomans and resorted to new
peace negotiations that culminated in the peace treaty of Zuhab on 14 Muharram
1049AH/17 May 1639CE.18 Around the time of Shah Safis death, though, Persia
seemed relatively secure from neighboring threats.
that peasants not merely rural commanders or notables lent a strong impetus to
these revolts. Such was the case with the rebels of the mountainous region
Daghistan.26 There is also a mention of the Shahs confrontation with the Bakhtiyari
group some time before 1055AH/1645CE.27 The peasants paid agricultural products
as taxes to the local governors.28 The occasional tax exemptions extended by the
monarch to his subjects should be seen as a mechanism to diffuse mass rebellions
and ensure centralization. The comparisons which John Chardin, a French traveler,
made between the Persian peasant and his/her European counterpart unfortunately
confused the picture and overestimated the fortunes of the peasants of Persia.29
The contradictory statements Chardin made to describe peasants attest to the social
complexity and regional variations among the Persian peasantry.30
Many of the changes in peasant life and output during the mid seventeenth
century CE arguably pertained to earlier policies of forced migration and large-
scale devastation of arable land under Shah Abbas. Little can be known about the
nature of these changes and their long-term implications. Peasant revolts were
discussed in the official Safavid chronicles as expressions of allegiance to a rural
notable who sought political power or had delusional and false messianic
expectations. Much of the peasant resistance to the state is overshadowed by the
chroniclers emphasis on the rural notables who led these revolts, presumably in
pursuit of provincial autonomy, political ascendancy and economic gain. Peasants
fought on the side of these notables possibly on a promise of an improvement in
their conditions or in spontaneous resistance to the governments policies. Despite
the apocalyptic and millenarian aspirations manifest in peasant resistance and
military outbreaks against the state, socio-economic variables were constantly at
play.31 Peasants were targets of vandalism and marauders and many became
dispossessed, thus joining the underworld of Safavid society.32
Shah Abbas introduced mechanisms of relief and allowed occasional outlets for
class discontent which balanced his thrust for centralization. Around 1020AH/
1611CE, he focused attention on the administration of justice in Tabriz and
addressed petitions from both the military and civilians.33 During his expedition
to Azerbaijan, he arrested officials in Gilan and Qazvin and addressed complaints
of malpractice and avarice against tax collectors.34 He waived taxes in 1022AH/
161314CE for both peasants and landlords for three years in Isfahan in order to
reward the merchants and artisans for the upkeep of the bazaar and the decoration
of the stores around the Meydan and the Qaysariyya.35 In 102425AH/161517CE
Shah Abbas decided to give away each year, in the form of alms to the peasants
and farmers, the income of the month of Ramadan accrued from divan dues, taxes,
leases and rents from property, that is he exempted them from the tax demanded
by the central bureaucracy.36 This also served his conversion policies. It is unclear
whether other sectors of the population of a province had to provide the remainder
of the tax amount. During the month of Ramadan in 102425AH/161517CE, he
exempted all people from tax demands, and no creditor was allowed to hound a
debtor across the empire.37 Evidently, many people complained about the fines
Safavid Mistrust, Popular Protest and the Rationalists Retreat 93
collected by the night watches (ahdas) and accused the government of taxing them
twice over. The Shah wanted his chief accountants in all the regions to account for
both sources of money as part of one whole tax quota. Overall, the tax was reduced
but the practice of keeping the fines was confirmed. Shah Abbas also occasionally
invited a whole population of a region to raise complaints and address grievances
against the officials in their provinces. 38 The court historians were keen on
presenting Shah Abbas as a compassionate king who investigated his peoples
complaints against the injustices of local governors in Isfahan, Kashan and Gilan.
But equally noteworthy is the fact that Shah Abbas also instructed his courtiers on
several occasions to block any petition or complaint and forced people to address
their concerns through bureaucratic channels as Floor noted.39
The last decade of Shah Abbass rule was marked by human disaster largely
caused by a combination of political and environmental forces. In 1032AH/1622
23CE, the people of Baghdad suffered from the pursuits of political autonomy by
the ruler, Bakr, who permitted his soldiery to abuse and exploit the peasants and
cultivators. The latter left their fields untilled, which caused a shortage of cereals
and great hardships. A drought also set in, followed by famine, which pushed one
hundred thousand people to desert the city.40 People:
fled wherever they heard there was a bite of bread to eat, and many people,
in their desperation, slew their children with the sword There was not a
single stage on my journey, and not a single village through which I passed,
where I failed to see a number of destitute refugees from Baghdad, with no
fixed abode, eking out a living on the charity and alms provided by the
peasants. As for the poor, who did not possess the wherewithal either to stay
in Baghdad or to leave, they collapsed in the streets and died of hunger.41
When the Shah captured Baghdad from Bakr in January 1623CE, he still had to
attend to the problem of starvation.42 There is no mention of what exactly the state
did to improve the situation. We know little about the effects of these events,
including the pestilence, which spread four years earlier leading to the illness of
the Shah, and the plague, which afflicted Azerbaijan in 1033AH/162324CE.43
Ardabil was directly affected and around 20,000 people died. The plague spread to
adjacent districts including Qazvin.
Mounting class discontent went hand in hand with a steady state obstruction of
informal and public address of grievances under Shah Safi and Shah Abbas II and
their grand viziers.44 Initially, the vizier took over the judicial functions of the Shahs,
giving immediate verdicts on petitions submitted by the populace in writing.45
The court of justice under Shah Abbas II realized this preference for curtailing
spontaneous public access to the monarch and strengthened the resolve of
bureaucratic elements.46 The Shah was expected to oversee court cases three days a
week, but he was soon replaced by the grand vizier. In 1657CE, Muhammad Beg,
the grand vizier stopped public audiences, which had been regularly held by
94 Converting Persia
himself and his predecessors, to hear the peoples requests and complaints. Under
Shah Suleiman the situation worsened, for he denied petitioners any access to him
and seemed insulated from his subjects protests against injustice, particularly if
the officials responsible for these injustices were linked or supported by the divan-
begi.47 In 1683CE, the state formally eliminated the practice of addressing ones
grievances directly to the Shah.48 As such, even this sporadic and delicate channel
was denied to the poor, reflecting the decrease in regulatory monarchical pressure
against the abusive and exploitative economic enterprises of the elite. Meanwhile,
upper-class merchants and government officials:
cited one obscure Shiite tradition from which subsequent Amili writings construed
a reference to Jabal Amil. This account states that the Sixth Shiite Imam and legal
scholar Jafar al-Sadiq (d. 148AH/765CE) was once asked to reveal the course of
action Twelver Shiites must take during occultation and following the advent of
the Qaim (the Riser).60 He foretold that there would be houses by the seashore in
the lower mountainous regions of Syria, where the choicest of his Shia resided,
diligently awaiting their imam. Based on this vague description, Al-Hurr proposed
that the location was Jabal Amil.
From the mid seventeenth century CE onward, it was possible for sons of the
clerical aristocracy trained in religious disciplines and bureaucratic skills to cross
over from purely religious posts to political and administrative ones in both the
provinces and the capital city. (See Appendix II) Muhammad b. Ali b. Khwatun, a
descendant of Husayn b. Abd al-Samad through his daughter, became vizier in
Haydarabad. Descendants of al-Karaki and Lutfullah al-Maysi, for instance, found
their way to the sadarat and the vizierate. Husayn b. Badr al-Din al-Araji al-Amili
(alive in 1050AH/1640CE) became sadr in Isfahan. Mirza Habibullah, the son of
Husayn b. Badr al-Din, trained both as a bureaucrat and scholar, became grand
sadr during the reign of Shah Abbas II. His son Mirza Muhammad Mahdi (d.
1080AH/1669CE) became grand vizier.61 Ali, the son of Mirza Habibullah, and three
of his grandsons served in religious posts like shaykh al-Islam of Isfahan and Tehran.
(See Appendix II) Jamal al-Din b. Nur al-Din Ali al-Amili al-Jubai (d. 1098AH/
1686CE) was sadr in Haydarabad.62 Muhammad b. Ali b. Mahmud al-Mashghari
(d. after 1090AH/1679CE) acted as vizier at one of the provincial Safavid courts.
Abd al-Hasib b. Ahmad al-Alawi al-Amili (d. 1121AH/1708CE) was a well-known
prayer leader in Isfahan. Jafar al-Amili al-Ridawi (alive in 1148AH/1735CE) became
grand sadr in Isfahan. (For court recognition of scholars and poets of Amili descent,
see Appendix II)63 Mirza Baha al-Din Muhammad, Mirza Kamal al-Din Husayn,
and Mirza Muhammad Shafi b. Baha al-Din al-Amili (d. 1125AH/1713CE) all
served as shuyukh al-Islam of Qazvin in the last decades or so of Safavid rule and
possibly after.
The conventional ulama, to whose ranks several Amili descendants belonged,
struggled relentlessly to regain their centrality to the empires religious-bureaucratic
institutions. Meanwhile, a major section of the propertied Persian nobility was
weaving a distinct ideological thread. This section promoted new forms of religious
leadership based on selective adaptations of Gnosticism and philosophy to juridical
Islam. The Sufi-bent and philosophically bent Persian scholars promoted a public
adherence to juridical conventions for the masses yet an elitist privatized venture
toward faith and the knowledge of God for the few, normally the aristocracy.
Also telling of one of the popular images of a cleric is the proverb, Two cannot
enter the heavens: the bread of the mullah and the Qalandars prayer.85
The religious dignitaries who received land grants and immunities were to
remain a subtle but constant menace to the states centralization goals and
sovereignty. In a rather complex manner, the very process that forced the monarchs
to manipulate the judicial domain to achieve greater legitimacy created the historical
conditions to undermine the monarchs and the Safavid state. Notwithstanding,
the high-ranking and ambitious ulama were not in a position to become independent
of the state or to force their particular vision and goals on it without accommodating
and servicing the sovereign or/and the influential ministers.
rivalry between Khalifa Sultan and Allahverdi Khan, the Armenian ghulam who
became master of the hunt (amir shikarbashi) in 1053AH/1644CE, a year before Khalifa
Sultan became grand vizier. As soon as Khalifa Sultan died, Allahverdi, trying to
counteract an intrusion of another administrator-cleric into the court, supported
Muhammad Beg, another ghulam, for the vacant post. Apparently, the diverse elites
did not act cohesively or systematically as stable entities of internal group solidarity.
Rather, intra-elite and inter-elite competitions and alliances fluctuated and changed
as they continued to influence court politics.
Khalifa Sultan succeeded in shaping the empires politics for some time. So
powerful did he become that the Shah eventually removed him from office and
blinded his two distinguished sons lest they aspire to overcome the Safavid
successor to the throne.97 The Shah also removed Mirza Rafi al-Din Muhammad
from the sadarat and Talib Khan from the vizierate. Khalifa Sultans children were
blinded along with those of Mirza Rafi al-Din Muhammad and Mirza Muhsin the
mutavalli sarkar fayd athar, in 1039AH.98 The sadarat was given to Khalil, the son of
Mirza Habibullah, during the same year. Yet this did not deter the Shah from making
use again of Khalifa Sultans expertise, which revealed the increasing contradictions
and tensions in the Shah-vizier relationship. On the one hand, it attests to the increas-
ing importance and usefulness of the grand vizier to the Shah, but points equally
to the latters decreasing sense of security and fear of such a political magnate.
Tonight I saw in a dream Shah Abbas the Great saying a statement to the effect
that: This man [Ali al-Shahidi] comes to our country [out of his own will] when
his forefathers whom we summoned to us had declined. How did he reach
such a state that he is forced to sell his books while you [Zeinab] are present?102
This dismal picture of Alis conditions presents a stark contrast to the shimmer
and flare of the lives of the early migrs of Jabal Amil. Ali lamented the years he
spent in the land of estrangement, Persia, broken-hearted, having obtained
nothing but remorse.103 A short while after Khalifa Sultans death, Ali would write,
as if to an Arab audience, that a noble virtuous Persian, Khalifa Sultan undertook
the study of the works of al-Shahid al-Thani and Hasan, his son. He explained
how much Khalifa Sultan esteemed Amili scholars reflecting:
I heard that Shaykh Hasan died during his composition of Al-Muntaqa and
Al-Maalim. Possessed of a great intellect and [excellent] verification, it is not
surprising that he would die while exerting his mind in their composition.104
On the one hand, Ali seemed gratified that someone of the stature of Khalifa Sultan
had paid homage to his grandfather Hasan, the author of Al-Maalim. On the other
hand, he hoped to show that Khalifa Sultan was a beneficiary of his ancestors.
The stability of the empire and the secure position of Shiism, a century and a
half after the Safavids came to power, alongside the absorption of clerical Islam by
new substrata among the Persian elite, not to mention middle and lower social
echelons, caused the waning of Alis conventional group of jurists and scholarly
pilgrims. He was outraged, as the court of Shah Abbas II became a meeting place
for philosophically bent ulama and artists, as well as dervishes. Ali disavowed
traditionists (akhbaris) including Sufi-bent scholars such as Muhsin al-Fayd Kashani
(d. 1091AH/1680CE) who received ample recognition from Shah Abbas II.105 Alis
social frustrations in turn took the form of theological exhortations against the
weak commitment to the sharia among his contemporaries and laxity in religious
observances in Persian society. Such flippancy in the treatment of the sacred law
was, he noted, part of an intentional campaign to degrade its rank and diminish
its influence.106 He considered the Shah responsible for this state of affairs and
blamed obeisant Shiites, who had vindicated the abusers of the sharia and treated
them as God-fearing people. Denouncing the Sufis and the Sufi-bent ulama, he
proclaimed that their falsifications had passed unnoticed by the great majority. He
saw how the old and the young took up Sufi ways, a reality facilitated by the:
careless cultivation of the religious sciences [on behalf of the Sufi bent clerics],
which are the means they used to obtain sublime ranks.107
In essence, Ali felt that clerical expertise was simply a cloak which some had donned
to attain court religious posts and royal favors. A great challenge for Ali had now
Safavid Mistrust, Popular Protest and the Rationalists Retreat 103
fomented in this new clerical elite of philosophically bent and Sufi-bent ulama
who had encroached on the jurists terrain that was decades ago walked by licensed
legalists. Nowhere is Alis sense of being ousted more clear than in his Second
Advise where he prays that the Shah:
will remain successful in following the path of his forefathers, and past
ancestors who exerted their efforts in defending this pure sharia and the
splendid monotheistic community.108
His exhortations betrayed his fear that the Shah might defect from the right path
and weaken his religious community under the influence of those who hold a
corrupt faith.109
considered Muhammad Beg to be the primary culprit and perceived the Shah to be
only indirectly involved in the persecution; Moreen argued that Muhammad Beg
was the actual architect of this policy.115 Rudi Matthee, however, introduces another
dimension to this debate as he asserts that it was Khalifa Sultan, rather than
Muhammad Beg, who instigated this anti-Jewish campaign over a relatively short
period of time. The campaign contained all the elements of a ritual cleansing, an
attempt at purification by a functionary anxious to establish his credentials upon
taking office.116 Indeed, there is evidence that Khalifa Sultan subscribed to such a
policy, which reflected a convergence of the interests of a number of courtiers and
the grand vizier. It is doubtful, however, whether anti-Jewish and even anti-
Armenian measures were primarily motivated by clerical adversity. Meanwhile,
most sources establish that the state-initiated conversions to Islam used, first,
material motives and, second, coercive measures demanding internalization of
Shiism and not simply outward expression of the faith. Thus, there is a mention of
paying two tumans for converts in addition to exemptions from poll tax (jizya),
which lured several Jews in and outside Isfahan to convert to Islam.117 Several
Armenians, particularly males, converted to Islam because this alone would allow
them to inherit their fathers property.118
Quite accurately, Moreen cautions against considering the Shiite belief about
the impurity of the Jews as the motivator for the persecutions, and noted that
references to such impurity in the Safavid chronicle Abbasnameh conceals economic
considerations and rivalries.119 Unfortunately, it is difficult to discern the nature of
such rivalries from the surviving sources. It is useful to add that Persian Zoroastrians
who were also branded as impure, in addition to being infidels did not seem
to suffer the same fate as the Jews of Isfahan.120 We also know that sovereigns and
viziers alike have occasionally bent ideal religious rules with respect to non-Muslims
whenever they had a keen political and pragmatic interest in doing so. For instance,
on the basis of Shiite law, a convert to Islam can still claim the inheritance of his/
her non-Muslim parents. Yet, to counteract this law, several Armenians sold their
property to a Muslim judge who then sold it to that persons children.121 In other
instances, the state raised no objections when the Carmelites baptized 3,000 Shiite
Persian children, who were taken by their parents to the missionaries to be cured
for various illnesses.122
There is no reference to any leading cleric or shaykh al-Islam providing a
theological or ideological endorsement of Muhammad Begs policy toward the Jews
and Armenians. Muhammad Beg, who had competed against clerical bureaucrats
who aspired to occupy his rank, ordered a number of low-ranking mullahs to instruct
the converts in the tenets of the Shiite faith after their conversion.123 The sadr, though
not a clerical authority himself, was the administrator of religious affairs, and as
such must have had a say in this policy. The sadr seemed to have clarified to
Muhammad Beg that Muslim law does not permit conversion to Islam by force. He
did not attempt, however, to obstruct the actions of the grand vizier.124 One concludes
that, in reality, it was not the clerical community or the Shiite clergy who expedited
Safavid Mistrust, Popular Protest and the Rationalists Retreat 105
this policy, but rather a branch of the administrative elite at the court for reasons
that remain largely obscure.
In 1072AH/1661CE, Muhammad Beg was succeeded by Mirza Muhammad
Mahdi, the son of Habibullah the sadr and a great grandson of al-Karaki. Mirza
Muhammads family was known for its administrative-clerical expertise. For over
ten years prior to his appointment to the sadarat, Mirza Muhammad served as sadr-
i mamalik. Evidently, this clerical-administrative subgroup forged marital ties with
members of their own group and with the royal family. In 1060AH/1651CE, Mirza
Muhammad Mahdis son, Mirza Masum, married the daughter of Khalifa Sultan
while his other son Mirza Muhammad Jafar married the granddaughter of Isa
Khan Sheikhavand, the grandson of Masum Beg Safavi, a descendant of a collateral
line of the Safavid royal family.125 He married a sister of Shah Abbas the Great.
During the latters late reign, Isa Khan became the chief of the kings guards, the
qurchi-bashi.126 He was mentioned among the emirs and prominent state officials
who were present upon the death of Shah Abbas. As a military official and central
government figure, Isa Khan was responsible for appointing qurchis (the kings
guards) and determining their salaries.127 The mustawfi and grand vizier had to
consult with him on questions dealing with the finances of these guards.128 Floor
noted that after the 1630sCE the qurchi-bashi had indeed become the most important
state official. He oversaw the ascent of Shah Safi to the throne by blocking the
candidacy of a member of his own family branch, a Sheikhavand.129 But, more so
than Khalifa Sultan, who was related by marriage to the royal family, Isa Khan
belonged to the Safavi family and his power grew beyond the function of his office
which sufficiently threatened the new monarch whom he helped put on the
throne.130 After his return from Baghdad to Isfahan, Shah Safi had him executed
along with his children in 1042AH/1632CE.131
The Shah disapproved of a number of the actions carried out by Mohammad
Beg and may have grown suspicious of his ambitions and increasing power. He
shifted his support to another substratum within the elite, even if it meant
supporting a less able vizier.132 As such, against his demonstrated incompetence,
Muhammad Mahdi, who had a clerical-bureaucratic background, became grand
vizier until his death eight years later. Evidently, the Dutch officials found
Muhammad Mahdi apathetic and inefficient, complaining to the Shah, that none
of his courtiers measured up to Mohammad Beg.133
During the Safavid period, the traditionist discourse drew a strict separation
between the early founders of hadith scholarship and those labeled the late Shiite
scholars predominantly of the sixteenth century CE. In that century, Hasan, the
son of al-Shahid al-Thani, noted in Maalim al-Din that Twelver Shiite traditionists
relied exclusively on the ahad (transmitted by one authority) traditions traced to
the Imams while the rationalists like Abu Jafar al-Tusi and others accepted them
in general. No one denied them except al-Murtada and his followers.140 Hasan as
such recognized differences among the old scholars themselves in terms of their
approbation of traditions. The difference between the traditionist and rationalist
trends seems, at the time of Hasan, to be still a matter of degree rather than quality.
Defining the conflict as one between the old founders and the new is one
deliberately invested by seventeenth-century traditionism to show that ijtihad was
a deviation from the fundamentals of Shiite jurisprudence as conveyed by the
Shiite founders, who were the closest to the times of the Imams. A cognate to this
position, is accusing ijtihadi scholarship to be diversionary due to its appropriation
of Sunnite legal inference. In fact, the interdependence and linkage between
traditionist and rationalist trends was characteristic of the history of Shiite
jurisprudence and positive law.
This interdependence is evident in the fact that scholars disagreed on which of
the founding fathers and their students actually utilized ijtihad in the evaluation of
traditions, and to what extent. For instance, Husayn b. Shihab al-Din al-Karaki, an
migr Amili traditionist, argued that al-Shaykh al-Tusi was mistakenly considered
a mujtahid of sorts. Al-Tusi composed the work Al-Mabsut on positive law in which
he showed how each legal area can be traced to the Imamate Tradition. Husayn
argued that al-Tusi followed the method of the early Shiite scholars, the akhbaris,
and did not practice ijtihad.141 Seventeenth-century Safavid society provided the
seminal social phase for the polarization of the two legal methods. The traditionists
reassessed Shiite juridical scholarship of their times concluding that it failed to
conform to the original, and authentic, traditions of the Imams as imparted by
the founding fathers. This newly interwoven traditionist discourse centered around
a return to original sources, and placed restrictions ranging from caution to total
prohibition on the use of ijtihad. The discourse also showed that Shiite jurists
disagreed on who actually used proto-ijtihadi or ijtihadi approaches to the traditions
now projected backwards.
The traditionist school declared its rejection of the use of interpretive analysis
and rational arguments to appraise the law or derive legal rulings. Astarabadi,
who represented the extreme voice of traditionism, found fault in the mujtahids
use of Aristotelian logic in legal inference.142 Several traditionists claimed to adhere
to the direct sources of Shiite traditions. As such, in its extreme position, akhbarism
endorsed what is enjoined by traditions and prohibited anything not mentioned in
them. Notwithstanding, one cannot simply take these proclamations of the akhbaris
at face value. A close look at the works of traditionists shows that only the very
puritanical among them could truly function as legal consultants for their
108 Converting Persia
even if he was non-Shiite, and have the tradition corroborated by a Shiite in cases
where the original transmitter of the tradition was not a Shiite. Husayn lists among
the conditions for accepting an ahad tradition its agreement with reason, thus
advancing a moderate traditionist position.148 Given the long association of Amili
scholarship with ijtihadi thought, it is noteworthy to find Husayn support an akhbari
position, albeit a moderate one. Yet, like other traditionists, Husayn tried to find
within Amili scholarship support for an emerging traditionist position. Husayn
noted for instance that Hasan, the son of al-Shahid al-Thani, and Bahai validated
fully the four books of Al-Kafi, Man la Yahduruhu al-Faqih, Al-Tahdhib and Al-Istibsar
as being derived from the original sources. Unlike the claims of the late scholars,
these works, Husayn stated, were well edited and honed.149 Husayn also assessed
the development at the hands of Shiite scholars of the science of diraya, which
investigates the content of the hadith, and its chain of transmission to determine
which accounts can be accepted or rejected. Originally expounded by Sunnite jurists,
diraya was, in Husayns view, of little benefit in Imami jurisprudence because the
accounts are derived from the Imams who are a prophetic source of guidance.150
Based on this, there can be no real contradiction among accounts except where
Shiite scholars were forced to practice precautionary dissimulation (taqiyya).151
Ultimately, he condemned ijtihad as an emulation of Sunnite legal methodology
and attributed akhbarism to an authentic, quintessential Imamism.
A number of observations can be made on Husayns exposition. First, the
traditionists wanted to restore the authoritative position and supreme validity of
foundational traditions/texts over reason. In other words, they wanted juridical
history and contemporary social concerns to conform to the foundational texts rather
than to make the foundational texts amenable and thus open to reinterpretation
and expansion on the basis of new and changing historical reality. It is on this basis
that ijtihad as a rationalist measure for evaluating traditions becomes a center of
contention.152 Husayn clearly referred to the love for leadership and corruption of
power, as motives for the usuli-akhbari rivalry. Indirectly, this was an incrimination
of the mujtahids, who dominated religious posts around his time. Second,
traditionists also hoped to curtail the political influence of numerous mujtahids
with titles like the jurisconsult of the age, the seal of jurisconsults and others
who claimed exclusive legal-political rights in imparting Shiite doctrine and
administering its central rituals. Third, the denunciation of rationalism as a Sunnite
creation must not be taken at face value. Rationalists themselves also accused
akhbarism of wholesale Sunnism. For both groups, accusations of Sunnism were
part of the discourse of declaring the other group to be unauthentic and far from
the spirit of Shiite jurisprudence. Appropriations from Sunnism to Shiism were
not the actual source of the conflict. Fourth, and as the succeeding work here will
show, leading Arab Amili scholars adopted akhbarism and promoted its tenets much
like their Persian counterparts. No ethnic or cultural distinctions seem relevant to
this controversy.
110 Converting Persia
especially useful for the state at a time when, first, its authority was increasingly
shared by competing and diverse strata of the elite and, second, when it faced
intensified economic hardships and dissent among the working peoples and lower
classes. Interpretive rationalism, at least potentially encouraged humans to reject
blind emulation and conformity to established norms and practices. Rather, it
supported the use of human reasoning, even within particular legal limits, to arrive
at an informed opinion. State espousal of ijtihadi Shiism was a tool for internal
discipline and external legitimacy. The earliest exponents of ijtihadi Shiism were
migr scholars with few ties to any of the contending parties of Persia, and as
such were incapable yet of posing a serious challenge to the state. As the Safavid
state underwent transformation so did its ideological resources. Thus, if interpretive
rationalism served a militant expanding empire in the sixteenth century CE, which
claimed Shiism as its religious identity, then traditionism seemed more suitable
for a religiously stable empire with modest military goals and erosion in the power
of its monarchs. Traditionism, which promoted a literal, homogenous and
somewhat blind following on the part of the common person to the written word,
limited, at least theoretically, the diversification of legal opinions and as such the
multiplicity of legal authorities. Traditionism also seemed a mechanism to suppress
popular anti-Safavid sentiments and political dissent. This school of thought seemed
more suitable for a transitory political state of mid seventeenth century CE Persia.
The monarchs Shah Safi and Shah Abbas II did not merely lose power to court
officials, particularly grand viziers, but also faced the ambitions of a clerical elite
of mujtahids par excellence. At first glance, it seems as if the promotion of
traditionism at the hands of a new stratum of the aristocracy would reverse the
threat of a juristic-based political ascendancy. As will become clear in the last chapter,
state alliances with traditionist aristocrats proved only temporarily beneficial to
monarchs like Shah Abbas II and Shah Suleiman. The Persian aristocrats also found
traditionism attractive because they seemed more closely involved in state decisions
during this period. Traditionism restricted claimants to ijtihad and upward climbers
from lower social strata. As such, akhbarism became an intra-elite and an inter-elite
affair at once. Unfortunately, we are in the dark as to the spread of traditionism
among scholars outside the aristocracy and their motives.
Heterodox and Sufi spokesmen were not the only sectors of Persian society to
seriously challenge the mujtahids and question their authority and integrity. This
explains the contradictory popular images and representations of religious
experts, be they the shaykh al-Islam or the mullah. A number of theologians saw
traditionism as an attempt to restore faith in Shiite jurists, and to protest against
state validation of mujtahids who represented a sort of a clerical aristocracy from
the time of Shah Tahmasb until the time of Shah Abbas. In the long run, however,
whether akhbari or usuli, Persias clerical leadership succeeded in recovering
important religious and state offices and found new ways of legitimation, which
revived and multiplied its utility beyond the waning power of the state. As such,
there was no fundamental difference between traditionists and rationalists in
112 Converting Persia
Far from being anticlerical, or for that matter liberal, the reigns of Shah Safi and
Shah Abbas II witnessed an espousal of a reformist clericalism that accepted the
amalgamation of high individualized traditions of Gnosticism and Sufism. For
instance, Muhammad Baqir Sabzavari (d. 1090AH/1679CE), a propertied notable
living in Isfahan, was a philosophically bent scholar who admitted elitist forms of
Sufism. He acted as the shaykh al-Islam of Isfahan and observed Friday prayer
methodically.163 Shah Abbas II expressed great respect for him. Like Sabzavari,
Muhsin al-Fayd (d. 1091AH/1680CE), one of Mulla Sadras students, was a
beneficiary of royal favors.164 But again, al-Fayd sought to bring philosophical
precepts closer to Shiite legalism, as such seeking a more subordinate position for
reason than the one originally declared by Mulla Sadra. Both Sabzavari and al-
Fayd came under attack from conventional jurists like Ali al-Shahidi. Al-Fayd
upheld only sacred law and illumination (kashf) and excluded reason as the core
for epistemology.165 For Mulla Sadra, the epistemological structure rested on a
synthesis of the sacred law, illumination, ratiocination, and rational demonstration
(aql).166 With al-Fayd, we witness a rigorous integration of philosophy with Shiite
orthopraxy. This shows that the Safavid encouragement of Sufi and philosophical
trends was calculated and quite distinct from more popular and radical derivatives.
This in turn explains how a number of these intellectual hybrids mentioned here
opposed the use of interpretive rationalism in the area of jurisprudence and law
and endorsed public adherence to the traditions. These contradictions manifest in
one and the same body of scholarship, reflect the transitory modes of socio-economic
and political contradictions of this period.
Mawlana Khalil Qazvini, favored by Shah Abbas II, was not beyond the pale of
jurists. A combiner of rational and traditional sciences, he wrote a Persian
commentary on the canonical Shiite hadith of Kulini, requested by Shah Abbas II.
The commentary reflected a predilection toward traditions (akhbar) and a
personalized venture toward Imamism. 167 Nonetheless, he rejected absolute
imitation and permitted ijtihad under particular conditions and capability.168 He
was a beneficiary of Bahai, Mir Damad and Khalifa Sultans juridical and Gnostic
training. Qazvini also frequented the circles of Haj Mahmud Reyati and Mulla
Husayn Yazdi. The Shah further acknowledged Mulla Rajab Ali Tabrizi, who drew
upon Gnostic philosophy.169 The contradictions in Khalil Qazvinis thought are
manifest in his attempt to prohibit Friday prayer while upholding a basic adherence
to traditions. Akhund Mirza Shirwani (d. 1098AH/1686CE) and Akhund
Muhammad Tunikabuni Sarab, who received equal recognition from Shah Abbas
II, were philosophically bent jurists.170 Sarab adhered to the philosophical school
of Mulla Rajab Ali Tabrizi, which nurtured a conformist attitude toward the
government.171 Legalist Shiite thought gradually, however, overtook eclecticism.
The Peripatetic (mashshai) and Gnostic schools in the last decades of Safavid rule
tended to become more hostile to philosophy and Gnosticism.172
Al-Fayd attempted to show around 1057AH/1647CE that a consensus had been
reached among Twelver Shiites in support of the obligatory observance of Friday
114 Converting Persia
prayer but Mawla Muhammad Amin b. Abd al-Wahhab argued against this position
and from an equally legal angle.173 Mulla Khalil Qazvini (d. 1089AH/1678CE), a
Sufi-bent scholar, prohibited the convening of Friday prayer during Occultation.174
He rejected the growing power of conventional jurists who utilized ijtihad to arrive
at new legal rulings. Qazvini also opposed al-Fayds belief in the unity of existence
and rejected the Sufi views of Muhammad Taqi Majlisi. 175 Unlike Qazvini,
Muhammad Taqi Majlisi (d. 1070AH/1659CE), known as Majlisi the First (al-Awwal),
who was Sufi bent, believed Friday prayer was obligatory.176 It is noteworthy that
both Muhammad Taqi Majlisi and Mulla Khalil Qazvini, though expressing opposite
views on Friday prayer, were highly esteemed by Shah Abbas II. In turn, Qazvini
and Majlisi I came under attack from conventional clerics of a lower social rank
like Mulla Muhammad Tahir Qummi (originally from Shiraz), the shaykh al-Islam
of Qum. Qummi, a traditionist, observed congregational prayer methodically,
chastising the Sufis and deserters of Friday prayer.177 A leading traditionist from
Yazd, Mawla Muhammad Muqim Yazdi was observant of Friday prayer and argued
that it was incumbent upon every Shiite to observe it during the absence of the
Imam.178 Yazdis view was a popular position among the traditionists at the time,
as it was preponderant among the rationalists to argue in favor of the conditional
and voluntary observance of Friday prayer.179
Overall, most mujtahids of the mid and late seventeenth century CE endorsed
the convening of Friday prayer under certain conditions, and felt it should be
administered within a hierarchical clerical structure by a few rationalists with tools
of legal inference and deputyship privileges. Yet, again, it is important to note that
mujtahids of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries CE held a mix of
views, some thinking that convening Friday prayer was not obligatory or necessary
during Occultation. The traditionists emphasized its being obligatory and
unconditional, as such decentering the jurist in the process and undermining the
deputyship of the jurist. Theoretically, traditionism may have seemed to be a
precautionary trend against the growth of a monopoly over clerical affairs. In
application, however, the power of the jurist was neither forfeited nor weakened
under a traditionist leadership. The philosophically bent jurists for the most part
denounced the observation of Friday prayer during Occultation as a subtle
expression of their challenge to Safavid theocratic claims. It seems that these senti-
ments were as much part of the elite as of wider social constituencies. Sufi-bent
scholars were split on the status of Friday prayer, some embracing it and others
upholding the Imamate millennial ideal. The Sufi-bent scholars seemed to be largely
drawn from once unrecognized social sectors, or upwardly mobile strata.
i Iran, Abdol Hosein Zarrinkoob argued that the high-ranking ulama of the Safavid
court were not opposed to Sufism per se, nor were central Sufi concepts alien to
their works and outlook.181 Rather, they were mostly threatened by the popular,
radical implications of their socio-economic content. Popular Sufism under the
Safavids became a vehicle for political dissent among disadvantaged social sectors,
particularly craftsmen in several guilds who challenged the clerical aristocracy
and the state by undermining the sharia and expressing defiance to the mujtahids.182
The monarchs closely watched militant Sufis who had the means to lead hundreds
in rebellions and destabilize Safavid rule. The term Sufi carried more than one
connotation and encompassed variegated references to heresy, which calls for a
redefinition of extremism. The latter became euphemistic for acts whose common
feature was dissatisfaction with the way political or religious power was exercised
after its centralization at the end of the Safavid era.183 The conversion of craftsmen
to various Sufi tariqas led in some instances to a mass conversion of a local or
provincial guild associated with him in defiance of the formal Shiism of the jurists.
The earlier Sunnite ahl-i futuvvat emphasized a solid work ethic and avoidance of
deceit; traits which gradually blended with the Qalandari branch of the
Malamatiyya in a reformist Sufi trend that found special popularity among
commoners and bazaaris. This furnished an additional dimension to the jurists
discomfort with the Sufis.184 The Qalandars are a particularly good example. Their
disregard for the work ethic of their times, their boastful idleness and turning to
beggary earned them the wrath of high-ranking clerics who showered them with
accusations of homosexuality and alcohol drinking. As a remnant branch of the
Malamatiyya Sufis, the people of blame who conceal their good deeds and encour-
age public blame on themselves the Qalandars discarded the Sufi garb and beard,
expressed great cynicism at mainstream social observances, neglect for formalistic
religious mannerism and were believed to consume hashish and henbane.185
Zarrinkoob asserts that the ulamas opposition to the Sufis, from the time of
Shah Abbas onward, increased in scope and intensity. In a sour and fervent disdain
of the Sufis, Mirza Habibullah the sadr, Muhaqqiq Sabzavari, Shaykh Ali Kamarahi,
Mir Sayyid Ahmad Alawi al-Amili, Mirza Rafi al-Din Naini and others issued
legal injunctions proclaiming their depravity and sinfulness.186 During the early
seventeenth century CE, mainstream jurists attacked high traditions of Sufism.
Mulla Sadra became the target of their relentless attacks and accusations of heresy.
As they forced him out of Isfahan, they felt secure about their indispensability to
the monarchs.
In the reigns of Shah Safi and Shah Abbas II, Sufi-bent scholars seemed to have
empowered themselves or at least legitimized their positions by co-opting the legal
discourse to resituate the normative and break the legalists hegemony. This posed
a clear threat to conventional jurists like Ali al-Shahidi. Although Sufism had roots
in Jabal Amil as reflected in the background of al-Shahid, it remained a marginal
trend within its scholastic-clerical community. A few expressed a general reverence
for Sufi masters and a tendency to embrace an austere life. Among these were
116 Converting Persia
Husayn b. Abd al-Samad, his son Bahai and Mirza Ahmad b. al-Husayn al-Amili,
the brother of Habibullah the sadr.187 Muhammad b. Hasan al-Amili al-Aynathi
(originally al-Aynathai) (d. after 1081AH/1670CE) showed visible Sufi leanings
and was considered among those who performed charismata (karamat).188 A Persian
descendant of Amili scholars and the shaykh al-Islam of Qazvin, namely Muhammad
Shafi b. Baha al-Din al-Karaki (d. 1125AH/1713CE), found in the rich and colorful
milieu of mysticism and philosophy in Persia a source of intellectual stimulation.
He expressed vivid interest in the translation and elaboration of the masnavis of
Jalal al-Din Rumi and attempted to show that Rumi made a favorable appraisal of
Twelver Shiism.189
In his Stray Arrows, Ali al-Shahidi accused the Sufis of undermining Shiite sacred
law and of expressing contempt toward jurists like him, the administrators of this
law.190 Several Sufis justified their aversion toward the legal sciences through the
corruption and incompetence of jurists.191 Openly admitting to the presence of such
jurists, Ali nonetheless reasoned that the shortcomings of legal experts should not
cause one to revoke the sacred law. Only a few had acted irresponsibly or embraced
earthly pleasures, and are therein blameworthy. The faith in juridical knowledge
is still firm and unwavering. Ali made a plea to the members of his own community,
the conventional jurists, to protect religious conduct and preserve their faith so
that the people can follow their lead. He admitted, however, that only some jurists
could be imitated. This statement clearly hints to the erosion in the jurists authority
and the thrust to restrict religious exemplars to few mujtahids whom the layperson
can emulate.
Like Ali al-Shahidi, Nimatullah al-Jazairi (d. 1112AH/1700CE) also embellished
the image of the jurist as a healer and anchor of moral ideals. This was a vivid
sign of the serious challenge jurists encountered as a result of the proliferation of
legal knowledge among diverse intellectual groups. Al-Jazairi described the jurist
as the inheritor of the Prophet and the discharger on behalf of God and his deputy
and the tongue that speaks for him.192 Above all, the jurist was the doctor of religion
who provided the remedy for the patient.193 Al-Jazairi saw himself as a missionary,
a passionate proselyte (tabligh al-dawa) who argued for the necessity of appointing
a religious scholar:
for every district, city, town, or shrine to teach its people their religion and
distinguish what harms them from what benefits them the patients with
heart diseases cannot know their disease and the man on whose face leprosy
appears but has no mirror cannot know his leprosy unless someone else
diagnosed it, and that is an obligation for all the ulama. The Sultans must
appoint a religious jurist in every village and quarter.194
But al-Jazairi warned that many a religious scholar had fallen ill and had
failed to live up to the required standards due to his lust and love for this
life.195
Safavid Mistrust, Popular Protest and the Rationalists Retreat 117
Sufi ties to the lower classes, their altruistic acts of charity and their austerity
became a dynamic source of popularity for them.205 Ali al-Shahidi found such
charity futile and argued that God considers it more worthy to spend money first
on ones parents, second on oneself and family, third on ones poor kindred, fourth
on ones poor neighbors, and fifth on God. Thus, God does not merit conspicuous
spending nor frugality but a middle ground between the two. It is unfavorable in
Gods eyes for one to give away all that one owns (the way many Sufis do), then
turn to God in want, for then God will abandon him. On the same note, Ali related
an account by Jafar al-Sadiq showing that the Sufis had made a wrong interpretation
(tawil qabih) of Quranic verses and manipulated their meaning to condone their
objectionable acts of charity.206
Ali warned Shiites against accepting at face value Sufi precepts propagated by
Sunnite scholars like al-Ghazali or embracing moderate Sufi views. To counteract
al-Ghazalis popularity, Ali noted that the former extolled the virtues of Abu Bakr
during a state of Sufi illumination. Al-Ghazali even prohibited the cursing of Yazid
and refrained from accusing him of the murder of Imam Husayn. Ali did not
advance theological arguments against al-Ghazali but rather emphasized his
animosity toward Shiites. He explained that al-Ghazali denounced Twelver Shiites
as recusants (rawafid) and rejected their claims to know the true meaning of the
scriptures through the teachings of the infallible Imam.207 Ali also challenged a
common belief among Twelver Shiites: that al-Ghazali was the companion of al-
Sayyid al-Murtada during his pilgrimage to Mecca.
To the distress of al-Shahidi, many Shiites believed that a Medieval Andalusian
Sufi, Muhyiddin b. Arabi (d. 638AH/1240CE), had harbored Shiite inclinations. With
the two-fold pursuit of disavowing Sunnism and Sufism, Ali asserted that Ibn Arabi
professed during his nocturnal journey (isra) that Abu Bakr ranked high above all
prophets. As such, Ali denounced al-Ghazali as a detester of Shiites and an idol
worshipper who misled the layperson into believing he was following the right path.
Conclusion
A restructuring of relations between the state, central bureaucracy and provincial-
military elites limited the resolve of the monarch but promoted new forms of
authority for the state. These changes were dictated by a decrease in military
expeditions at the frontiers in the form of defensive or offensive war characteristic
of the reign of Shah Abbas. Subsequent reliance on bureaucratic social elements
boosted the posts of ministers in general and the grand vizier in particular, which
eventually encroached on the Shahs individual power. Meanwhile, the growing
social contradictions and economic tensions evident during the late reign of Shah
Abbas found sharper expression during the mid seventeenth century CE. With the
weakening of disciplinary restraints against the elites and the decline in mechanisms
of relief advocated by Shah Abbas, lower-class discontent and rebellions attempting
to undermine the state intensified.
Safavid Mistrust, Popular Protest and the Rationalists Retreat 119
Even though the Safavid scholarly elite was not a homogenous entity until the
times of Shah Safi, it does seem to have acted as a self-contained group with
relatively similar interests and outlook. After that time, however, diverse intellectual
and political tendencies rise to the fore. This was part of, first, a change in state
structure witnessing diffusion rather than centralization of power among different
wings of the central bureaucracy, some of which adopted clerical Islam; second,
clerical tasks diversified, became hierarchically organized, and carried local
undertones in different social settings of the empire; and third, a strengthening of
dissent from below brought greater ideological complexity and diversity within
the clerical community. Meanwhile, the forceful espousal of clerical Islam by a
section of the Persian aristocracy enhanced the demise of Amilism and promoted
Persianized models of clerical leadership.
Shah Safi and Shah Abbas II aimed to limit the control of the clerical elite,
predominantly composed of rationalist jurists, by cutting off their economic grants
and then replacing many of them with another branch of the Persian clerical elite
who promoted traditionism. A number of traditionists then became the new
exponents of the Shiite normative, who posed a serious challenge to ijtihadi clerical
practices. More significant was the admission of Sufi-bent and philosophically bent
jurists to the official domain. It is within this context that legalists began to decry
the monarchs weak commitment to the sacred law in the mid seventeenth century
CE. They complained about the disintegration of the moral fiber of Safavid society
and attacked what they labeled as the laxity in the adherence and administration
of Islamic sharia in court and in society. These attacks were profoundly telling of
the collapse of the political expectations of the old clerical elite and the competition
it faced from the state-funded scholarly hybrids.208 Conventional jurists also
experienced diffuse forms of resistance to their economic ascendancy, reflected in
popular culture in the form of sarcasm and ridicule.
A section of the Persian aristocracy found in clerical Islam a suitable expression
for its interests. In addition, religious scholars associated with the court sought
individualized and elitist approaches to Sufism. It is inadequate to present the
Safavid support of intellectual hybridity from a culturalist perspective as simply a
triumph of Persian culture inherently defined by Sufism and philosophy against
clerical Islam of the migr Arab scholars. The conflicts among diverse currents of
thought were entirely a Persian affair because the migr scholars were themselves
at this point Persian, living in Safavid society. Moreover, clerical Islam cannot be
categorically treated as constantly antithetical or mutually exclusive to Sufi and
philosophical thought. Sufi-bent and philosophically bent scholars from the Persian
nobility, in their attempt to replace the old elite in state offices, co-opted the clerical
discourse to achieve an authorizing stance.
Nowhere were these intellectual hybrids more indicative of the internal and
cross-sectional class differences in seventeenth-century CE Persia than in the legal
struggles over Sufism and congregational prayer.209 Intra-elite and inter-elite
struggles were framed in theological polemics between jurists and Sufi-bent
120 Converting Persia
scholars. This was not simply a clerical reaction to popular Sufism. It was also an
internal contest over doctrinal and behavioral patterns of Shiism at a time when
Sufi-bent scholars have acquired a proficient knowledge in legal Islam and high
Sufism had sneaked into the ulamas domain. The disintegration of the old socio-
religious boundaries was laid bare and legalists like Ali al-Shahidi strove to explain
the moral mishaps of jurists and the loss of their grip over society which permitted
the Sufi vision in its many shapes and forms to become an alternative course for
Shiite persuasions.
The cross-fertilization between clerical Islam and these trends reflected the entry
of diverse social elements into the power sphere, and diffusion of power not only
away from the Shah, but also among multiple branches of the elite. This differed
from the more centralized authority of Shah Abbas who, though receptive to
popular Sufism for a short while, ultimately crushed the leaders of the Nuqtaviyya
and Nimatullahiyya and prevented their visions from becoming part of state
ideology. The state found in the Sufi and philosophically bent scholars a balancing
measure against the mujtahids power and autonomy. At first glance, it may seem
as if the monarchs and the central bureaucracys flirtation with Sufi and
philosophical hybrids was part of a policy of anticlericalism, as most scholars of
Safavid Persia purported. I have argued instead that the majority of these scholars
were well versed in juridical Islam, and were adept exponents of the sharia and
the clerical discourse. As such, they co-opted the conventional legalists by using
the very tool for their ascendancy in state offices, namely juridical Islam. This is
attested in the polemical writings on Friday prayer, gauged effectively in juridical
terms by such hybrids. As such the debate never really fell outside clerical
boundaries. Meanwhile, philosophical and Sufi scholarship of this period allowed
only a few to seek sources of knowledge outside the sharia, while traditionism
restricted the application of reason in religious conduct and ultimately limited ones
knowledge and interference in the social and political worlds.
The Sufi bent ulama continued to problematize the question of Friday prayer,
insisting that it was illicit. Except for the more moderate Sufis, like Muhammad
Taqi Majlisi and Muhsin al-Fayd, no Sufi-bent scholar supported the obligatory
observation of Friday prayer. The philosophically bent ulama also for the most
part declared Friday prayer obligatory. Rationalist jurists like Mawla Hasan Ali
Tustari, Sulayman al-Shakhuri, Jamal al-Muhaqqiqin, and Mirza Muhammad al-
Naysaburi endorsed its prohibition. Except for the traditionists, who divorced the
observance of Friday prayer from imperial sovereignty, the Sufi-bent ulama, like
the rationalists, moved from expressions of hesitancy towards the Safavids temporal
rule to open dissent and resistance towards the state, one in pursuit of millennial
spaces and the second in pursuit of the Mahdist Imamate ideal.
5
The Rediscovery of Traditions
and the Shifting Normative
WHEN SHAH ABBAS II passed away in 1077AH/1666CE, the grand vizier, Mirza
Muhammad Mahdi, supported the claims of his seven-year-old son Hamza Mirza
in opposition to the majority of the courtiers who endorsed the enthronement of
the nineteen-year old Safi Mirza.1 Unlike his predecessors, Shah Abbas II realized
he had little control over appointing a successor. As such, he did not declare which
of his two able sons he wanted to succeed him.2 It seemed more advantageous to:
those who are in Place to have a Minor King for their Sovereign, than one
that is of Age to govern, all the Suffrages were unanimous for giving the
Crown to the younger son, whom the King had brought along with him, and
who was then upon the Spot.3
Safi Mirza, known later as Shah Suleiman, ruled for twenty-eight years until
1105AH/1694CE. Brought up in the secluded world of the harem, Safi showed little
interest in political administration and state affairs at a time when the empire was
suffering a severe economic and fiscal crisis.4 At times, administrative development
coexisted with weak military control and bureaucratic paralysis. 5 Matthee
cautioned, however, against concluding that Shah Suleiman was largely responsible
for the onset of economic disintegration in the Safavid Empire.6 By the time of
Shah Abbas II, when territorial expansion came to an end, the treasury was already
suffering from decline of revenue and income due to the increase in crown lands
and military efficiency.7 Persian society experienced a significant decrease in wealth
between the 1070sAH/1660sCE and 1080sAH/1670sCE, and people complained that
dishonest trade transactions and cheating were rampant. Persian farmers were in
122 Converting Persia
a Man who goes to Bed at Night with a Ten Penny Piece in his Breeches, finds
but Five Pence there in the Morning, if the Governor was changd in the Night.18
The governors profited from these changes because, under the pretext of paying a
gratuity to the Officer that brought them [to power], they raised ten Times as
much upon the People.19 It is unclear what strategies or actions the people took to
resist the damaging effect of elite politics to their economic interest and administrat-
ive disarray compounded by widespread bribery and the states reckless spending.20
The Rediscovery of Traditions and the Shifting Normative 123
During the ceremonies commemorating the death of Imam Husayn, the
government licensed and supported open fighting between local factions in different
provinces. The factions competed over resources and political control in struggles
that at times took the form of tribal, ethnic and racial conflict. The spirit of
factionalism was encouraged by Shah Abbas as a method to control his provinces.
Frustration and deprivation were channeled through these violent confrontations
with stones and sticks, which caused numerous injuries and death.21 Meanwhile,
governors succumbed to, or at times orchestrated, theft and highway robberies in
the cities. The Caravans did not dare to stop any longer in the Villages, but chose
rather to encamp under Tents, because of the Difficulty of avoiding the Ambushes
of the Peasants.22 Mothers encouraged their children to take up theft professionally
and promised them a good Supper in return.
Administrative problems at the center and political instability in the provinces,
large-scale deterioration of central regional economies in the empire and the
concomitant environmental calamities gave rise to sharper class divisions, social
unrest and political dissension. It is within this context that Shah Sultan Husayn
and his clerics issued royal decrees and injunctions to counteract a wide range of
violations normally associated with depressed social elements, who threatened
state security.23 These violations, though involving at times the notables (ayan),
seem mainly directed against the common people (ahali) also associated with
ruffians (awbash), ranged from gambling, laying bets on pigeon flight, wrestling,
wine-drinking, hemp consumption, prostitution and brigandage to forms of
entertainment, music and dancing. These developments were in part reflected in
the increasing potency of the Safavid underworld, and open challenges to local
governors and the state. Meanwhile, several Gnostics (arifs) and Sufis found an
enthusiastic following to their ideas among dissenting social sectors.24 The
commoners, or awam in the language of clerics and high-ranking state bureaucrats,
were as much the theologically debased as the socially low-ranking and dissenting
voices of the Safavid world. Even though riots led by ruffian populations and
uprisings with dervish chiliastic leanings against the state existed throughout the
Safavid period, they were largely crushed by Qizilbash soldiery during the sixteenth
century, and effectively suppressed under Shah Abbas.25 As James Reid noted, the
rural and urban underworlds of Safavid society including brigands, vagabonds,
and local leaders were usually involved in revolts and political disturbances against
the Safavids.26 Unfortunately, little has survived about the full scope and incidence
of the revolts of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries CE in Persia.
At this juncture in Safavid history, a more puritanical, traditionist clerical elite
with a solid bureaucratic base came to the rescue of the ailing empire. Naturally,
the monarchs sources of distinction and power had waned, which left his courtiers
and servicemen with the task of finding adequate sources of legitimacy. Muhammad
Baqir Majlisi (d. 1110AH/1698CE), a powerful court cleric and bureaucrat associated
mainly with the reign of Shah Sultan Husayn, repeatedly embellished the reputation
of the Safavid Empire by citing Shiite traditions which confirmed the Safavids
124 Converting Persia
genuine Imamism, and predicted their political feats and missionary zeal in
spreading Shiism.27 Meanwhile, another scholar extended to the Safavids the
distinguished attributes of a pure progeny and an Arab pedigree.28 In Fadail al-
Sadat, Muhammad Ashraf b. Abd al-Hasib al-Musawi al-Karaki (d. 1145AH/
1732CE) spoke of the socio-economic privileges and spiritual excellence of sayyids
related by blood to the Prophet, and to the tribe of Quraysh and the Arabs.29 A
grandson of Mir Damad, Muhammad Ashraf based his conclusions on the
arguments of Ibn Tawus in Kashf al-Hujja, which gave the Hashimites social
precedence and natural leadership.30 He utilized these arguments to confirm the
nobility and pure Prophetic line of the Safavid Shah who claims descent from the
Hashimites. 31 Muhammad Ashraf further noted that hostility toward the
descendents of the house of the Prophet was a sign of bastardy and would incur
punishment in the next world.32
In 1135AH/1722CE, the Afghans made their triumphant entry into Isfahan, led
by Mahmud the Ghaznavid, who had Sultan Husayn ride on his left side to
legitimize his rule over Persia.
Rationalists of the late Safavid period found no justification for convening Friday
prayer, stating that the court clerics, and indirectly the Safavid state, lacked the
qualifications and conditions necessary for convening it. The rationalists were not
in a position to overlook or control the performance of Friday prayer, nor were
they under pressure to validate the Safavid state. The legal and philosophical
arguments over this question spread not merely among the elite but across class as
well. The titles Mir, Mirza, Akhund and Agha and Mulla reflected variations
in the social status of the scholars who joined the debate on Friday prayer mentioned
before. Unfortunately, we know very little about the activities of these scholars or
the nature of their social transformation, as to form a clear opinion about the
connections between their ideas and the historical realities they experienced. Sufi-
bent scholars for the most part expressed dissent against Safavid rule. Muhammad
Rida Qazvini (d. after 1136AH/1723CE), a Sufi-bent scholar, though maintaining
good relations with the court, insisted that convening Friday prayer was forbidden
as long as the Imam is in hiding.46 Sufi-bent scholars declined to accept a closure
to the story of temporal authority and continued to find illegitimate features in
any but the awaited Imams government. Their position gave voice to political
opposition from lower constituencies, a resistance to official notions of time, polity
and human agency. It is plausible that rationalists, who prohibited Friday prayer,
albeit from a different motive, found in ijtihad a source of empowerment against
the clerical elites emphasis on unquestioned adherence to traditions. In other words,
denying the necessity of Friday prayer gave a theological window of maneuver for
disgruntled sectors, which questioned the legitimacy of Safavid theocratic claims
and the relevance of the state to the individual.
Modern scholars disagree on the nature of Majlisis religious policies and his
approach toward Sufism and contemporary Sufis of high and popular traditions.
Muslih al-Din Mahdavi refuted the view that Majlisi persecuted the Sufis as a
whole.64 Mahdavi asserted that Majlisi accepted moderate and ethical Sufism,
meaning sharia-conforming versions of Sufism and unpublicized spiritual
experiences similar to those expressed by Muhammad Taqi, his father, and Bahai.65
Majlisi would write that the path of religion is one because God sent one messenger
and one sacred law.66 Recasting and co-opting Sufism, Majlisi praised the pristine
Sufism of Shiite jurists like Ali b. Tawus, a possessor of charismata and
distinguished spiritual ranks (maqamat), Ibn Fahd al-Hilli, known for his austerity,
and al-Shahid al-Thani, who held Sufi secrets and signs. These scholars, Majlisi
added, protected the rightful religion, expressed religious devotions, glorified God,
and invoked His name. Their acts conform to the sharia. They were not extremists
in their Sufism like their Sunnite counterparts, who engaged in singing, dancing
and drum beating.67 For Majlisi, then, acceptable Sufism came to mean private
spiritual revelations and a public expression of devotion, austerity and conformity
to the sharia. Majlisi rejected any attempt to substitute a literal, widely based
communal Shiism, with Sufi beliefs in the unity of existence, transmigration of
souls. He also denounced Sufi fraternities and tariqas, with their initiation
ceremonies and courts of music and dancing which offer initiates spiritual
immersion at odds with the teachings of clerical exegetes of Tradition and the sharia.
It is unclear whether Majlisi issued decrees to actively persecute or kill infidels,
including Sufis.68 Several students of Majlisi and Persian descendants of al-Shahid
al-Thani also refuted Sufi ideas and movements.69 There is no doubt, however, that
the Sufi-bent ulama were a force to reckon with and were considered by jurists a
serious threat.70 Muhammad Karim Sharif Qummi, for instance, strove to defend
Sufism against the attacks of Mulla Muhammad Tahir Qummi in his work Tuhfat
al-Ushshaq. The physician of Shah Suleiman also wrote a Sufi work denouncing
Muhammad Tahirs views, known as Tabsirat al-Muminin.71
It is unlikely that Majlisi used force in converting a presumed 1,070 Sunnites to
Shiism in Syrian territories or that such conversions were the outcome of his
successful explication of Imamism and its political cause in Haqq al-Yaqin.72 Sources
point to Majlisis active role in converting by force around 70,000 Sunnites and
non-Muslims, but the circumstances surrounding these policies remain vague. It is
possible that insurgencies in Qandahar and the increased tensions in areas
populated by Sunnites encouraged the rhetoric of religious conversion and militancy
by Safavid officials like Majlisi. A few modern scholars, notably Arjomand, further
suggested that the Afghan invasion of Safavid Persia in 1135AH/1722CE may have
been triggered by Majlisis persecution of Sunnites in Afghanistan.73 It seems that
the language of conversion, like that of anti-Sufism, was a means to project a strong
disciplinary state and to divert attention away from severe political and economic
problems. The rhetoric of conversion also projected the growth of militant solutions
to prevent the disintegration of the empire.
The Rediscovery of Traditions and the Shifting Normative 129
Imamhood and Eschatology in Lieu of a De-empowered State
Majlisi utilized limited rationalist interpretations of the sharia, and reconfirmed
the laws encompassing and ubiquitous nature. Majlisis legal outlook could be
described as a middle method between rationalism and traditionism. He accepted
the role of reason, consensus and the literal meaning of the scriptures in the same
way as a mujtahid would uphold a tradition reached by consensus (ijma manqul).74
In the area of jurisprudence he was not a strict traditionist. On the other hand, he
revived traditions (akhbar) as a crucial and independent source of knowledge about
points of law.75
As a clerical leader, Majlisi derived much power not simply on the basis of a
state appointment but rather by emphasizing the link between Shiite devotional
attitudes and a reverence toward the custodians of Shiism, namely the jurists. He
rediscovered the utility of Shiite Tradition as he laid down a monumental, twenty-
five volume compendium on traditions, known as Bihar al-Anwar (Seas of Light)
started in 1077AH/1666CE, before the birth of Shah Sultan Husayn, but completed
in 1104AH/1692CE. The Persian form of the traditions and their storytelling element
gave Seas of Light distinct popularity. As such, Majlisi was able to declass the interest
in traditions unlike philosophers and Gnostics whose ideas remained largely
inaccessible to the populace. The images of heaven and hell in Seas of Light, and the
eschatological promises and futuristic expectations, were directed to a wide and
undiscriminating readership whose intellectual abilities, he believed, were wanting.
Majlisi, as such, co-opted certain elements of Sufism and adapted them to the ahl
al-bayt devotionalism. Arjomand is correct in noting that Majlisis works succeeded
in capturing the imagination of the people and enlisting their loyalty.76 Seas of
Light aimed to bring together the basic, foundational, all-inclusive stories of the
Imams and authorized a communal commitment to Imamism, irrespective of the
shape of temporal authority. The spread of this devotional literature was also
achieved through Persianization. Majlisi questioned the hegemonic role of Arabic
as the language of creed, jurisprudence and law. He noted that it is insufficient for
a scholar to master Arabic he must rather acquire the core Islamic disciplines.
Majlisi was not only critical of scholars who did not research the content of Arabic
texts but also those who used Arabic mechanically. He composed several books on
Tradition in Persian and valorized it as the language of scholasticism.77 This stands
in contrast to Chardins observation that, under Shah Abbas II, Arabic was still
lidiome de la religion et des sciences releves.78
It seems possible that Majlisis practices hoped to untie the legitimacy of clerical
Shiism to the legitimacy of the Safavid state in a period of political crisis.
Furthermore, the promotion of traditions was a way of avoiding interpretive
endeavors and discouraging Persians from pursuing expansive or divisive paths
of legal rationalism. Majlisi argued that if humans possessed an independent
intellect and comprehension, God would not have sent them Prophets and
messengers. God ordered humans to obey these messengers in all that they decree.
130 Converting Persia
After spending forty years in Jabal Amil, al-Hurr traveled first to Iraq, then to
Mashhad where he visited the shrine of Imam al-Rida. He took up residence in
The Rediscovery of Traditions and the Shifting Normative 131
Mashhad until his death, twenty-four years later. He traveled twice for pilgrimage
and once to Iraq to visit the Imams shrines.88
Before his arrival in Mashhad for the first time in 1073AH/1662CE, he passed through
Isfahan where he made an instant friend of Majlisi, and the two exchanged scholarly
licenses (ijazas). Curiously, the Shah expressed little enthusiasm about this otherwise
distinguished migr Arab scholar. During his short stay in Isfahan, al-Hurr visited
the court of Shah Suleiman and, without asking permission, he took his place on one
side of the cushion on which the Shah was resting. When the Shah inquired about him,
his courtiers explained that al-Hurr was among the great Arab ulama, and that his
name was Muhammad b. al-Hasan al-Hurr al-Amili. The Shah then turning to al-
Hurr asked: Farq-i Mayan Hurr va khar Cheqadr ast? (What is the difference between
Hurr and khar [donkey]?). Al-Hurr had spent no more than few months in Persia, but
knew enough Persian to answer: One cushion! Instead of feeling offended, the Shah
was amused by al-Hurrs courage and sharp wit.89 Indeed, the intellectual labor of the
Amilis was no longer directly relevant to the monarchs or to Safavid society at this
historical juncture. Even if partly anecdotal, the above account also equally underscore
the diminished stature of the monarchs. Al-Hurrs great contributions to Shiite hadith
and law were indisputable, but they were neither unique nor indispensable to the
empires foreseeable goals as those of al-Karaki and Bahai before. Mostly through the
influence of Majlisi, al-Hurr became chief judge (qadi al-qudat) and shaykh al-Islam.90 It
is difficult to know with certainty how much political weight al-Hurrs position and
views carried in these offices during the late seventeenth century CE. Floor noted that
depending on location and circumstances the post of shaykh al-Islam was influential at
the time. For instance, a royal decree issued in 1079AH/1669CE showed that the shaykh
al-Islam of Mashhad was charged with setting a model of religious piety, and enjoining
the good and prohibiting illicit acts. Furthermore, the shaykh al-Islam overlooked the
payment of religious taxes like the fifth and alms, and decided on questions of
inheritance.91 He, rather than the sadr, appointed district judges and low-ranking judicial
staff. It seems that Persians believed that the views of the shaykh al-Islam carried
significant weight due to his proximity to the Shah.92
The interest in expanding adherence to traditions, eschatological literature and
Imamate occultism are evident in al-Hurrs work as much as Majlisis, at a time of
political indeterminacy and decline in state power. Al-Hurr was the first to compile
the Prophetic traditions (ahadith qudsiyya) in his work Al-Jawahir al-Saniyya. In Al-
Iqaz min al-Haja bil-Burhan ala al-Raja, he points to 600 traditions and sixty-four
Quranic verses among other sources, as proof for the return of the Mahdi.93 He also
argued in another treatise that the Imam is not merely infallible but does not forget
or get distracted (sahu). The social demand for this literature, much like the attraction
of Sufi precepts among the literati and the lay alike, reveals the popularity of millennial
and apocalyptic notions of time and authority as expressions of disenchantment with
and resistance to the existing political order.
If usulism was the hallmark of the legal-doctrinal outlook of the early clerics of a
vibrant, expanding empire in the sixteenth century CE, then the growth of akhbarism
132 Converting Persia
was a sign of political malaise and the growing irrelevance of imperial sovereignty
to Persian society at large in the last decade of the seventeenth century CE. The most
decisive difference between akhbarism and usulism in the late Safavid period, as
Modarressi correctly noted, was the the validity or invalidity of reason in connection
to religious matters.94 This has a number of seemingly contradictory implications.
First, it discouraged rationalist, interpretive approaches to the sharia, particularly
among an alienated, disgruntled laity seeking to find answers to its socio-economic
problems. This implies that state clerics like Majlisi and al-Hurr found open
rationalism, even in the legal arena, harmful to the state and to their own goals
under such conditions. Second, far from showing an aversion to temporal power,
akhbaris coveted state offices and monopolized legal opinions for some time. Third,
akhbarism of the state clerics was in no way absolute or exhaustive. On a practical
level, it limited clerical competition to a few at the top, and denied other social strata
the power to use ijtihad to advance new and diverse legal positions. Specialized legal
and doctrinal works preserved links between traditionism and a restricted form of
rationalism. The fact that Majlisi took a middle ground between akhbarism and usulism
illustrates how top-ranking ulama permitted a measure of reasoning, however limited,
within their ranks.95 It was inevitable for Majlisi to achieve his goals as a state cleric
without utilizing conditional reasoning. In retrospect, one needs to realize the inter-
dependence and dialectical relationship rather than the absolute contradiction
between rationalism and traditionism during different historical phases.96
The multifaceted forms of exchange between the young Shiite dynasty and the
Sunnite populations were defined by new historical realities. Renewed interest in
conversion from Sunnism to Shiism in remote provinces of the empire, hoped to
weaken threats to the state from the peripheries, and to rally Persians around a
common cause. High-ranking ulama found renewed interest in Shiite-Sunnite
polemics and expounded the central doctrines of Twelver Shiism in several works.
Al-Hurr argued that public cursing was permissible when directed against
committers of grave sins (kabair). As for those who committed venial sins (saghair),
cursing them carried a further element, namely an accusation of blasphemy (makfira).
Al-Hurr intended to devote a long work on cursing on the basis of both Sunnite
and Shiite traditions but felt that al-Karaki had already established the licitness
of cursing, thus quenching the curiosity of the seeker.97
On Tobacco
Persian sources expressed familiarity with tobacco-smoking early during the establish-
ment of the Safavid Empire.101 It gained popularity, however, and had found wide
circulation by the time of Shah Abbas, although he thought it was no better than
horse dung and tried hard to root it out.102 All in vain; tobacco found its way into the
homes of Persian notables, courtiers, merchants and craftsmen alike and continued
to spread throughout the time of Shah Abbas II. Persians smoked tobacco, and the
people of quality have their Pipe or Callion always carryd before them by a Servant
on Horse-back; and they often stop by the way to smoak, and sometimes smoak as
they ride.103 Smoking also found its way to the religious seminaries for both Tutor
and Pupil very hard at their Studies, and both of them with Pipes in the Mouths.
Some Persians used to break their fasts during Ramadan by first smoking tobacco.
During the reign of Shah Suleiman, the question of the legality of smoking (tutun)
surfaced among the ulama and seemed closely connected with the Shahs inquiries
and the courts position. Mulla Khalil Qazvini did not hesitate to endorse the total
prohibition of tobacco.104 Strict traditionists (akhbari) at the time of al-Hurr prohibited
it.105 Al-Hurr, however, took a different stand. He recollected that at one time the
noblest king of the world, Shah Safi, inquired about the reasons for al-Hurrs
abstinence from drinking coffee and smoking tobacco. Al-Hurr intentionally
avoided discussing legal matters for which there were no clear clues. As such, he
answered the Shah that tobacco and coffee did not appeal to his taste.106 Unsatisfied
with the answer, the Shah confronted him and inquired whether he found
jurisdiction on both items problematic or whether he would take the course of
caution (ihtiyat) by refraining from them. Clearly, the Shah seemed well informed
about the legal discussions surrounding coffee and tobacco. Al-Hurr admitted that
he was acting out of caution and added that he would neither declare tobacco and
coffee licit nor prohibit them due to the fact that they did not exist at the time of the
Prophet and the Imams and as such there is no specific account or text clarifying
their legal status. Al-Hurr further noted that since legal opinions around tobacco
and coffee were controversial, caution is the preferred course of action.
134 Converting Persia
was performing his prayers one day at the tomb of the mystic Baba Rokn al-
Din Esfahani, when he heard a voice from the grave addressing him as follows:
What is the meaning of all this negligence? Now is the time for vigilance. The
speaker gave his name and genealogy and revealed some mysteries, but the
The Rediscovery of Traditions and the Shifting Normative 135
shaikh did not repeat them publicly and said nothing about the remarks made
by the voice from the tomb except those concerning negligence and the need
for vigilance. After the shaikhs death, however, one of his devotees who had
been a confidant of the shaikh divulged something of these mysteries.115
Bahai found his mastery of the sharia insufficient, and sought Sufi forms of
knowledge. One also learns that Bahais philosophical and mystical inclinations
forced him at times to overlook legal prohibitions against music. One day during
his stay in Herat, Bahai saw a group of people gathered around a blind man carry-
ing a stringed musical instrument (rabab). When Bahai inquired about the reason
for this gathering he learnt that the blind man recited poetry lines that disclosed
the state of being of the person who comes close to him. Bahai retorted in denial:
I intend to break his rabab and prevent him from profiting from it. But if he
were to recite some poetry that expressed the reality of my inner self, I will
let him free.116
When Bahai came closer to the blind man, the latter screamed and pointed at
Bahai, saying:
Bahai reacted strongly to these verses, being beset by a strange state. Late
seventeenth-century CE scholars appropriated such mystical experiences professed
by jurists like Bahai and argued that mysticism does not violate Shiite teachings
and that it agreed with the spirit of the sharia.118
The political instability and the deterioration in the social and economic bases of
Safavid society paved the way for unorthodoxy and wider, more potent forms of
popular Sufism attested in the outburst of treatises on Sufism and music during this
period.119 The challenge to the jurists authority surfaced as much in the anti-clerical
literature as in the statements of Ali al-Shahidi, Majlisi and al-Jazairi, as I explained
in Chapter 4. Indeed, the Imamate doctrine of the Mahdi, in its core, entertains mess-
ianism, which could be used by disenchanted social sectors and lower social classes
to protest against formal, state embellished Shiism. Zarrinkoob asserted that the
defamation of the Sufis, reflected for instance in Majlisis Ayn al-Hayat, is intended
as a warning for the layperson in order to dissuade him/her from adhering to the
more radical features of Sufism. Majlisis attempt to promote the image of the jurist
attested further to the increasing relevance of mysticism for the populace. He
explained that, unlike the layperson, a learned jurist could sift and tackle Sufi tenets
adequately.120 In Jawahir al-Uqul, Majlisi used an allegorical structure similar to Gorbeh
136 Converting Persia
va Mush to enumerate the shortcomings of both jurists and Sufis, indirectly admitting
their comparable weight, and competition over social power.121
Meanwhile, a number of Sufi groups selected and appropriated features of legal-
istic Shiism. Descendents of the lineage-based Sufi orders like the Nimatullahiyya,
Zarrinkoob noted, turned away from philosophy and took up the legal sciences
while others became mujtahids and shuyukh al-Islam.122 Clerical rejection of popular
Sufism was directed against the non-lineage Sufis who encouraged their followers
to challenge the orthodoxy upheld by the state and its religious elite. The jurists
received with great alarm the Sufi concepts of the Pole (qutb) and seat of deputyship
(maqam-i vilayat), after the widespread popularity of Ibn Arabis works.123 The idea
that Sufi Poles could open the door to deputyship or agency (vilayat) caused a
major fissure in the formal Shiite dogma. It entailed that the deputy holder (sahib-
i vilayat), who was none but the Imam of the Age, would control the conditions of
the deputyship and the Occultation. Subsequently, the jurists, as the guides for the
Imam of the age, would become dispensable and replaceable.
The revival of attacks against the Qalandars, in the late Safavid period, are
noteworthy, for they underscore the interconnection among economic dispossession,
vagrancy, anti-Safavid political rebellion and, above all, Sufism-dervishism.124 Al-
Jazairi expressed great disdain for the Sufis, but he devoted special attention to
the Qalandars. It is difficult to ascertain what particular historical incidents
motivated al-Jazairis anti-Qalandar statements, but it is certain that the Qalandars
continued to gain momentum until the seventeenth century CE. Al-Jazairi likened
the world to a human organism, and compared the kings to a mans head and the
ulama to his heart. In this order, the Qalandars were analogous to a mans pubic
and armpit hair because they have no function in the body. It is harmful and must
be plucked out in the same way, as the Qalandars need to be uprooted from society.125
Al-Jazairi dramatized the Qalandars evil ways and found their disdain for
religious rituals, particularly prayer, most reprehensible.
By the end of Safavid rule, little of the archetypal austerity, karamat (charismata,
miracles) and spiritual excellence remained exclusive to the Sufi tradition. The
popular literature ranging from anecdotes and stories to the powerfully
penetrating tone of the Persian rubaiyyat promoted new discourses on Sufis and
mujtahids. 126 In Qisas al-Ulama, for instance, numerous biographical re-
presentations of jurists delineate their pietistic-karamat powers. 127 Once the
exclusive holding of the Sufis, charismata was acquired by jurists who, like their
Sufi counterparts, evolved into self-sacrificing murids.128 From that time on, the
populace bestowed on many jurists, in their murid-like posture, extraordinary
miracles, the foretelling of dreams and the honor of receiving visitations from
the Hidden Imam. This new aura surrounding jurists is vivid in Tuhfat al-Akhyar
by Mawla Muhammad Tahir Qummi. Based on one tradition, Qummi proclaimed
that on the Day of Judgment, when the Prophet weighs the ink of the ulama with
the blood of martyrs, the ink will be given more value.129 Zarrinkoob accurately
showed that the jurist, while striving to uproot popular Sufism, had inadvertently
The Rediscovery of Traditions and the Shifting Normative 137
claimed a form of maqam-i irshad (spiritual guidance) as a Pole. A proverb reflected
the jurists newly tapped sources of power:
The worshipper has not only been relegated to a lower rank but has become the
antithesis of a religious scholar. Guidance and redemption passes through the
agency of jurists, the interpreters of the law.
charismata, who, like their Sufi counterparts, turned into self-sacrificing murids. The
populace bestowed on jurists, in their murid-like role, the performance of miracles,
the foretelling of dreams, and made them recipients of visitations from the Hidden
Imam. This dynamic and complex exchange between the ulama and the Sufis, partly
illuminated by Zarrinkoob, calls for a nuanced assessment of the changing character
and boundaries of each of Sufism and clerical Shiism and an analysis of the social
process shaping their relationship.132 We need to discuss multiple forms of Sufism as
well as clerical Shiism within distinct historical contexts.
Traditionist scholars for the most part upheld the obligatory observance of Friday
prayer but did not base such obligation on the nature of the state or its historical
conditions in any shape or form. It was a largely an ahistorical, text-bound, non-
interpretive (for it is impossible to rule on any matter without a measure of
interpretation) adherence to the words of the Quran and the hadith. Somehow, this
de-linking between temporal authority and Friday prayer may have made it easier
for Persians to accept the observance of Friday prayer. But, practically, such an
observance hoped to strengthen the clerical-bureaucratic establishment, which
serviced the state. Even though state clerics like Majlisi and al-Hurr al-Amili
encouraged the public to adhere to a limited set of socio-religious practices based on
the traditions, they could not avoid using a measure of reasoning, however limited,
to arrive at legal rulings. Majlisi, for instance, accepted the role of reason, Shiite
consensus and the scriptures simultaneously as a basis for forming a legal opinion,
thus taking a middle ground between rationalism and traditionism. Apparently, many
Safavid traditionists admitted some forms of reasoning in particular legal fields and
only the few prohibited the use of ijtihad completely, as was the position of Muhammad
Amin Astarabadi. Moreover, in practice, traditionists and rationalists differed little
in their relationship to the Safavid temporal rulers.
Sufi-bent scholars like mujtahids favored the prohibition of Friday prayer, albeit
from distinct theological and legal angles. The Sufis rejected the theocratic claims
of the Safavids, for they either upheld ideal Imamate rule or refused to forfeit
messianic expectations, which derailed the existing historical trajectory. The elite
articulated these views as well as lower-class constituencies, whose accounts and
experiences were suppressed and only indirectly presented in Safavid chronicles.
The mujtahids as rationalists found in ijtihad a source of empowerment against the
clerical elites emphasis on unquestioned adherence to one mold, that of the
traditions. They underscored their rejection of the Safavids and their religious
servicemen by ruling that the necessary conditions for observing Friday prayer
were absent. Marginalized elite members and disgruntled social sectors seemed to
have embraced this prohibition by the end of the Safavid era. The prohibition was
a theological expression of the eroding legitimacy of the state and its ideological
resources. By the time of Shah Tahmasb II (11351144AH/17221732CE), the
opposition to the convening of Friday prayer had spread to the ranks of conventional
jurists like Ali Naqi Kamarahi, the shaykh al-Islam of Shiraz and later Isfahan, and
Agha Ibrahim al-Mashhadi (d. 1148AH/1735CE), the shaykh al-Islam of Mashhad.133
Conclusion
T HE YOUNG SAFAVID EMPIRE needed prestigious clerics who could strengthen its
foundations by promoting a standard urban system of Shiite worship and a
cohesive religious outlook based on the sharia. Neither the Qizilbash, who adhered
to folk heterodox Shiism, nor the erudite Persian notables, who had a general
Sunnite training, were capable of providing the Safavid Empire with a collective
social consciousness congenial to empire-building and state legitimacy. The
founders of the Safavid Empire sought to transform their deistic rule from a
communal Shiism to a state-operated Shiism at a time when several Arab
theologians from Jabal Amil, along with their families, were emigrating from
Ottoman Syria to Iraq, Mecca, India and Persia. A number of historical factors
motivated this emigration of a surplus of jurists who could not find a professional
outlet for their expertise, first due to the decrease in opportunities within the
Ottoman learning system and, second, due to their limited ability to implement
and formally spread their Shiite legal rulings in Amili villages and towns, which
abided by the Ottomans Sunnite religious instructions and legal practices. In
addition, a few Amili scholars who were actively professing and implementing
ijtihad, came under close scrutiny and at least one eminent scholar, al-Shahid al-
Thani, was killed by an Ottoman official. The Safavids clearly realized how well
they could benefit from the use of ijtihadi rationalism to shape their dynastic
authority and project an image of Islamic authenticity to their Ottoman foes to the
west. Of all the Safavid Shahs, Tahmasb placed the greatest trust in the Amilis in
general and in the Karaki family of Jabal Amil in particular. Ali al-Karaki, one of
the earliest emigrants to Iraq, actively and persistently courted the Safavids, hoping
to shape Safavid religious policies and fully implement Jafari law as the basis of
140 Converting Persia
the new Shiite state. Shah Tahmasbs reign, however, brought tensions within the
clerical community surrounding, first, clerical claims to supreme religious
knowledge, second, designating the jurist as the Imams deputy and, third, the
degree of legitimacy which the clerical elite should extend to the Safavid Empire.
Several Persian aristocrats resented al-Karakis encroachment on their political
power while their rivals, the Qizilbash elite, supported him. By the end of the
sixteenth century CE, a number of Amili mujtahids had joined the landed aristocracy,
attained upper-class distinctions and tapped popular sources of social power.
The Amilis promoted anti-Sunnite rituals for practical political reasons, namely
to popularize Shiite creed, create collective religious emblems and advocate
emotional immersion in experiences distinguished as Shiite. In a way, such an
approach aimed to de-normalize the once fluid exchange among different facets of
Shiism and Sunnism in favor of a self-conscious demarcation of things Shiite as
focal sources of identity for the laity. The context of Ottoman-Safavid and Uzbek-
Safavid struggles and the need for religious legitimacy supplied the justification
for such rituals.
Encouraged by his teacher, al-Shahid al-Thani, Husayn b. Abd al-Samad left
Jabal Amil for Iraq, finally settling in Persia. With an eagerness to bring Persian
society under the fold of Shiite legalism, Husayn started actively to spread and
propagate Shiite traditions. Al-Karaki had argued that observing Friday prayer
was optional for Shiite Muslims and must only be held during the presence of a
jurist who functions as the deputy of the Imam. The social and political importance
which al-Karaki gave to such a jurist created much resistance among the Persian
bureaucrats against the observance of Friday prayer, which was halted after his
death. Husayn, however, convinced Shah Tahmasb that holding Friday prayer was
a powerful weapon against the Ottomans and the Uzbeks, because it embellished
the Islamic character of his empire. Husayn also tried to disentangle ijtihad from
court politics, warning against accepting the opinions of al-Karaki and his grandson,
Mir Sayyid Husayn, each of whom took on the title seal of mujtahid. He held
steadfastly to the idea of a pluralism of authority, reflected in the rationalist renewal
of legal rulings and a rejection of the opinions of dead mujtahids. Indirectly, Husayns
emphasis on the importance of diversity and renewal of Shiite law revalidated the
position of the Persian notables. More importantly, however, Husayn resisted
attempts by his sovereign to control questions of clerical leadership or to designate
a seal. Ultimately, he aimed to bring a measure of autonomy to the jurists and
high-ranking ulama during their association with temporal rulers.
During the reign of Shah Tahmasb and Shah Ismail II, influential Qizilbash
emirs welcomed the ascendancy of Amili clerics to the religious posts in order to
undermine their rivals, the Persian sadrs and bureaucrats. A few aligned themselves
with Amili legalism, initially as a counterweight to the Persian notables and to
ensure state stability and uniformity which they, as members of the ruling elite,
were interested in achieving. After the establishment of the Safavid Empire, the
Qizilbash tribes, though emerging from a heterodox, Sufi form of folk Shiism,
Conclusion 141
began to nurture diverse, often contradictory approaches to Shiism on the basis of
social class and political interest. In other words, even though the pastoralist and
settled Qizilbash populace continued to promote local Sufi and heterodox leanings,
members of the military elite, which functioned as an organ of the state, became
more receptive to a legally regulated Shiism. Their support of the early Amili
clerics attests to such a development. On their part, the Amili ulama were forced
to address popular features of Twelver Shiism in Persian society and were inevitably
drawn to co-opt a number of its features in order to refit Shiite legalism to the
needs of the lower classes as well as the state.
The emigr Amili theologians underwent significant socio-political and economic
transformation in their new home in Persia. The opportunity to wed Shiism to the
Safavid Empire rendered almost pointless for them the long-established idea of a
total suspension of temporal authority in the absence of the Mahdi. The Amilis
promulgated legal and doctrinal points to serve three worldly purposes: to
legitimize the states authority over the Shahs divine rights; to provide ideological
Shiite links that validated the concepts of state and society; and to promote the
efficacy and autonomy of the clerical elite. On its part, Amili legalism shaped the
character of Persian society inasmuch as this society was ready, historically speaking,
to undergo socio-political transformation.
Under Shah Abbas, greater efforts were made to promote a rigorous, wide-
based Shiite orthopraxy that could be internalized by diverse social classes. The
renewal and expansion of Islamic law was a function of social processes, weaving
in economic and socio-political elements. The increase in the interpretive capacity
of the law, mainly through ijtihad and the creative re-production and refutation of
fatwas, was concomitant with changes in polity and social life. Intensified military
campaigns with the Ottomans, centralization and depopulation policies, socio-
economic and geographical displacement and forced conversion to Islam all
transformed the doctrinal and legal landscape. Meanwhile, the severity of Shah
Abbas depopulation and centralization policies drained the energy of the peasants,
whose discontent was periodically balanced by tax exemptions, which kept fully
fledged rebellions at bay. The treatise of Shaykh Lutfullah al-Maysi on spiritual
seclusion became an occasion for Lutfullah to establish not only his credibility as a
court mujtahid, but also the Shahs authority in the new public space, Meydan-i
Naqsh-i Jahan in Isfahan. The debate over the congregational qualities of Lutfullahs
mosque or their lack thereof, brought to the fore the social struggle between the
old Isfahani business elite of Meydan-i Harun-i Vilayat and the Shahs rivaling
and authoritative new business center, the Meydan. The struggle also took clear
class dimensions when the lower sectors came to be more closely associated with
the old center and its congregational mosque.
High-ranking theologians like Bahai and Mir Damad expressed a keen interest
in scientific and philosophical thought and appropriated traditions of high Sufism.
Shah Abbas welcomed this individualized and elitist eclecticism, particularly
because it promoted outward conformity to the political order and de-legitimized
142 Converting Persia
popular heterodoxy and dissent. The mujtahids, though seeking a greater autonomy
from the state, honored their alliance with the temporal rulers, fitting a sharia-
enlightened order to Safavid sovereignty. As such, clerical Shiism, advocated by
the migr Amilis, found eager followers not only among a learned Persian elite,
but also among the Safavid populace. Major sectors of Persian society consented to
and appropriated official Shiism. The Amilis surmised critical methods as to how
the foundational Shiite texts could be relevant to Persians of different walks of
life. Persianization underwrote the emergence of a highly competent and eclectic
group of Persian ulama, who carried the legal discourses to a more public domain.
Persianization was similarly evident in the politics of those who contested and
questioned the legal authority of Amili scholars. For instance, a few decades after
al-Karakis ban on the much-cherished folk epic, Abu Muslim Nameh, several Persian
ulama took up the struggle against the Abu Muslimiyya devotees. Their attacks on
the epic took a distinctively Persian character and became an internal social affair.
The high level of abstraction found in the specialized diction and conceptual
molds of the rational sciences can distort their immediate link to societal change
and political reality. Notwithstanding, Mir Damads concerns with metaphysical
questions, particularly Gods relationship to the world, were ostensibly a statement
about human knowledge, political conformity and the ideological tensions in the
imperial order of Shah Abbas. These tensions surfaced in Mir Damads treatment
of the relationship among the shifting frameworks of eternity, perpetuity, and time.
The changing context of these cosmogonic-ontological realms may suggest that a
particular government can fulfill the will of the Divine or become a temporary
negation of it. Under Shah Abbas, the state seemed capable of harnessing multiple
economic sources, and better situated than its predecessors to dominate
ideologically diverse groups within the ruling elite. This necessitated greater levels
of separation between ruler and ruled and the rise of multifold sources for Safavid
legitimacy and power. Mir Damad recast Suhravardian views in ways congruent
with his social position as a member of a clerical aristocracy allied to the state, yet
struggling to achieve autonomy. This autonomy was tied to the notion of an
ahistorical Imamate sovereignty for which mujtahids like Mir Damad act as witnesses
and legatees. Mir Damad did not seek to reconcile philosophy and the sharia. Rather,
he prevented philosophical rationalism or mystical intuition, which he utilized,
from being judged clerically and vice versa. The concept of huduth dahri avoided a
clash between clerical scripturalism on the one hand, and philosophical/intuitive
knowledge of the Divine and the world on the other. As such, Mir Damad compart-
mentalized philosophy and sharia through the very notion of perpetuity, with
each realm being bound by its own set of laws. He validated his position as a state
cleric when he noted that the fear of divine retribution was necessary to circumvent
the commitment of abominable acts, that is, acts held to be abominable by the
sharia experts and the disciplining state.1 True human freedom is unattainable, yet
one is still rewarded or punished for particular freely willed acts even if God is the
ultimate cause of such acts.
Conclusion 143
During the mid seventeenth century CE, a restructuring of relations between the
state, the central bureaucracy and provincial-military elites, transferred part of the
monarchs authority to bureaucratic organs of the state. After a dramatic decrease in
frontier wars with the Ottomans, Shah Safi increased crown estates at the expense of
the provinces. Thus, much wealth was diverted away from provinces like Fars,
Qazvin, Gilan, Mazandaran, Yazd, Kirman and parts of Azerbaijan and Khurasan.
Consequently, provincial military elite and their staff suffered a blow to their resources
while the political power of ministers in general and the grand vizier in particular,
increased. Unlike Shah Abbas, Shah Safi and Shah Abbas II failed to implement
systematic checks against elite monopolies or provide occasional relief to the lower
classes in the form of tax exemptions. At the same time, greater economic grievances
surfaced, some precipitated earlier at the time of Shah Abbas, which led to sporadic
revolts against the Safavids. These developments brought greater ideological
complexity and diversity to the clerical community including the court ulama. The
era of Shah Abbas brings an end to Amilism as a scholastic tradition exceptionally
useful to the Safavid monarchs and Persian society at large. Already, with Bahai
and Mir Dimad, it was no longer possible to locate their intellectual and legal works
exclusively within this tradition. Persianization was evident not only in the
eclecticism of jurists like Bahai and Mir Damad, but also in the educated and lay
adoption of the legal voice of Islam among Persians.
As the impetus for conversion to Shiism weakened in comparison to the sixteenth
and early seventeenth centuries CE and Sunnite-Shiite polemical confrontations
between Safavid and Ottoman scholars lost much steam, the need for the old clerical
elite of rationalists (mujtahids) and its expansive legal jurisdiction waned.
Furthermore, the increasing power of this elite alongside the tendency of the
disgruntled lower classes to rally around open critics of the Safavids, as was the
case with Mulla Qasim, made Shah Safi and Shah Abbas II turn against this elite
and its ijtihadi practices. These ijtihadi practices had permitted, at least in theory,
the ongoing critique and refutation of established practices or beliefs on the basis
of rationalist legal approbation among court jurists as well as low-ranking mullahs,
who gave voice to popular dissent. The Shahs cut off the mujtahids economic grants
and replaced them with another branch of the Persian clerical elite, which promoted
traditionism (akhbarism). The Shahs hoped traditionism would limit the challenges
to their weakened monarchical rule. When Sufi-bent and philosophically bent
scholars joined the clerical ranks and were welcomed by the Safavid court,
conventional jurists bemoaned the monarchs retreat from the sacred Shiite law of
his ancestors. Behind their attacks on the Safavid moral laxity and hypocrisy lurked
the mujtahids anger at being displaced by such scholarly hybrids. I have argued
that the monarchs encouragement of Sufi and philosophical trends was not part of
a policy of anticlericalism, as many scholars of Safavid Persia purported. Most of
these hybrids were well versed in juridical Islam and were adept exponents of the
sharia. This may seem contradictory but, in reality, it is not. Shah Safi and Shah
Abbas II and some of their ministers also encouraged conservative and elitist
144 Converting Persia
versions of philosophical and Sufi inquiries, which hardly challenged the ruling
structure. In addition, it is quite possible to entertain contradictory strings of
intellectual activity during periods of historical transition. This transition brought
to the fore distinct forms of economic and social conflicts . At the state level, these
conflicts signaled among other things, a shift in class boundaries between old and
new ruling elites, intra and inter-elite struggles and a diffusion of power away
from the Shah. One witnesses sharper ideological rifts among the clerical-
administrative courtiers, the landed aristocracy and the military. Unfortunately,
the scarcity of sources allows one limited access to the nature of the economic
dislocations and social conflicts experienced by the lower classes. Evidently,
elements from the top and from below converged in opposing the mujtahids, albeit
from diverse political and economic motives. This, however, does not lead to the
demise of the conventional jurists. Persians continued to express a mixed adherence
to and popular denunciation of mujtahids and mullahs of different legal persuasions.
The espousal of traditionist thought by the imperial power structure, and its
popularity among lower social echelons is evident in Safavid chronicles as well as
in the ulamas writings, including those of Husayn b. Shihab al-Din al-Karaki and
Ali al-Shahidi, Muhammad Baqir Majlisi, and al-Hurr al-Amili. This picture
challenges a number of prevalent assumptions in the secondary literature on
akhbarism and usulism. First, that they were independent and separate legal schools
before the sixteenth century, second, that they entertained fixed legal postulates
and uniform political approaches to government, and third, that each one of them
described a monolithic group of clerics with no internal differentiation or variation.
I emphasize instead the interdependence of traditionist and rationalist elements in
Shiite legal thought and practices even among Safavid scholars of the mid and late
seventeenth century. There are a few extreme, self-conscious, and exclusionary
proselytes of traditionism around this time but within usuli and akhbari circles there
was a range of approaches to ijtihad, Friday prayer, and Shiite government. These
approaches also shift over time and confirm the dialectical nature of the akhbari-
usuli enterprise. Moreover, Astarabadis Safinat al-Najat does not automatically lead
to the rise of a full-fledged traditionist school among Safavid scholars. Rather, socio-
economic forces central to seventeenth century Safavid society discussed above,
gave voice to traditionism as a resistance to interpretive rationalism of the propertied
court mujtahids and their staff of low-ranking mullahs.1
Clerical Islam was not constantly antithetical or mutually exclusive to Sufi and
philosophical thought. Sufi-bent and philosophically bent scholars from the Persian
nobility co-opted the clerical discourse in order to replace the old rationalist jurists
and achieve an authorizing stance. These hybrids challenged the legalists model
of normative Shiism and allowed elitist and individualized forms of Sufism and
philosophy as the basis for religious knowledge. Intra-elite and inter-elite struggles
were framed in theological polemics between jurists and Sufi bent scholars over
Sufism and congregational prayer. This was not simply a clerical reaction to popular
Sufism but also to clerically espoused Sufism. It was also a contest over which
Conclusion 145
group will decide the doctrinal and behavioral patterns of Shiism in Persia. Mean-
while, as Abdol-Hosein Zarrinkoob suggested in several studies, the jurists and
the Sufis were constantly influencing each other and evolving into distinct and
multifaceted subgroups. With the states support of the jurists, the struggle between
the latter and the Sufis culminated in a displacement of the Sufis, at least formally,
and the transfer of their popular aura to the jurists in a dialectic of opposition and
co-optation.
Except for the more moderate Sufis like Muhammad Taqi Majlisi and Muhsin
al-Fayd, no Sufi-bent scholar supported the obligatory observation of Friday prayer.
This position posed a challenge to the theocratic claims of the Safavids, for it reflected
a persistence of messianic expectations, which reject a final ending to the trajectory
of Shiite association with temporal authority. It is noteworthy that rationalist jurists
like the Sufi-bent ulama called for the prohibition of Friday prayer, albeit from a
distinct theological and political position, namely to question Shah Safi and Shah
Abbas IIs adherence to proper Imamate practices and express their doubts about
the qualifications of the religious servicemen who replaced them at court, namely
the traditionists, Sufi-bent and philosophically bent scholars. Marginalized elites
and disgruntled social sectors gave theological expression to their eroding belief
in the efficacy and legitimacy of the Safavid state towards the end of the seventeenth
century CE. The philosophically bent ulama for the most part declared Friday prayer
obligatory, lending much support to Safavid monarchical rule against its critics,
the conventional rationalist jurists.
Diffuse sources of resistance to the Safavids and their puritanical clerical-
bureaucratic elite emerged from spontaneous popular rebellions and urban Sufi
movements in the late seventeenth century CE. To salvage its authority and renew
itself, the Safavid state advocated an anti-rationalist adherence to foundational
Shiite traditions and an emotive use of collective Shiite ritual expanding the field
of veneration of the Imams. Ultimately, the late Safavids realized that the
traditionists, much like their rationalist co-legalists, advocated the jurists political
involvement in society and government. The ulamas ideas and modifications
shaped the social order in a manner unpredicted by the Shahs. Against increasing
popular resistance, traditionist scholars who dominated this era called for the
obligatory observance of Friday prayer, not as an enactment of the Shahs
sovereignty but as an imitative adherence to the scriptures. Majlisi used traditionism
to strengthen the Safavids image as true Imamis and the cleric as the guiding force
for the masses. The ruling groups supporting traditionism hoped to prevent
dissenting groups, particularly the lower social strata, from using ijtihad as a tool
to advance views threatening to it. Eschatological literature and Imamate Occultism
communicated largely in Persian rather than Arabic found an eager public, and
flourished under the support of high-ranking clerics like Muhammad Baqir Majlisi.
Meanwhile, Sufi notions of austerity, religious devotions, pirhood and spiritual
guidance found their way into clerical literature.
Appendices
Khayr al-Din b. Abd al-Razzaq b. Makki b. Abd al-Razzaq b. Ali b. al-Shahid al-
Shirazi al-Amili (alive in 1007AH/1598CE)
Ali b. Ahmad al-Nabati (alive in 1012AH/1603CE)
* Taj al-Din b.Ali b. Ahmad al-Husayni (alive 1019AH/1610CE)
Abu Turab, Abd al-Samad, brother of Shaykh-i Bahai (d. 1020AH/1611CE)
Ahmad b. Ahmad b. Yusuf al-Sawadi al-Inathi (alive in 1021AH/1612CE)
Jamal al-Din Yusuf b. Ahmad b. Nimatullah b. Khatun (alive before 1030AH/
1621CE)
Radiyy al-Din b. Ali b. Ahmad b. Muhammad b. Abi Jami al-Jubai (alive before
1039AH/1629CE)
Fakhr al-Din b. Ali b. Ahmad b. Muhammad b. Abi Jami (d. early 11thAH/17thCE)
Hasan b. Ali b. Ahmad b. Abi Jami al-Amili (d. early 11thAH/17thCE)
Muhammad b. al-Hasan b. Zayn al-Din (d. 1030AH/1620CE)4
Husayn b. Ali b. Muhammad al-Hurr al-Amili (d. after 1030AH/1620CE)
Shaykh-i Bahai (d. 1030AH/1621CE)
Lutfullah al-Maysi (d. 1032AH/162223CE)
Mir Damad (d. 1041AH/16312CE)
Al-Husayni al-Amili al-Isfahani, brother-in-law of Mir Damad
Ali b. Sabih al-Amili (contemporary of Bahai)
Jafar b. Lutfullah b. Abd al-Karim b. Ibrahim b. Ali b. Abd al-Ali al-Maysi
(contemporary of Bahai)
Jawad b. Sad b. Jawad al-Amili (contemporary of Bahai)
Najib al-Din, Ali b. Muhammad al-Jubai al-Amili (contemporary of Bahai)5
Husayn b. Haydar b. Ali b. Qamar (alive in 1038AH/1628CE)
Muhammad b. Ahmad b. Khwatun al-Amili (d. after 1039AH/1629CE)
Ali b. Khwatun al-Amili (alive mid 11thAH/17thCE)
Jawad b. Ali al-Karaki (alive mid 11thAH/17thCE)
Nur al-Din Ali b. Jafar b. Lutfullah b. Abd al-Karim al-Maysi (alive in 1044AH/
1634CE)
Husayn b. al-Hasan al-Mashghari (alive in 1048AH/1638CE)
Muhammad al-Jawad b. Ali al-Jamii (d. 1050AH/1640CE)
Husayn b. Abil-Hasan al-Husayni al-Amili (alive in 1050AH/1640CE)
Mirza Habibullah b. al-Husayn b. al-Hasan b. Jafar al-Araji al-Amili (alive in
1050AH/1640CE)
Ahmad b. al-Husayn al-Musawi, brother of Mirza Habibullah
Muhammad b. al-Husayn b. al-Hasan alAmili, brother of Mirza Habibullah
Husayn b. Abd al-Samad, paternal nephew of Bahai
Nuri b. Abd al-Samad, paternal nephew of Bahai
Zayn al-Abidin al-Husayni, maternal nephew of Bahai
Ahmad b. Zayn al-Abidin al-Alawi (d. 1054AH/1644CE)
Husayn b. Ali b. Muhammad b. al-Hasan b. Zayn al-Din, son of al-Shahid al-
Thani (d. 1056AH/1646CE)
Badr al-Din Hasan al-Amili al-Mudarris (alive in 1056AH/1646CE)
Appendix I 149
Muhammad b. Ali b. Khwatun al-Amili al-Tusi (d. 1057AH/1647CE)
Badr al-Din b. Ahmad al-Husayni al-Ansari (alive in 1057AH/1647CE)
Muhammad b. Ali b. Muhyiddin al-Musawi (alive in 1057AH/1647CE)
Ahmad b. al-Husayn b. Badr al-Din al-Hasan b. Jafar al-Araji al-Karaki (d. before
1060AH/1650CE)
Nur al-Din Ali b. Ali b. Husayn al-Musawi (d. 10618AH/16507CE)
Hasan b. Ali b. Muhammad al-Hurr, the father of Muhammad al-Hurr al-Amili
(d. 1062AH/1652CE)
Zayn al-Din b. Muhammad b. al-Hasan b. Zayn al-Din al-Jubai (d. 1064AH/
1653CE)
Asadullah b. Muhammad Mumin al-Khatuni (alive in 1067AH/1656CE)
Husayn b. Muhammad b. Ali b. Ali b. al-Husayn b. Abil-Hasan al-Musawi al-
Amili al-Jubai (d. 1069AH/1658CE)
Husayn b. Ali b. Khudur al-Furzuli (alive before 1069AH/1658CE)
Nimatullah b. al-Husayn (d. 1069AH/1658CE)
Ahmad b. Ali b. Abd al-Ali al-Maysi (alive in 1073AH/1662CE)
Husayn b. Shihab al-Din al-Karaki (d. 1076AH/1665CE)
Zayn al-Abidin b. al-Hasan b. Ali al-Hurr al-Mashghari, brother of al-Hurr al-
Amili (d. 1078AH/1667CE)
Husayn b. Ali b. Muhammad b. al-Hasan b. Zayn al-Din al-Jubai (d. 1078AH/
1667CE).6
Kamal al-Din or Nizam al-Din al-Harfushi (d. 1080AH/1669CE)
Ibrahim b. Muhammad b. Ali al-Harfushi al-Karaki (d. 1080AH/1669CE)
Mirza Muhammad Mahdi b. Mirza Habibullah al-Karaki (d. 1080AH/1669CE)
Mirza Jafar b. Ibrahim b. Muhammad b. al-Husayn b. al-Hasan al-Karaki (alive
after 1080AH/1669CE)
Husayn b. Badr al-Din b. Najm al-Din al-Araji, father of Mirza Habibullah, (d.
1080AH/166970CE)
Muhammad b. Ali b. Muhammad b. al-Hurr (d. 1081AH/1670CE)
Muhammad b. Muhammad b. Hasan b. Qasim al-Inathi (alive in 1081AH/1670CE)
Ali b. al-Hasan al-Hurr al-Mashghari, brother of al-Hurr al-Amili (d. 1087AH/
1676CE)
Ali b. Zayn al-Din b. Muhammad (alive in 1089AH/1678CE)
Muhammad b. Ali b. Mahmud b. Yusuf al-Mashghari (d. after 1090AH/1679CE)
Mirza Ali al-Rida b. Habibullah al-Araji al-Karaki (d. 1091AH/1680CE)
Muhammad b. Ali b. Musayid al-Husayni (alive in 1091AH/1680CE)
Abd al-Latif b.Ali b. Ahmad b.Abi Jami (alive in 1094AH/1682CE)
Mirza Muhammad Masum b. Muhammad Mahdi b. Habibullah al-Musawi al-
Karaki (d. 1095AH/1683CE)
Hasan b. Ali b. al-Hasan b. Yunus al-Zahiri al-Inathi (d. before 1096AH/1684CE)
Muhammad b. Ali b. al-Aqiq al-Tibnini (d. before 1096AH/1684CE)
Al-Hasan b. Ibrahim b. Ali b. Abd al-Ali al-Maysi (contemporary of al-Hurr)
Abdullah b. Muhammad al-Faqani (alive in 1069AH/1684CE)7
150 Converting Persia
Period: 15001560CE
NAME POSITION CITY
Total: 6 scholars
Period: 15601620CE
NAME POSITION CITY
Total: 11 scholars
Period: 16201680CE
NAME POSITION CITY
Total: 18 scholars
Period: 16801736CE
NAME POSITION CITY
Total: 10 scholars
Total scholars with distinguished posts for the whole Safavid Period: 45
156 Converting Persia
A. Shiite Law
Systematic Legal Works and Commentaries
Bahai (d.1030/1621): Al-Habl al-Matin, Mashriq al-Shamsayn
Muhammad al-Hurr al-Amili or al-Hurr (d. 1104AH/1692CE): Bidayat al-Hidaya,
Hidayat al-Umma ila Ahkam al-Aimma (3 selected volumes of his Wasail al-Shia)
Collections of Fatwas
Al-Karaki: Risala-yi Ahkam (Persian translation of his collection of Fatwas), Usul
al-Din wa Furuih
Husayn b. Abd al-Samad: Fatawa Mutafawwiqa
Bahai: Jami-i Abbasi (Persian, on acts of devotion), Majmuat Fatawa
Lutfullah al-Maysi: Majmuat Fatawa
Mir Damad: Shari al-Najat (Persian, on acts of devotion)
Zayn al-Abidin al-Husayni (alive mid 11thAH/17thCE), maternal nephew of Bahai:
Tatmim al-Jami al-Abbasi
Appendix III 159
Muhammad b. Ali b. Khwatun (d. 1057AH/1647CE): Takmil al-Jami al-
Abbasi, Commentary on Jami-i Abbasi
Quranic Law
Muhammad b. Ali b. Haydar al-Musawi (d. 1139AH/1726CE): Inas sultan al-
Muminin, Ayat al-Ahkam
B. Acts of Devotion
1. General
Al-Karaki: Risala fi al-Bulugh wa Haddih, Risala fi al-Niyya
Husayn al-Mujtahid: Risala fi al-Niyya
160 Converting Persia
2. Comprehensive works
Husayn b. Abd al-Samad: Al-Wajibat al-Malikiyya
Bahai: Al-Ithnaashariyyat
Ritual Purity
1. General
Al-Karaki: Risala fi Tarif al-Tahara, Risala fi Mulaqi al-Shubha al-Mahsura
Abd al-Ali al-Karaki: Commentaries on work of Ali b. Hilal al-Karaki
Bahai: Risala fi al-Tahara
Mir Damad: Al-Taliqat fi al-Tahara
2. On waters
Al-Karaki: Al-Risala al-Kurriyya
Bahai: Al-Kurriyya
3. On ablution
Al-Karaki: Risala fi Wujub al-Tahara
Husayn b. Abd al-Samad: Mash al-Rijlayn or Wujub al-Mash wa Tayinihi wa
Adam Jawaz Ghasl al-Rijlayn
Ali b. Hilal al-Karaki: Kitab al-Tahara
Bahai: Mash al-Rijlayn
4. On the deceased
Husayn al-Mujtahid: Risala fi Istiqbal al-Qibla
5. On impurities
Al-Karaki: Risala fi ma Tanajjas baduhu wa Ishtabaha Mawdi al-Nijasa
Ahmad al-Alawi: Risala fi Nijasat al-Khamr (in refutation of the legal opinions
of Muhammad Amin Astarabadi)
6. On vessels
Husayn al-Mujtahid: Risala fi al-Awani
Prayer
1. General
Al-Karaki: Al-Alfiyya, al-Jafariyya, al-Najmiyya (on dogmatics and prayer),
Maani Afal al-Salat, al-Risala al-Amaliyya fi Fiqh al-Salat al-Yawmiyya
Abd al-Ali al-Karaki: Al-Nizamiyya
Hasan al-Karaki: Risala fi al-Minhaj al-Qawim fi al-Taslim fi al-Salat
Husayn b. Abd al-Samad: Al-Iqd al-Husayni (al-Tahmasbi), al-Masail al-
Salatiyya, Risala fi al-Salat wa al-Iqrar
Bahai: Al-Ithnaashariyya fi al-Salat, Risala Mukhtasara fi Fiqh al-Salat, Risala fi
Qada al-Salat
Badr al-Din al-Ansari: Al-Ithnaashariyya al-Salatiyya
Muhammad b. Abd al-Hasib al-Alawi (d. 1133AH/1720CE or 1145AH/1732CE):
Ghawamid al-Salat
Appendix III 161
2. On the direction of prayer
Al-Karaki: Risala fi al-Qibla, Risala fi Qiblat Khurasan
Husayn b. Abd al-Samad: Tuhfat Ahl al-Iman, Qiblat Iraq al-Ajam wa Khurasan
Abd al-Ali al-Karaki: Risala Latifa fi al-Qibla Umuman wa fi Qiblat Khurasan
Husayn al-Mujtahid: Risala fil-Qibla, Qiblat Khurasan
Bahai: Risala fi Tahqiq Jahat al-Qibla, Jihat al-Qibla, Marifat Qiblat al-Bilad,
Tahqiq Qiblat Iraq Ajam wa Khurasan
Al-Hurr: Risala fi Qiblat al-Iraq wa Khurasan
3. On clothes for prayer
Al-Karaki: Risala fi Qalansuwat al-Harir wa al-Dibaj
Bahai: Al-Haririyya
4. On recitation
Baha al-Din: Risala fi Istihbab al-Sura fi al-Salat, Risala fi Wujub al-Sura bada al-
Hamd
5. On prostration
Al-Karaki: Risala fi Jawaz al-Sujud ala al-Turba al-Husayniyya al-Mashwiyya
Bahai: Risala fi Ahkam Sujud al-Tilawa, Risala fi Sajdat al-Quran wa Ahkamiha
wa Adabiha
6. Friday prayer
Al-Karaki: Risala fi Salat al-Juma
Husayn b. Abd al-Samad: Risala fi Wujub Salat al-Juma
Ali b. Hilal al-Karaki: Risala fi Salat al-Juma
Abd al-Ali al-Karaki: Al-Luma fi Tahqiq Amr Salat al-Juma or Adam Wujub al-
Salat Aynan fi Zaman al-Ghayba
Hasan b.Ali al-Karaki: Al-Bulgha fi Itibar Idhn al-Imam fi Mashruiyyat Salat
al-Juma or Risala fi Ayniyyat Salat al-Juma
Husayn al-Mujtahid: Al-Luma fi Nafi Ayniyyat Salat al-Juma or Al-bulgha fi
Adam Ayniyyat Salat al-Juma
Husayn b. Haydar b. Ali b. Qamar (alive in 1038AH/1628CE): Risala fi al-Salat
Bahai: Risala fi Salat al-Juma
Mir Damad: Risala fi Salat al-Juma
Al-Hurr: Ithbat Wujub Salat al-Juma Aynan
7. On errors in prayer
Al-Karaki: Khalal al-Salat, Risala fi al-Sahu wa al-Shak fi al-Salat
Bahai: Sharh Mushkilat al-Salat, Risala fi Sihhat Salat mima la Tatimmu fi al-Sitr
Wahdihi
8. On travelers prayer
Al-Karaki: Fawaid fi Salat al-Musafir
Bahai: Risala fi al-Takhyir fi al-Mawatin al-Arbaa lil-Musafin fi al-Qisar wal-Itmam
9. On Ziyarat
Ahmad al-Alawi: Risala-yi dar Namaz-i Ziyarat
10. On prayer and residences
Al-Karaki: Maqala fi al-Khuruj an Had al-Tarakhkhus min Mahal al-Iqama
162 Converting Persia
Alms
1. General
Bahai: Risala fi al-Zakat, Risala fi al-Zakat wa Taqdiriha bil-Mathaqil
Al-Hurr: Urjuza fi al-Zakat
Khums
1. General
Zayn al-Din Abu Mansur al-Amili: Jawab Masala fi al-Khums.
Husayn b. Abd al-Samad: Risalat al-Husur wa al-Bawari wa Sahm al-Imam also
known as Risala fi Sarf Sahm al-Imam min al-Khums ila Fuqara al-Sada
Bahai: Al-Ithnaashariyya fi al-Zakat wa al-Khums
2. Specific
Mir Damad: Ithbat al-Siyada li-man Yantasibu ila Hashim Umman
Ahmad al-Alawi: Risala dar Siyadat-i Sharif-i
Fasting
1. General
Al-Karaki: Risala dar Sawm
Bahai: Al-Ithnaashariyya fi al-Sawm, Risala fi al-Sawm
Badr al-Din al-Ansari: Sharh on al-Ithnaashariyya al-Sawmiyya
2. On other topics
Husayn b. Haydar b. Qamar al-Karaki: Ishtirat Sihhat al-Sawm al-Wajib bil-
Ghusl min al-Jinaba
Bahai: Risala fi Takhlil al-Asnan fi Layali Shahr Ramadan also known as Al-Jam
wa al-Tawfiq bayna al-Fatwayayn
Seclusion
Lutfullah al-Maysi: Al-Itikafiyya or Ma al-Hayat wa Safi al-Furat Hajj
Al-Karaki: Risala fi al-Hajj wa al-Umra, Risala fi Manasik al-Hajj followed by
Mulhaq Kafarat al-Hajj
Bahai: Al-Ithnaashariyya fi al-Hajj or Manasik al-Hajj, Risala fi al-Hajj
Zayn al-Abidin b. al-Hasan al-Mashghari: Sharh on Manasik al-Hajj by Bahai,
called Al-Manasik al-Marwiyya fi Sharh al-Ithnaashariyya al-Hajjiyya
Holy War
1. General
Husayn al-Mujtahid: Al-Jihadiyya
2. On booty of war
Muhammad b. al-Hasan al-Amili: Risala fi al-Ard al-Maftuha Anwatan
TRANSACTION
Abul-Hasan al-Sharif b. Tahir al-Futuni (d. 11389AH/1725CE1): Sharh Kitab al-
Matajir based on Kitab Kifayat al-Ahkam by Sabzavari
a. Prohibited business
1. On music
Ali al-Shahidi: Tanbih al-Ghafilin, in refutation of Sabzavaris treatises on ghina
2. On tax revenue and governments gifts
Al-Karaki: Qatiat al-Lajaj fi Tahqiq Hill al-Kharaj
Husayn b. Abd al-Samad: Risala fi Hilliyyat Jawaiz al-Sultan
b. Rights of cancellation
1. Specific
Al-Karaki: Risala fi Tahqiq al-Bay bi-Shart al-Khayar
Endowment
1. Specific
Ahmad al-Alawi: Bayan al-Haqq wa Tibyan al-Sidq
Marriage
1. General
Al-Karaki: Risala fi al-Nikah wa al-Muta, Al-Nikahiyya (on Tazwij al-Nabi li-
Zaynab wa Ruqayya min Uthman)1
Bahai: Ahkam al-Zawj wa al-Zawja
Husayn b. al-Hasan al-Mashghari al-Amili (alive in 1048AH/1638CE): Al-Nikah
2. On legal guardians
Lutfullah al-Maysi: Al-Wathaiq wa al-Iqal lil-Ashwa fi al-Layla al-Zalma bi-Qiwa
al-Hibal or Risala fi Faskh al-Zawja al-Saghira Nikah al-Wali Laha bada Kibariha
164 Converting Persia
3. On legal obstacles
Al-Karaki: Shurut al-Nikah
4. On foster relationship
Al-Karaki: Risala fi al-Rida
Husayn b. Abd al-Samad: Risala fi al-Rida
Mir Damad: Dawabit al-Rida, al-Risala al-Ridaiyya
Al-Hurr: al-Risala al-Ridaiyya, Manzuma fi al-Rida
Abul-Hasan al-Futuni: Risala fi al-Rida
5. On temporary marriage
Al-Karaki: Faida fi al-Muta
6. On nuptial gifts
Bahai: Risala fi Jawaz Man al-Zawja Nafsaha an al-Zawj Hatta Taqbid al-Mahr,
Maqala fi Imtina al-Zawja an Mutlaq al-Istimta la Khusus al-Wat Qabla Qabd
Tamam al-Mahr (which may be the same as the first one)
Mir Damad: Jawab al-Sual an Tanazu al-Zawjayn fi Qadr al-Mahr wa Tasdiq
Wakil al-Zawja lil-Zawj
d. On unilateral obligations
1. Divorce
Al-Karaki: Risala fi Talaq al-Ghaib
2. Confession
Husayn b. Abd al-Samad: Risala fi al-Iqrar
e. On rules
Hunting and slaughtering
1. Specific
Husayn al-Mujtahid: Risala fi Hukm Dhabaih Ahl al-Kitab
Bahai: Risala fi Dhabaih Ahl al-Kitab, Risala fi Nijasat Dhabaih al-Kuffar wa
Sanaiihim
Food and drink
1. On wine
Ahmad al-Alawi: Risala dar Radd-i Mawla Muhammad Amin Astarabadi who
declared wine-drinking lawful
2. On tobacco
Al-Hurr: Risala fi Hurmat Shurb al-Tutun wal-Qahwa
Reclamation
1. Specific
Al-Karaki: Risala fi al-Ard al-Mundarisa, Risalat Aqsam al-Ardayn
Inheritance
1. General
Al-Karaki: Sharh Mabhath al-Mirath min al-Mukhtasar al-Nafi
Husayn b. Abd al-Samad: Al-Iqrar bi-Waladin fi al-Irth
Ali b. Muhyiddin al-Jami (d. after 1008AH/1599CE): Risala fi al-Mirath
Abd al-Samad (d. 1020AH/1611CE), the brother of Bahai: Commentaries on
Appendix III 165
Risalat al-Mawarith by Nasir al-Din Tusi
Bahai: Al-Faraid al-Bahiyya, Risala fi al-Mawarith
Lutfullah al-Maysi: Tahqiq Masalat al-Wasiyya bil-Mal (based on al-Allamas Irshad)
Ahmad b. al-Hasan al-Hurr (alive in 1106AH/1694CE): Urjuza fi al-Mawarith2
Al-Hurr al-Amili: Manzuma fi al-Mawarith
Abd al-Hasib b. Ahmad al-Alawi
Arbitration
1. On judicial procedure
Husayn al-Mujtahid: Risala fi Tanazi al-Zawjan fi Mata al-Bayt
Mir Damad: Risala fi Tanaz al-Zawjayn fi Qadr al-Mahr
2. On witness
Al-Karaki: Risala fi al-Idala or Risala fi Marifat al-Kabair
Abd al-Ali al-Karaki: Risala fi al-Kabair
Bahai: Risala fi al-Idala
E. Religious Writings
a. Hadith
Husayn b. Abd al-Samad: Al-Arbain, Sharh Hadith Hubbiba ilayya min
Dunyakum Thalath, Risala fi al-Diraya, Wusul al-Akhyar ila Usul al-Akhbar
Bahai: Sharh al-Arbain Hadithan, Al-Wajiza fi Ilm al-Diraya
Mir Damad: Al-Rawashih al-Samawiyya fi Sharh Ahadith al-Imamiyya (a Sharh
on al-Kafi), Maqala fi Tadif Hadith Sahu al-Nabi, Hashiyat Al-Istibsar on Hadith
166 Converting Persia
b. Quranic exegesis
Bahai: Al-Urwa al-Wuthqa fi al-Tafsir, Tafsir Surat al-Fatiha, Hashiyat Anwar
al-Tanzil ala Tafsir al-Baydawi, Tafsir Surat Fasuhqan li-Ashab al-Sair, Maqala
fi Wajh al-Taghlib fi Qawlihi Taala: Wa Ma Kunna Ashab al-Sair, Hal Qawl
al-Baydawi, Al-Hashiya ala al-Hashiya ala Tafsir al-Baydawi, Hawashi al-
Kashshaf, Ayn al-Hayat, Jawabat Thalath Masail Tafsiriyya
Appendix III 167
Mir Damad: Sudrat al-Muntaha, Amanat-i Ilahi (Tafsir Surat Amanat), Tawil al-
Muqtaat fi Awail al-Suwar al-Quraniyya, Tafsir Surat al-Ikhlas, Maqala fi Qul
Huwal-Lahu Ahad
Ahmad al-Alawi: Lataif-i Ghaybiya, Risala dar Aqwal-i Dabbat al-Ard
Muhammad b. Ali b. Khwatun al-Amili (d. 1057AH/1647CE): Lectures on Tafsir
Husayn b. Shihab al-Din al-Karaki (d. 1076AH/1665CE): Hashiya ala al-Baydawi
Ahmad b. al-Hasan b. al-Hurr: Tafsir al-Quran
Abul-Hasan b. Ali b. al-Hurr al-Amili (late 17thCE): Mirat al-Anwar wa Mishkat
al-Asrar fi Tafsir al-Quran
Abd al-Hasib b. Ahmad al-Alawi: Arsh Sama al-Tawfiq
d. Doctrine
Al-Karaki: Al-Marifa wa al-Miqdar al-Lazim Minha
Husayn al-Mujtahid: Sharh Wajib al-Itiqad, Al-Tawhid, Risalat Tawhid wa Ithbat-
i Wajib
Bahai: Al-Itiqadat, Fayide-yi Manqul az Wajib al-Itiqad
Mir Damad: Nibras al-Diya fi Tahqiq Mana al-Bada
Zayn al-Abidin b. al-Hasan al-Mashghari (d. 1078AH/1667CE): Risala fi al-
Taqiyya
168 Converting Persia
Al-Hurr al-Amili: Al-Iqaz min al-Haja bil-Burhan ala al-Raja, Risalat Tanzih
al-Masum min al-Sahu wa al-Nisyan, Al-Tanbih fi al-Tanzih
Abul-Hasan al-Sharif al-Futuni: Diya al-Alamin fi Bayan al-Aimma al-Mustafin,
Shariat al-Shia wa Dalail al-Sharia (a sharh on Mafatih al-Sharai by Muqla
Muhsin Kashani), Haqiqat Madhhab al-Imamiyya
e. Polemics 4
Al-Karaki: Nafahat al-Lahut fi Lan al-Jibt wa al-Taghut, Al-Matain al-Majrumiyya
Husayn b. Abd al-Samad: Munazara maa badi ulama Halab fil-Imama
Hasan al-Karaki: Kitab Umdat al-Maqal fi Kufr Ahl al-Dalal
Abd al-Ali al-Karaki: Al-Munazarat
Husayn al-Mujtahid: Radd Bida al-Amma, Risala fi Yawm Qatl Umar
Ahmad al-Alawi: Misqal-i Safa dar Tajliyeh va Tasfiyeh-yi Aineh-yi Haqq Nama,
Lavamii Rubbani dar Radd-i Shubahat-i Nasrani, Sawaiq al-Rahman fi al-Radd
ala al-Yahud wa Ithbat Tahrif Tawratihim, Risalat Izhar al-Haqq wa Miyar al-
Sidq,5 Thuqub al-Shihab fi Rajm al-Murtab (against Sufism)
Husayn b. Shihab al-Din al-Karaki: Hidayat al-Abrar ila Tariq al-Aimma al-
Akhyar (against Usulis)
Ali al-Shahidi: Al-Siham al-Mariqa min Arad (Aghrad) al-Zanadiqa, Zad al-
Murshidin, Maslak al-Murshidin, Al-Radd ala Sultan al-Ulama
Al-Hurr al-Amili: Al-Risala al-Ithna Ashariyya fi al-Radd ala al-Sufiyya
Muhammad Ashraf b. Abd al-Hasib al-Alawi (d. 1133AH/1720CE or 1145AH/
1732CE): Masaib al-Nawasib
Abul-Hasan al-Sharif al-Futuni: Tanzih al-Qummiyyin fi al-Radd ala al-Sayyid
al-Murtada
i. Ethics
Husayn b. Abd al-Samad: Al-Arbaina Hadithan fi al-Akhlaq, Nur al-Haqiqa wa
Nawr al-Hadiqa
Muhammad b. Ali b. Khwatun: Tawdih-i Akhlaq-i Abdullah Shah-i (a Sharh on
Akhlaq-i Nasiri)
Al-Hurr al-Amili: Manzuma fi al-Akhlaq
Ahmad b. al-Hasan b. Ali b. al-Hurr al-Amili: Kitab Jawahir al-Kalam fi al-Khisal
al-Mahmuda fi al-Anam
Abul-Hasan al-Sharif al-Futuni: Nasayih al-Muluk wa Adab al-Suluk
j. Logic8
Bahai: Sharh ala Sharh al-Shamsiyya
Mir Damad: Risala fi al-Mantiq
Husayn b. Shihab al-Din al-Karaki: Urjuza fi al-Mantiq
a. Philosophy-theosophy
Bahai: Al-Jawhar al-Fard, Khawas-i Asma-i Ilahi, Fasl-i dar Marifat-i Damir,
Ithbat al-Anwar al-Ilahiyya, Risala fi al-Wujud al-Dhihni
Mir Damad: Risala fi Tahqiq Mafhum al-Wujud, Al-Jabr wa al-Tafwid, Al-Imadat
wa al-Tashriqat fi Huduth al-Alam wa Qidamih, Al-Sirat al-Mustaqim, Taqdimat
Taqwim al-Iman, Taqwim al-Iman, Hashiyat Taqwim al-Iman, Hashiya ala al-
Shifa, Al-Jadhawat, Al-Ufq al-Mubin, Risala fi Huduth al-Alam, Al-Tashihat
wa al-Taqwimat,9 Al-Qabasat, Khilsat al-Malakut, Al-Iqazat, Etologia of Aristotle,
Al-Iqadat fi Khalq al-Amal wa Afal al-Ibad, Al-Jam wa al-Tawfiq bayna Rayay
al-Hakimayn fi Huduth al-Alam, Al-Habl al-Matin, Nafi al-Jabr wa al-Tafwid,
Sharh al-Najat of Ibn Sina, Tashriq al-Haqq, Risala fi Ilm al-Wajib
Abd al-Hasib b. Ahmad al-Alawi: Sudrat al-Muntaha wa al-Atiyya al-Uzma
Ahmad al-Alawi al-Amili: Riyad al-Quds, Hazirat al-Uns min Arkan Riyad al-
Quds, also called Masabih al-Quds wa Qanadil al-Uns, Al-Nafahat al-Lahutiyya
fi al-Atharat al-Bahaiyya, Miftah al-Shifa wa al-Urwa al-Wuthqa, Al-Hikma
al-Mashriqiyya, Kihl al-Absar, Pasukh-i Amili beh Porsesh-i Tusi az Khosroshahi
c. Sufism
Bahai: Milal va Nihal
Mirza Ahmad, brother of Habibullah: A treatise on Sufism
Muhammad Shafi b. Baha al-Din: Passages on Istilahat al-Sufiyya wa al-Urafa
d. Mathematics
Al-Karaki: Risala fi al-Kurr
Khayr al-Din b. Abd al-Razzaq b. Makki al-Shirazi al-Amili (alive in 1007AH/
1598CE): works on Riyadiyyat including a treatise with a long final section on
Ilm al-Hisab
Bahai: Bahr al-Hisab, Khulasat al-Hisab, Hashiyat Khulasat al-Hisab, Al-Risala
al-Bahaiyya fi al-Hisab, Risala-ye dar Hisab, Bahr al-Hisab, Al-Tuhfa, Mizan al-
Maqadir or Awzan-i Sharia, Risala fi Nisbat Irtifa Azam al-Jibal ila Qutr al-
Ard, Risala fi Nisbat al-Qutr ila al-Muhit, Risala fi al-Kurr
Abd al-Samad, brother of Bahai: Manzuma fi al-Jabr wa al-Muqabala
Mir Damad: Unmuzaj al-Ulum, Jayb al-Zawiya
Jawad b. Sad b. Jawad al-Amili: Sharh Khulasat al-Hisab
Najib al-Din, Ali b. Muhammad al-Jubai: Hisab al-Khataayn
Husayn b. Abd al-Samad, nephew of Bahai: Manzuma fi al-Jabr wa al-Muqabala
Muhammad b. Ali b. Khwatun: Lectures on rational sciences and mathematics
Al-Hurr al-Amili: Manzuma fi al-Handasa
e. Astronomy
Bahai: Tashrih al-Aflak fi al-Haya, Hashiya ala Tashrih al-Aflak, Risala fi Marifat
al-Taqwim, Tadaris al-Ard, Al-Safiha (on al-Astirlab), Sharh al-Chughmini, Tuhfe-
yi Hatimi, Sharh Nusus Marifat al-Taqwim, Risala fi Anna Anwar al-Kawakib
Mustafada min al-Shams, Risala fi Hall Ishkalay Utarid wa al-Qamar
Al-Hurr al-Amili: Hayat, Manzuma fi Ilm al-Nujum wa al-Falak
f. Medicine
Husayn b. Shihab al-Din al-Karaki: Kitab al-Tibb al-Kabir, Kitab al-Tibb al-Saghir11
g. History12
Zayn al-Abidin b. al-Hasan al-Mashghari, brother of al-Hurr (d. 1078AH/1667CE):
Tarikh
Ahmad b. Hasan b.Ali b. al-Hurr al-Amili: Al-Durr al-Masluk fi Ahwal al-Anbiya
wa al-Muluk,13 Al-Tibr al-Maskuk, Rawd al-Nazirin fi Ilm al-Awwalin wal-Akharin14
Muhammad Shafi b. Baha al-Din: Shashaa Dhu al-Faqar15
172 Converting Persia
G. Miscellaneous
Combined works
Abd al-Hasib b. Ahmad al-Alawi: Manahij al-Shariin16
Abul-Hasan al-Sharif al-Futuni: Al-Fawaid al-Gharawiyya wa al-Durar al-Najafiyya17
Ali al-Shahidi: Jami al-Ghurar
The Quran
Bahai: Tahdhib al-Bayan fi Tartib al-Quran, Hall al-Huruf al-Quraniyya, Ijaz
al-Asnaf18
Al-Hurr: Risalat Tawatur al-Quran
Geneology
Abul-Hasan al-Sharif al-Futuni: Al-Ansab
Bahai: Mashajjarat al-Rijal, Nasab Namah va Shajareh
Ahmad al-Alawi: Risala dar Nasab-i Muawiyah alayhi al-Lana wa al-Adhab
Abul-Hasan al-Sharif al-Futuni: Hadaiq al-Albab, Kashf al-Niqab an Wajh
Rumuz Hadaiq al-Albab19
Rihla/safarnamah
Husayn b. Abd al-Samad: Al-Rihla
Muhammad b. Ali b. Muhammad al-Hurr, paternal uncle of al-Hurr (d. 1081AH/
1670CE): Al-Rihla
Najib al-Din Ali b. Muhammad al-Jubai: Al-Rihla possibly the same as Al-Rihla
ila al-Haj
Ibrahim b. Ibrahim b. Fakhr al-Din al-Bazuri: Rihlat al-Musafir wa al-Ghunya an
al-Musamir
Appendix III 173
Copying and error
Al-Hurr: Manzuma fi Qawaid al-Khatt wa al-Kitaba
Mir Damad: Al-Tashifat
Introduction
1. A significant body of literature emerged in both Iran and Lebanon attempting to
revisit the Safavid period, focusing particularly on questions of monarchical rule,
Imamate government, revolutionary and institutionalized Shiism, and Iranian
cultural identity. See Ali Shariati, Tashayyu-i Alavi va Tashayyu-i Safavi (Iran, 1973);
Maryam Mir Ahmadi, Din va Madhhab dar Asr-i Safavi (Tehran, 1984); Rasul
Jafariyan, Dunbalah-yi Justiju dar Tarikh-i Tashayyu dar Iran (Qum, 1995); Mahdi
Munfarid Farahani, Muhajarat-i Ulamay-i Shia az Jabal Amil beh Iran dar Asr-i
Safavi (Tehran, 1998).
2. A good example of this nationalist scholarship is Agha Buzurg Tehrani, Tabaqat
Alam al-Shia: Al-Kawakib al-Muntashira fil-Qarn al-Thani bad al-Ashara, ed. Ali
Munzavi (Tehran, 1993). In my interviews with Munzavi, he expressed his belief
that Persian culture was naturally inclined toward Sufi thought and open
philosophical inquiries alien to the cultural Arab background of the theologians of
Jabal Amil. See also Abd al-Husayn Salihi Shahidi, Madrasa-yi Falsafi-yi Qazvin
dar Asr-i Safavi, Hozeh, 58 (1372), pp. 169192. On the Lebanese side, several works
described the conversion of Persia to clerical Shiism, mechanically, as the outcome
of the personal efforts and unique intellectual background of the Amili theologians.
See Ali Muroeh, Al-Tashayyu bayna Jabal Amil wa Iran (London, 1987); Jafar al-
Muhajir, Al-Hijra al-Amiliyya ila Iran fil-Asr al-Safawi (Beirut, 1989); Muhammad
Mahdi Taskhiri, Al-Hurr al-Amili in the Heart of the Iranian People, in Silsilat
Mutamarat Hayat Ulama Jabal Amil, Al-Hurr al-Amili (Beirut, 1419), pp. 4556.
In comparison, recent studies of the Safavid period by Rasul Jafariyan, Safaviyah
dar arasah-i din, farhang va Siyasat, 3 vols (Qum, 1379/2000) and Mansur Sifatgul,
Sakhtar-i nihad va andishah-i dini dar Iran-i asr-i Safavi (Tehran, 1381/2002) advance
more nuanced treatments of these questions.
176 Converting Persia
3. See Abu El Fadl Ezzati, An Introduction to Shii Islamic Law and Jurisprudence (Lahore,
1976); Norman Calder, The Structure of Authority in Imami Shii Jurisprudence,
Ph.D. Diss., London University, 1983; Etan Kohlberg, Belief and Law in Imami Shiism
(Great Britain and USA, 1991); Noel J. Coulson, A History of Islamic Law (Edinburgh,
1997). In comparison to these studies, Devin Stewarts Islamic Legal Orthodoxy:
Twelver Shiite Responses to the Sunni Legal System (Utah, 1998), sheds some light on
sectarian-legal politics among Shiite and Sunnite scholars, which shaped the
development of Shiite legal precepts and juridical methods after the tenth century.
Yet, we are still in the dark as to the social processes, with their economic and
political components, which shaped the evolution and transformation of a particular
juridical concept or practice or produced major legal debates and theological rifts
at distinct historical junctures.
4. See Husayn Muroeh, Al-Nazaat al-Madiyya fi al-Falsafa al- Arabiyya al-Islamiyya,
vol. 2 (Beirut, 1988); Rifaat Abou El-Haj, The Social Uses of the Past: Recent Arab
Historiography of Ottoman Rule, IJMES, 14 (1982), pp. 185201; Eric Hobsbawm
and Terrence Ranger, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge and New York, 1983).
5. See Eric Hobsbawm, The Social Function of the Past: Some Questions, Past and
Present, no. 55 (1972) pp. 317. Historians cannot truly reproduce the past and
therefore continue to struggle with the problem of analyzing the notion of the past
and its transformation in society.
6. Contrary to a widely held view, the decline of the madrasas of Jabal Amil in the
seventeenth century did not stem from the ulamas large-scale migration to Mecca,
Iraq, Iran and India. Legal expertise (and a surplus of scholars) grew irrelevant for
Amili society. The view that Amili religious schools dwindled in the late sixteenth
century due to the jurists desertion of Jabal Amil after their forced migration to
Safavid Persia under the Ottomans dominates most studies of Syrian-Lebanese
Shiism. See Muhsin al-Amin, Khitat Jabal Amil (Beirut, 1983); Jafar al-Muhajir,
Al-Hijra al-Amiliyya ila Iran al-Safawiyya (Beirut, 1989); Dalal Abbas, Baha al-Din
al-Amili: Adiban, Faqihan wa Aliman (Beirut, 1995).
7. Willem Floor, The Economy of Safavid Persia (Reichert, 2000), p. 14.
8. The relationship between medieval Islamic trade guilds and the futuvvat tradition
in Persia needs further research. Floor argued that there is no evidence for the
interpenetration between the two based on an examination of a nineteenth-century
work on the Faqr-i Ajam, a futuvvat association, which possibly antedates the
foundation of the Safavid state. See Floor, Guilds and futuvvat in Iran, Zeitschrift
der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft 134 (1984) pp. 106114.
51. Wilfred Madelung, Al-Karaki, Encyclopedia of Islam 2 (EI2), p. 610; Albert Hourani,
The Safavid Era, in Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Hamid Dabashi and Seyyed Vali
Reza Nasr (eds), Expectation of the Millennium: Shiism in History (Albany, 1989),
pp. 1878.
52. Ali b. Abd al-Ali al-Karaki, Rasail al-Muhaqqiq al-Karaki, vol. 1, ed. Muhammad
al-Hassun (Qum, 1409/1988), pp. 2389.
53. Modarressi: Kharaj, pp. 47, 568.
54. Tehrani, Ihya al-Dathir, pp. 1601; Muhammad Muhsin Tehrani, Al-Mashyakha
(Najaf, 1356/1937), pp. 556.
55. Al-Karaki, Rasail, vol. 1, pp. 237.
56. Riyad, vol. 3, pp. 44160.
57. Khwandamir, Habib al-Siyar, part 4, vol. 3, p. 114.
58. Roemer, The Qizilbash Turcomans, pp. 301.
59. Willem Floor, The sadr or head of the Safavid religious administration, judiciary
and endowments and other members of the religious institution, in Zeitschrift
Der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft (ZDMG), Band 150 (2000), pp. 463,
4689.
60. Savory, Iran Under the Safavids, pp. 345.
61. Ayan, vol. 8, p. 209.
62. Alam-ara-yi Abbasi, vol. 1, p. 231; Shah Abbas, vol. 1, p. 230.
63. Hasan-i Rumlu, Ahsan al-Tavarikh, ed. N. Seddon (Calcutta, 1931), p. 254; Alam-
ara-yi Abbasi, vol. 1, pp. 2312; Shah Abbas, vol. 1, p. 233; The Safavid Administrative
System, in The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 6, pp. 3623.
64. Rawdat, vol. 4 (Beirut, 1411/1991), p. 356.
65. Rumlu: Ahsan-u Tavarikh, p. 255; Muhammad Yusuf wa Alihi Isfahani, Khuld-i Barin
(Tehran, 1372H/1952), p. 428; Rawdat, vol. 4, p. 357. See also Ghulam Sarwar, History
of Shah Ismail Safawi (Aligarh, 1975), p. 102.
66. Rumlu, Ahsanut-Tawarikh: A Chronicle of the Early Safawis, vol. 2, ed. C. N. Seddon
(Baroda, 1934), pp. 2547.
67. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 1, pp. 229230; Shah Abbas, vol. 1, p. 231.
68. Rawdat, vol. 7, p. 183.
69. Ibid.; Agha Buzurg Tehrani, Tabaqat Alam al-Shia: Ihya al-Dathir, ed. Ali Naqi
Munzavi (Beirut, 1972), p. 220.
70. Rawdat, vol. 7, p. 182.
71. There are several references to the continuation of kneeling and prostration in
front of the Shah. See J. Chardin, Les Voyages du Chevalier Chardin in Perse, vol. 5, ed.
L. Langles (Paris, 1811), p. 218.
72. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 1, pp. 229230; Shah Abbas, vol. 1, pp. 2301; Rawdat, vol. 4, pp.
3578, vol. 7, pp. 1689; Shirazi, Takmilat al-Akhbar, p. 193. Shirazi, who was clearly
sympathetic to Mir Ghiyath al-Din, felt that the latters objections to al-Karakis
designation of the qibla were not offensive but that court officials blew the issue
out of proportion.
73. Shirazi, Takmilat, pp. 667.
Notes 181
74. Abd al-Husayn Khwatunabadi (d. 1105/1693), Vaqayi-u Sinin val-Avam (Tehran,
1352/1933), p. 360; Alam-ara-yi, vol. 1, pp. 22931; Shah Abbas, vol. 1, pp. 2312;
Rawdat, vol. 7, pp. 1689.
75. Arjomand, The Shadow of God, pp. 1334.
76. Ayan, vol. 8, p. 208.
77. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 1, p. 230; Shah Abbas, vol. 1, p. 231.
78. Shirazi, Takmilat, pp. 667.
79. Savory, The Principal Offices of Ismail I, pp. 956; Roemer, The Safavid Period,
pp. 2289.
80. Savory, The Significance of the Political Murder of Mirza Salman, in Studies of the
History of Safavid Iran, p. 167.
81. Savory, The Principal Offices of Tahmasb I, pp. 813.
82. Arjomand, The Shadow of God, p. 133.
83. Rumlu, Ahsan-u Tavarikh, pp. 3923.
84. Arjomand, The Shadow of God, pp. 336; Erica Glassen, Schah Ismail I und die
Theologen seiner Zeit, pp. 25468.
85. B. Scarcia-Amoretti, Religion in the Timurid and Safavid Periods, in The Cambridge
History of Iran, vol. 6, pp. 6423.
86. See several entries for Amili scholars in Agha Buzurg Tehrani, Tabaqat Alam al-
Shia: al-Kawakib al-Muntashira, ed. Ali Naqi Munzavi (Tehran, 1372/1952). See also
Andrew Newman, The Myth of the Clerical Migration to Safawid Iran, Die Welt
des Islams, 33 (1993), pp. 66112. Munzavi points to essential and dichotomous
cultural/intellectual traits for Arab and Persian scholars. Newman, for his part,
emphasizes the ethnic background of the Amilis in explaining their legal opinions
on issues like Friday prayer and association with temporal authority.
87. In addition to those listed in the second chapter, several Amili descendents married
into prominent Persian families. Abdullah b. Jabir al-Amili (d. 11thAH/17thCE)
who transmits from the students of al-Muhaqqiq al-Thani, is a descendant of the
paternal aunt of al-Mawla Taqi Majlisi, the father of Muhammad Baqir Majlisi (d.
1111AH/1699CE). The maternal grandfather of Muhammad Taqi Majlisi was the
Amili scholar Darwish Muhammad b. al-Hasan al-Natanzi. Again Mir Salih
Khwatunabadi, the son-in-law of Muhammad Baqir Majlisi, was the maternal uncle
of another late Amili scholar, namely Abul-Hasan Sharif b. Tahir al-Futuni. Other
sources noted that the mother of Majlisi was the daughter of al-Futuni himself. See
Tehrani, Ihya al-Dathir, p. 59; Shihab al-Din al-Marashi al-Najafi, Al-Ijaza al-Kabira
aw al-Tariq wa al-Mahajja ila Thamarat al-Muhja (Qum, 1414/1993), p. 335; Ayan, vol.
9, p. 189.
88. A. J. Wensinck, Khutba, Shorter Encyclopaedia of Islam (SEI) (Leiden, 1974), pp.
2589; A. A. Sachedina, The Just Ruler (al-sultan al-adil) in Shiite Islam (Oxford,
1988), pp. 1779.
89. Al-Karaki, Rasail, vol. 1, p. 139. Al-Karaki completed his treatise in 921AH/1515CE.
90. Savory, Iran Under the Safavids, pp. 289.
91. Rawdat, vol. 4, p. 354.
182 Converting Persia
92. Hasan b. Ali al-Karaki, Al-Bulgha fi Bayan Itibar Idhn al-Imam fi Shariyyat Salat
al-Juma, in Sayyid Ahmad al-Husayni (ed.), Fihrist-i Nuskhaha-yi Khatti-yi
Kitabkhana-yi Marashi (Qum, 1975), collection 4697, no. 1, folio 31b.
93. Muhammad Muqim Yazdi, Al-Hujja fi Wujub Salat al-Juma fi Zaman al-Ghayba,
in Sayyid Jawad Modarressi Yazdi (ed.), Al-Iqd al-Tahmasbi aw al-Husayni (Yazd,
n.d.), pp. 523; Isfahani, Khuld-i Barin, pp. 4334.
94. Ayan, vol. 7, p. 14550; Rawdat, vol. 3, pp. 3489, 351; Ali b. Muhammad b. Hasan
b. Zayn al-Din al-Amili (d. 11034AH/1691CE), Al-Durr al-Manthur min al-Mathur
wa ghayr al-Mathur, vol. 2 (Qum 1398/1977), pp. 1704.
95. See Richard Repp, Some Observations on the Development of the Ottoman Learned
Hierarchy, in Nikki Keddie (ed.), Scholars, Saints and Sufis: Muslim Religious
Institutions in the Middle East since 1500 (Los Angeles, 1972), pp. 301.
96. Ali b. Zayn al-Din al-Amili, Al-Durr al-Manthur, vol. 2, pp. 1704; Rawdat, vol. 3,
pp. 3512.
97. Rawdat, vol. 3, p. 345.
98. Al-Durr al-Manthur, vol. 2, p. 162.
99. Ayan, vol. 1, pp. 1423.
100. Modarressi, Kharaj, p. 54.
101. Al-Karaki, Rasail, vol. 1, p. 237.
102. Ibid. pp. 2389.
103. Ibid. pp. 238, 2445. Al-Karaki drew upon the writings of Shaykh al-Taifa, al-
Allama, Ibn Idris and al-Shahid to support his position and reverse the dominant
practice among his fellow jurists at the time.
104. Ibid.
105. See Arjomand, Two Decrees of Shah Tahmasb Concerning Statecraft and the
Authority of Shaykh Ali al-Karaki, in S. A. Arjomand (ed.), Authority and Political
Culture in Shiism (Albany, 1988), p. 254.
106. Wilfred Madelung, Al-Karaki, EI2.
107. Arjomand, Two Decrees of Shah Tahmasb, p. 254.
108. Ibid. p. 143; see Chardin, Les Voyages, vol. 5, pp. 1945.
109. Arjomand, The Shadow, p. 142.
110. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 1, pp. 244; Shah Abbas, pp. 2445.
111. Matain al-Mujrimiyya is inextant, but sections of it are included in a work by Fadil
al-Din Muhammad b. Ishaq b. Muhammad Hamawi (d. 938AH/1531CE), a student
of al-Karaki. See Muhammad b. Ishaq b. Muhammad Hamawi, Anis al-Muminin
(Tehran, 1363/1943), pp. 145, 1889. See also Ali b. Muhammad b. al-Hasan b.
Zayn al-Din al-Amili, Al-Siham al-Mariqa min Aghrad al-Zanadiqa, MS in M. T.
Danishpazhuh (ed.), Fihrist-i Nuskhahay-i Khatti-yi Muqaddasa-yi Qum (Qum, 1355/
1936), collection 2356, folio 10a, 16b.
112. Hamawi, Anis al-Muminin, pp. 136, 1423.
113. Ibid. p. 142.
114. Ibid. pp. 147, 175.
115. Ibid. pp. 1889.
Notes 183
116. Zabihullah Safa, Majera-ye tahrim-e Abu Moslem-name, Iran Nameh, 5/2 (1986),
pp. 233249; Kathryn Babayan, The Safavid Synthesis: From Qizilbash Islam to
Imamate Shiism, Iranian Studies, nos 14, vol. 27 (1994), p. 144.
117. Around 1043AH/1633CE, Mir Lawhi faced strong popular opposition when he
reiterated al-Karakis arguments against Abu Muslim and his cult. See Henry
Corbin, Aineh Javanmardi, tr. Ahsan Naraqi (Tehran, 1363/1984), p. 163; Tehrani,
Al-Kawakib al-Muntashira, pp. 4167.
118. Savory, Iran Under the Safavids, p. 8.
119. Abdol-Hosein Zarrinkoob, Persian Sufism in Historical Perspective, Iranian Studies
34/3 (1970), p. 181.
120. Mohammad-Djafar Mahdjoub, The Evolution of Popular Eulogy of the Imams
Among the Shia, in Authority and Political Culture, pp. 735.
121. Ibid.
122. Momen, Shii Islam, pp. 143, 2403.
123. Al-Karaki, Rasail, vol. 2, pp. 31920. The interlocutor addressed al-Karaki as the
seal of mujtahids a title donned on al-Karaki in 939AH/1533CE. This denotes that
al-Karakis fatwa (legal opinion) against guild practices occurred sometime around
or after this date.
124. No exact date is given for the fatwa of al-Karaki against the artisans, but the
interlocutor addressed him in the treatise as khatam al-mujtahidin (seal of
jurisconsults).
125. Mehdi Keyvani, Artisans and Guild Life in the Later Safavid Period: Contributions to
the Social-Economic History of Persia (Berlin, 1982), p. 63.
126. Al-Karaki, Rasail, vol. 2, p. 320.
127. Al-Siham al-Mariqa, folio 16b.
128. Rosemary Stanfield Johnson, Sunni Survival in Safavid Iran: Anti-Sunni Activities
during the reign of Tahmasb I, Iranian Studies, no. 14/27 (1994), pp. 1323.
129. Ibid. pp. 1313.
130. Al-Karaki , Nafahat al-Lahut fi Lan al-Jibt wal-Taghut, MS, in A. Anvar, Fihrist-
i Nusakh-i Khatti-yi Kitabkhana-yi Milli (Tehran, 134458 Sh./196579), collection
1703, folio 4b-5a, 6b.
131. Ibid. folio 4b5a. M. M. Pickthall, Al-Baqara, 2:89, 161, in Meaning of the Glorious
Quran (New York, 1977).
132. Nafahat al-Lahut, folio 18ab.
133. Ibid. folio 76b, 43b.
134. Floor, The sadr, p. 463.
135. Rawdat, vol. 4, p. 358.
136. Isfahani, Khuld-i Barin, pp. 42930.
137. Rawdat, vol. 4, p. 347; Yusuf al-Bahrani, Luluat al-Bahrayn fil-Ijazat wa Tarajim Rijal
al-Hadith (Najaf, 1386/1966), p. 153.
138. Rawdat, vol. 4 (Beirut, 1991), pp. 35460.
139. Agha Buzurg Tehrani, Al-Dharia ila Tasanif al-Shia, vol. 4 (Beirut, 1983), p. 81.
140. Habib al-Siyar, part 4, vol. 3, p. 114.
184 Converting Persia
34. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 1, p. 244; Shah Abbas, vol. 1, p. 229; Arjomand, The Shadow of God,
pp. 1334.
35. Al-Karaki, as we noted earlier, had objected to prostration for the king and
considered it blasphemous. Evidently, his views didnt go far because the court
Ceremonial of kissing the Shahs feet persisted.
36. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 1, p. 319; Shah Abbas, vol. 1, p. 307.
37. Husayn b. Abd al-Samad, Risala fi al-Husur wa al-Bawari, folios 1a7b.
38. Ibid. folio 1a.
39. Ibid. folios 1ab.
40. Ibid. folio 3a.
41. Husayn b. Abd al-Samad, Tahqiq Qiblat Iraq al-Ajam wa Khurasan, folio 8.
Devin Stewart was kind to offer me a copy of this treatise. It may be the same as
Tuhfat Ahl al-Iman fi Qiblat Iraq al-Ajam wa Khurasan.
42. Husayn b. Abd al-Samad, Al-Iqd al-Husayni (al-Tahmasbi), ed. Sayyid Jawad
Modarressi Yazdi (Yazd, n.d.), p. 3. This book is a collection of treatises dealing
with Friday prayer, including Al-Hujja fi Wujub Salat al-Juma fi Zaman al-Ghayba
by Muhammad Muqim Yazdi (d. 1084AH/1673CE); Scarcia-Amoretti, Religion in
the Timurid and Safavid Periods, in P. Jackson & L. Lockhart (eds), The Cambridge
History of Iran, vol. 6 (New York, 1986), pp. 6423.
43. Husayn b. Abd al-Samad, Al-Iqd al-Husayni, p. 3.
44. Ibid. pp. 46.
45. Ibid.
46. Ibid. The call for the absolute necessity of convening Friday prayer reflects the
positions of Sallar and Ibn Idris.
47. Husayn b. Abd al-Samad, Al-Iqd, pp. 313; see also Alam-ara-yi, vol. 1, p. 247;
Shah Abbas, vol. 1, p. 247; Khuld-i Barin, p. 434.
48. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 1, p. 247; Shah Abbas, vol. 1, p. 247; Isfahani, Khuld-i Barin, p. 434.
49. Rasul Jafariyan, Din va Siyasat dar Asr-i Safavi (Qum, 1370/1950), pp. 12931.
50. M. Muqim Yazdi, Al-Hujja, p. 51.
51. Al-Dharia, vol. 1, p. 185.
52. Al-Muhajir, Al-Hijra, p. 149; Devin Stewart, The First Shaykh al-Islam of the Safavid
Capital Qazvin, Journal of the American Oriental Society (JAOS), 3/116 (JulySeptember,
1996), pp. 4024; Alam-ara-yi, vol. 2, p. 575; Shah Abbas, vol. 2, pp. 6312.
53. Riyad, vol. 2, p. 120; Husayn b. Abd al-Samad, Wusul al-Akhyar, p. 12.
54. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 1, pp. 2478; Shah Abbas, vol. 1, p. 247.
55. Ibid.; Riyad, vol. 2, p. 120; Ayan, vol. 6, pp. 5760.
56. For more information on this issue, see Dickson, Shah Tahmasb and the Uzbeks.
57. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 1, pp. 1079, 161, 3512, 3767; Shah Abbas, vol. 1, pp. 109, 162,
342, 364. Munshi was covering the events of 944AH/1537CE when he made this
observation.
58. Isfahanis Khuld-i Barin describes the post at Herat as an adorned seat of
jurisprudence while he presents Herat in flowery words as a captivating, pleasant
and exhilarating site. See Khuld-i Barin, p. 434.
Notes 187
59. Al-Dharia, vol. 12, p. 13. Al-Zahira opens with a general description of Herat and
then describes its waters, weather, fruits and women. Bahai recounts some intimate
memories of his time in Garizgah and at the Herati school of Mirza. Bahai laments
his departure from Herat.
60. Some letters, which Bahai wrote to his father in Herat during his own stay in
Qazvin indicate how strongly he felt about Herat. See Ayan, vol. 9, p. 247; Dalal
Abbas, Baha al-Din al-Amili: Adiban wa Faqihan wa Aliman (Beirut, 1995), p. 110.
Abbas offers the most comprehensive historical coverage of Bahais life to date.
Al-Dharia, vol. 17, p. 288. Tahqiq Miqdar al-Karr was published with Al-Habl al-
Matin (Qum: Basirati, n.d.).
61. Ayan, vol. 6, p. 58.
62. Ibid. p. 60; Riyad, vol. 2, p. 121.
63. See Husayn b. Abd al-Samad, Nur al-Haqiqa wa Nawr al-Hadiqa (Qum, 1403/1983) on
ethics. Iqd is also a good example of Husayns Sufi predilections. His metaphorical
constructs of God as king and the divine as the royal hadra (presence) along with the
themes of physical deprivation and toiling to please God, are reminiscent of general
Sufi traditions. His open references to Ibrahim b. Adham, Bishr al-Hafi and ahl al-
kahf, the archetypal Sufi figures, triggered great disapproval from traditional jurists
and scholars. See Iqd al-Husayni, p. 46; Ayan, vol. 6, p. 60; Riyad, vol. 2, p. 115.
64. Savory, Iran Under the Safavids, pp. 2057. Any ideas Bahai may have entertained
about contacting the Mughal court may have been dispelled by a letter which his
friend Nurullah Shushtari wrote to him about the horrors of being stuck in India.
Shushtari was flogged to death in 1610CE. See Francis Robinson, Ottomans-
Safavids-Mughals: Shared Knowledge and Connective Systems, Journal of Islamic
Studies, 2/8 (July 1997), p. 158.
65. Roemer, The Safavid Period, p. 251; Vali Quli b. Davud Quli Shamlu, Qisas al-
Khaqani (Tehran, 1371/1951), pp. 936.
66. Roemer, The Safavid Period, p. 251.
67. Ibid. p. 252; see also Shohreh Gholsorkhi, Ismail II and Mirza Makhdum Sharifi,
An Interlude in Safavid History, International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies
(IJMES), 26 (1994), p. 485.
68. Roemer, The Safavid Period, p. 252.
69. See Amir Mahmud Khwandamir, Dhayl-i Tarikh Habib al-Siyar, pp. 154, 181; Shirazi,
Takmilat al-Akhbar, pp. 1746.
70. Michel Mazzaoui, The Religious Policy of Safavid Shah Ismail II, in Intellectual
Studies on Islam, p. 53.
71. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 1, p. 327; Shah Abbas, vol. 1, p. 315.
72. Mazzaoui: Religious Policy, p. 53. Mazzaouis insightful analysis is based on a
brief statement made by Rumlu in Ahsan-u Tavarikh.
73. Bert Fragner, Social and Internal Economic Affairs, The Cambridge History of Iran,
pp. 5067.
74. Ibid. pp. 51011; Floor, A Fiscal History of Iran in the Safavid and Qajar Periods (New
York, 1998), pp. 5760; Chardin, Voyages, vol. 6, p. 65. The small suyurghals were
188 Converting Persia
not generated exclusively from state land but also from religious endowments
(waqf) and crown lands (mamalik-i khassah).
75. Fragner, Social and Internal Economic, p. 507.
76. Rudi Matthee, Politics and Trade in Late-Safavid Iran: Commercial Crisis and
Government Reaction Under Shah Solayman (16661694), Ph.D. diss. (UCLA 1991),
pp. 1549.
77. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 1, pp. 32931, 33335; Shah Abbas, vol. 1, pp. 31820, 3234;
Mazzaoui, Religious Policy, p. 54.
78. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 1, pp. 4245; vol. 2, pp. 1043, 1047, 1061, 1306; Shah Abbas, vol. 1,
pp. 4068, 5278.
79. Sholeh Quinn, Historical Writing During the Reign of Shah Abbas: Ideology, Imitation
and Legitimacy in Safavid Chronicles (Salt Lake City, 2000), pp. 103, 11116.
80. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 1, p. 309; Shah Abbas, vol. 1, pp. 3023.
81. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 1, p. 334; Shah Abbas, vol. 1, p. 323.
82. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 1, p. 331; Shah Abbas, vol. 1, p. 320.
83. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 1, pp. 1878; Shah Abbas, vol. 1, pp. 1878.
84. Mir Makhdum nurtured the same views on the weakness of the Shah and his
inability to confine the Qizilbash. He also pointed to his own attempts to manipulate
Ismail II. See Mirza Makhdum al-Sharifi, Al-Nawaqid fi al-Radd ala al-Rawafid,
MS, in Rudolf Mach (ed.), Catalogue of Arabic Manuscripts in Garrett Collection
(Princeton, 1977), Yahuda Collection, no. 2629, folio 82b.
85. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 1, p. 236; Shah Abbas, vol. 1, p. 237; Ihya al-Dathir, pp. 176, 2456.
86. Mirza Makhdum, Al-Nawaqid, folio 44b.
87. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 1, p. 320; Shah Abbas, vol. 1, p. 308.
88. Rumlu, Ahsan-u Tavarikh, p. 86. The early Safavids had promoted the ritual cursing
of the first three Caliphs at least since 9056AH/14991500CE.
89. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 1, pp. 3302; Shah Abbas, vol. 1, pp. 31819.
90. See al-Karaki, Fatawa Khatam al-Mujtahidin, in Rasail al-Karaki, vol. 2, p. 320.
91. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 1, p. 236; Shah Abbas, vol. 1, p. 237.
92. Stanfield Johnson, Sunni Survival, pp. 12333.
93. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 1, p. 236; Shah Abbas, vol. 1, p. 237.
94. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 1, p. 340; Shah Abbas, vol. 1, p. 329. Friendship ties between Pari
Khan Khanum and Mirza Makhdums mother helped secure Mirza Makhdums
safe departure from Persia. Gholsorkhi, Ismail II and Mirza Makhdum, pp. 4834.
95. Ibid. pp. 32930; see also Mir Makhdum, Al-Nawaqid, folio 119b.
96. Mirza Makhdum, Al-Nawaqid, folios 102a102b.
97. Ibid. folio 102b.
98. Al-Karaki cultivated limited, yet important, ties with the Persian nobility. At least
two of his daughters married into the Astarabadi family. The celebrated scholar
and philosopher Muhammad Baqir Astarabadi (d. 1040AH/163132CE), known
as Mir Damad, was al-Karakis maternal grandson. Mir Sayyid Husayn, another
grandson of al-Karaki, carried the title of Mir. See Qadi Ahmad Qummi, Khulasat
al-Tavarikh: Fasl-i Marbut be Nakhustin-i Salihay-i Saltanat-i Shah Abbas Avval or Die
Notes 189
Chronick Hulasat Al-TawariH Des Qazi Ahmad Qumi, Der Abschnilt uber Schah Abbas
I, ed. & tr. Hans Muller (Weisbaden, 1964), pp. 6, 13, 17, 93. One of al-Karakis sons,
Taj al-Din Abd al-Ali, acquired the title Mir Sayyid Ali. See Alam-ara-yi, vol. 1,
pp. 21415; Shah Abbas, pp. 31820. Al-Karaki cultivated positive ties with two
princes from the Isfahani and Shushtari families, whom he nominated for the
sadarat (administration of religious endowments) under Shah Tahmasb. Other Amili
descendants, like Ahmad b. Zayn al-Abidin al-Alawi, also carried the titles Mir
Sayyid. In the late Safavid period, Abul-Hasan Sharif b. Tahir al-Futunis maternal
uncle was from the nobility, namely Mir Salih Khatunabadi. See Ihya al-Dathir, p.
59; Shihab al-Din al-Marashi al-Najafi, Al-Ijaza al-Kabira aw al-Tariq wal-Mahajja ila
Thamarat al-Muhja (Qum, 1414/1993), p. 335; Ayan, vol. 9, p. 189. Lutfullah al-
Maysis daughter became one of the wives of Shah Abbas [the Great]. See Riyad,
vol. 4, pp. 41720.
99. Alama-ara-yi, vol. 1, p. 203; Shah Abbas, vol. 1, pp. 205.
100. Alama-ara-yi, vol. 1, p. 203; Shah Abbas, vol. 1, pp. 205. Munshi, unlike Khwandamir,
compares Mir Husayn to Persian and Arab ulama alike. Although he is uneasy
about Mir Husayns pompousness, he would assert that the latter exceeded Arab
and Persian ulama in eloquence of expression.
101. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 1, p. 203; Shah Abbas, vol. 1, p. 204; Qadi Ahmad Qummi, Khulasat
al-Tavarikh, pp. 6, 13, 17, 93.
102. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 1, p. 228; Shah Abbas, vol. 1, p. 229.
103. Ibid. vol. 1, p. 307.
104. Ibid. vol. 1, pp. 237, 319. Mir Sayyid Ali, the katib of Astarabad, was among the
zealots criticized by Munshi for going beyond reasonable limits in enjoining the
good and forbidding evil. Munshi doubted his sincerity and credibility. The close
exchange between the Amilis and the Astarabadis goes further back to the late
fifteenth and early sixteenth century. Three of the major teachers of Husayn b.
Shams al-Din Muhammad Astarabadi were Amili scholars, namely, Ibn Muflih
al-Maysi (d. 938AH/1531CE), Ibn al-Muadhdhin, and al-Suhyuni. Several other
Astarabadi students studied with al-Karaki and other Amilis in Persia, including
Mirza Muhammad b. Ali b. Ibrahim Astarabadi (d. 1028AH/1618CE) who studied
with Zahir al-Din, Ibrahim b. Ali b. Abd al-Ali al-Maysi. See Muhammad Muhsin
Tehrani, Al-Mashyakha aw Al-Isnad al-Musaffa, p. 13.
105. Gholsorkhi, Shah Ismail II, p. 47980.
106. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 1, p. 331; Shah Abbas, vol. 1, p. 320.
107. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 2, pp. 71718; Shah Abbas, vol. 2, pp. 6312.
108. Al-Sharifi, Al-Nawaqid, folio 107b.
109. Ibid. folio 102a.
110. Ibid. folios 101b, 102a.
111. See Al-Dharia, vol. 11, p. 151. Mir Husayn, Risala fi Tayin Maqtal Umar, and
Risala fi Qatl Umar, MSS, in Fihrist-i Kitabkhana-yi Majlis-i Shura-yi Milli, collection
3987, nos 3 and 4, pp. 41920, 4238. In Riyad, the treatise is listed under Tayin
Qatl Umar wal-Amal Fihi.
190 Converting Persia
and Modern Times, vol. 3 (Chicago, 1974), p. 50. Lockhart noted that the Safavid
state developed into an absolute monarchy following the usual eastern pattern.
Yet, Lockhart contradicts himself when he points to a sharing or partial sharing of
authority by the ministers and officials in order to prevent a concentration of
power in one particular political faction or household. Hodgson, too, characterized
the political power of Shah Abbas as absolutist. In reality, however, Shah Abbas
succeeded in bringing state offices more closely under his control but he could not
eliminate the local power of the traditional elite in a city like Isfahan.
15. Matthee, The Politics of Trade, pp. 89, 62.
16. John Foran argued that the seventeenth-century Safavids, due to their utilization
of more than one mode of production, particularly the peasant crop-sharing and
the urban petty-commodity, were in a unique position to claim a considerable
proportion of Persias surplus. See John Foran, The Modes of Production Approach
to Seventeenth-Century Iran, IJMES, 20 (1988), pp. 3505. Floor, in contrast with
Foran, noted that the government played a limited role in developing the Safavid
economy. Public investment was limited to irrigation, transport infrastructure and
public construction projects. See Floor, The Economy, p. 62; A Fiscal History, p. 17.
17. Floor, The Economy, p. 61. See also page 55.
18. Ibid. pp, 57, 59.
19. Floor, A Fiscal History, p. 15.
20. See Qadi Ahmad Qummi, Khulasat al-Tavarikh, ed. and tr. Hans Muller, pp. 6, 13,
17, 93.
21. See Alam-ara-yi, vol. 1, p. 331; Shah Abbas, vol. 1, p. 320.
22. See Tabaqat Alam al-Shia: Ihya al-Dathir, p. 59; Shihab al-Din al-Marashi al-Najafi,
Al-Ijaza al-Kabira aw al-Tariq wal-Mahajja ila Thamarat al-Muhja (Qum, 1414AH/
1993CE), pp. 335; Ayan al-Shia, vol. 9, pp. 189; Riyad al-Ulama, vol. 4, pp. 41720.
23. See Baha al-Din al-Amili,Itiqadat, MS, Fihrist-i Nuskhaha-yi Khatti-yi Kitabkhana-
yi Umumi-yi Marashi, ed. Ahmad al-Husayni, collection 7036, no 65, folio 1b; Al-
Dharia, p. 79; Mir Damad, Risala fi Salat al-Juma, MS, Fihrist-i Nuskhaha-yi Khatti-
yi Kitabkhana-yi Umumi-yi Marashi, collection 7036, no. 51, folio 1a.
24. Riyad, vol. 4, p. 417.
25. Ibid. p. 539; Roemer, The Safavid Period, pp. 2667. For more information on the
encounters between Shah Abbas and the Uzbegs around 1009AH/1600CE, see
Abd al-Husayn Navai (ed.), Shah Abbas: Majmuay-i Asnad-i, vol. 1, pp. 162171.
26. Shah Abbas, vol. 1, pp. 5401.
27. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 1, pp. 653, 722, 811, 823; Shah Abbas, vol. 1, p. 539.
28. Floor, The Economy of Safavid Persia, pp. 1415.
29. Abdol-Hosein Zarrinkoob adequately discussed this complex process of
adaptation, cooptation and exchange between the Sufi and the clerical traditions.
See Zarrinkoob, Persian Sufism in Historical Perspective, Iranian Studies, nos 34/
3 (1970), pp. 139208; Josteju dar Tasavvuf-i Iran (Tehran, 1366/1987).
30. Stephen P. Blake, Half the World: The Social Architecture of Safavid Isfahan, 15901722
(Costa Mesa, 1999), pp. 267.
Notes 193
31. Ibid. p. 110.
32. Masashi Haneda, The Character of Urbanisation of Isfahan in the Later Safavid
Period, in Charles Melville (ed.), Safavid Persia, pp. 3813.
33. Al-Muhajir, Al-Hijra, p. 181.
34. Arjomand, The Shadow of God, p. 148.
35. Baha al-Din al-Amili, Jamii Abbasi (Iran, n.d.), pp. 23.
36. Ibid. p. 3.
37. Mir Damad upheld al-Tusis rationalist interpretation of Shiite Tradition. See
Newman, Encyclopaedia Iranica, Damad, p. 625.
38. Bahai drew upon the works of Marifat al-Madhahib and Hadiqat al-Shia by al-
Muqaddas al-Ardabili. See Al-Dharia, vol. 22, pp. 21920.
39. Ibid. vol. 7, pp. 2245.
40. Arjomand, The Shadow, p. 145.
41. Ibid.
42. Luluat al-Bahrayn, p. 26; Ayan, vol. 6, pp. 56, 589.
43. This information is based on Yusuf Tabajas brief description of a newly discovered
manuscript by Husayn b. Abd al-Samad al-Amili, the father of Bahai. The
manuscript is titled Risala fil-Rihla. We learn for the first time that al-Shahid al-
Thani had advised Husayn b. Abd al-Samad and a number of his students to
leave Jabal Amil to Iraq and Persia after 956AH/1549CE. See Tabaja, Majahil al-
Tarikh al-Amili fil-Qarn al-Sadis Ashar, pp. 23.
44. Ayan, vol. 9, p. 240; Baha al-Din, Kashkul, vol. 1, p. 213.
45. Ibid. p. 212.
46. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 1, pp. 2478; Shah Abbas, vol. 1, pp. 2489; Muhammad Yusuf wa
Alih Isfahani, Khuld-i Barin, ed. M. H. Mohaddith (Tehran, 1372/1993), pp. 4345.
47. Andrew Newman, Toward a Reconsideration of the Isfahan School of
Philosophy: Shaykh Bahai and the Role of the Safawid Ulama, Studia Iranica,
vol. 15 (1986), pp. 16598.
48. Devin Stewart, The Lost Biography of Baha al-Din al-Amili and the Reign of
Shah Ismail II in Safavid Historiography, Iranian Studies, 2/31 (1998), pp. 1878;
Dalal Abbas, Baha al-Din al-Amili Adiban wa Faqihan wa Aliman (Beirut, 1995), pp.
11738. Stewart noted convincingly that Bahais entire journey in Ottoman lands
took less than nineteen months. Abbas dealt in depth with this issue arriving at
conclusions similar to Stewarts, arguing that Bahais travels within and outside
Persia took four years.
49. Muhammad al-Hurr Amili, Amal al-Amil fi Ulama Jabal Amil, vol. 1 (Najaf, 1385/
1965), pp. 15560; Riyad, vol. 5, pp. 8897; Ayan al-Shia, vol. 9, pp. 23449; Luluat,
pp. 1623; Rawdat, vol. 7, p. 58; Alam-ara-yi, vol. 1, pp. 2478; Shah Abbas, vol. 1,
pp. 2479.
50. Rawdat, vol. 7, p. 58; Riyad, vol. 5, pp. 8897; Ayan, vol. 9, pp. 23449. Husayn al-
Karaki stated that together with his teacher, Bahai, he traveled to Herat allati kana
sabiqan huwa wa-waliduhu fiha shaykh al-Islam, which can be translated as where
he and his father were shuyukh al-Islam or where he and his father, the shaykh al-
194 Converting Persia
Islam, resided. In my dissertation, I was inclined toward the first reading of this
statement. But I have found no solid references to Bahai as the shaykh al-Islam of
Herat after his father left Persia. This clearly converges with Stewarts position
and suggestions. We know that Shah Tahmasb gave permission to Husayn b. Abd
al-Samad to go on pilgrimage, in other words, to leave Persia permanently in
983AH/1575CE, but he denied such permission to Bahai. It may be that the Shah
wanted Bahai to take up his fathers post or a similar post in another region. See
Ayan, vol. 6, p. 58; See Stewart, A Biographical Notice, pp. 56371; Abbas, Baha
al-Din, pp. 11516.
51. Al-Dharia, p. 321.
52. See Abbas, Baha al-Din, pp. 1246.
53. Ibid. pp. 11719, 13940; Ayan, vol. 6, p. 469.
54. Baha al-Din, Kashkul, vol. 1, pp. 2389.
55. Abbas, Baha al-Din, pp. 1246.
56. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 1, pp. 2312; Shah Abbas, vol. 1, pp. 2334.
57. Khulasat al-Tavarikh, pp. 6, 13, 17, 934. Qummi refers to Bahai only twice.
58. Stephen P. Blake suggested that Shah Abbas moved the capital to Isfahan in 999AH/
1590CE, that is, seven to eight years earlier than the official date presented by
Persian historians. See Blake, Half the World, pp. 267. Despite the validity of Blakes
argument, I believe that the Shahs seat of power became formally based in Isfahan
in 15978CE, that is, several years after he took the decision to move to Isfahan
and start major renovations and constructions in its urban quarters.
59. Amal, vol. 1, p. 169; Ayan, vol. 10, pp. 1011; Taliqat Amal, pp. 734.
60. Riyad, vol. 5, pp. 1345; Ayan, vol. 1, p. 169.
61. See John Perrys article, Forced Migration in Iran during the Seventeenth and
Eighteenth Centuries, Iranian Studies, 8 (Autumn, 1975). Moreover, Alam-ara-yi,
vols 1 and 2, the number of references that Munshi makes to Abbass use of this
policy exceed greatly such references to the use of that policy by his predecessors.
62. Ibid. p. 206.
63. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 2, pp. 10801; Shah Abbas, vol. 2, pp. 8567.
64. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 2, pp. 10801; Shah Abbas, vol. 2, p. 857.
65. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 2, pp. 10586; Shah Abbas, vol. 2, p. 860. Apparently, the Shah
was unable to reside in the once flourishing city of Nakhshevan during one of his
military campaigns for its hamlets and fields were stripped of fertility. See also
Perry, Forced Migration, pp. 2067.
66. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 2, p. 1084; Shah Abbas, vol. 2, p. 859.
67. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 2, p. 1212; Shah Abbas, vol. 2, p. 930.
68. Perry, Forced Migration, pp. 2067; Muhammad Muhsin Mustawfi, Zubdat al-
Tavarikh, pp. 70, 73.
69. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 2, pp. 11011102; Shah Abbas, vol. 2, p. 869.
70. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 2, pp. 11012; Shah Abbas, vol. 2, p. 869.
71. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 2, p. 1442; Shah Abbas, vol. 2, p. 1088.
72. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 2, p. 14423; Shah Abbas, vol. 2, p. 1089.
Notes 195
73. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 2, 14412; Shah Abbas, vol. 2, p. 1087.
74. James Reid, Studies in Safavid Mind, Society and Culture (Costa Mesa, 2000), pp.
3056, 308. Reid noted that the qizilbash in particular levied soldiers who performed
military service because the chieftain considered such service as an exaction due
him in his role as the master and patron.
75. Floor, Safavid Government Institutions, pp. 1367.
76. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 2, p. 1454; Shah Abbas, vol. 2, pp. 10956.
77. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 3, p. 151920; Shah Abbas, vol. 2, p. 1138.
78. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 3, pp. 15889; Shah Abbas, vol. 2, p. 1181.
79. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 3, pp. 15889; Shah Abbas, vol. 2, pp. 11812.
80. Baha al-Din, Risala fi Hukm Dhabaih Ahl al-Kitab, in Kalimat al-Muhaqqiqin (Qum,
1402), pp. 52630; Al-Dharia, vol. 10, pp. 34.
81. Baha al-Din, Risala fi Hukm Dhabaih, pp. 5267.
82. Luluat, p. 58.
83. Edmund Herzig, The Rise of the Julfa Merchants in the Late Sixteenth Century,
in Charles Melville (ed.), Safavid Persia: The History and Politics of an Islamic Society
(London, 1996), p. 315.
84. The treatise is entitled Risala fi Nijasat Dhabaih al-Kuffar wa Sanaiihim (Treatise
on the Impurity of the Slaughter Animals of the Infidels and their Hand-made
Objects). Bahai seems to have written two treatises on dhabaih. The Risala fi Nijasat
must be a different treatise from Risala fi Hukm Dhabaih, because the former
includes a section on the handmade items of Christians and Jews, which the latter
does not address.
85. Arberry, The Koran Interpreted, p. 100.
86. Muhammad Rashid Rida, Tafsir al-Manar (Cairo, 1375/1955), pp. 113, 17778.
87. Luluat, p. 47.
88. Baha al-Din, Hurmat Dhabaih Ahl al-Kitab, ed. Zuhayr al-Araji (Beirut, 1410/1990),
p. 44.
89. Ibid. pp. 634.
90. Ibid. p. 73.
91. Ibid. p. 74.
92. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 2, pp. 14224; Shah Abbas, vol. 2, pp. 10756.
93. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 2, p. 1442; Shah Abbas, vol. 2, p. 1088.
94. Baha al-Din, Pasukh-i Bahai ba Shah Abbas [or Jawab-i Shaykh Bahai ba Hakim-
i Gilan], MS, Fihrist-i Kitabkhana-yi Madrasa-yi Ali-i Sipahsalar, eds. Ibn Yusuf Shirazi
et al., collection 8150 (Tehran, 131556/193677), fol. 1a.
95. Sir John Chardins Travels in Persia, edited and introduced by R. Percy Sykes (London,
1927), p. 281.
96. Baha al-Din, Pasukh-i Bahai ba Shah Abbas, fol. 1a.
97. Ibid. folio 1b.
98. Ibid. folio 2a.
99. Baha al-Din, Pasukh-i Bahai, pp. 2812. This work is also known as Al-Jam wa
al-Tawfiq bayn al-Fatwayayn.
196 Converting Persia
189. Laurence, European Contacts, p. 393. For more information on the involvement
of the East India Company in the assault against the Portuguese, see pages 4446.
190. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 3, pp. 15889; Shah Abbas, vol. 2, p. 1181.
191. Ibid.
192. Alavi Amili, Misqal-i Safa, pp. 1145.
193. Ibid. p. 24.
194. Ibid. pp. 6568.
195. Ibid. pp. 545, 1235.
196. Ahamd Alavi, Latiif-i Ghaybiyeh, pp. 185, 208, 251, 336, 354, 365, 425.
197. Alavi Amili, Misqal-i Safa, p. 21.
198. Rawdat, vol. 1, p. 78. Khwansari noted that Lutfullah came to Persia at early age
(awail umrih). His father, Abd al-Karim al-Maysi (alive in 984AH/1576CE), was
at the Ridawiyya shrine in Mashhad around 981AH/1573CE where he had copied
a section of Uqud al-Malik. Riyad, vol. 4, pp. 417420.
199. Riyad, vol. 4, p. 418; Alam-ara-yi, vol. 1, pp. 24950; Shah Abbas, vol. 1, p. 249;
Ayan, vol. 9, p. 38.
200. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 2, p. 1417; Shah Abbas, vol. 2, p. 1070.
201. Riyad, vol. 4, p. 418.
202. Riyad, vol. 4, pp. 41720.
203. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 3, pp. 16745; Shah Abbas, vol. 2, pp. 122930. Munshis historical
account at the time of Shah Abbas I lacks much of the political dispute so evident
in the early confrontations between the Amili ulama and court officials.
204. Ibid.
205. Riyad, vol. 4, p. 417.
206. Ibid. folio 9b.
207. Mulla Jalal, Tarikh-i Abbasi ya Ruznameh-yi, pp. 1134.
208. See R. D. McChesney, Four Sources on Shah Abbass Buildings in Isfahan,
Muqarnas V: An Annual on Islamic Art and Architecture (E. J. Brill, 1988), pp. 11719.
209. Masashi Haneda, The Character of the Urbanisation of Isfahan in the Later Safavid
Period, in Safavid Persia, pp. 3813; Blake, Half the World, pp. 223, 1501. Haneda
and Blake successfully show the elements of negotiation between the Shah and
the traditional urban elite in Isfahan.
210. Blake, Half the World, p. 23.
211. Tarikh-i Abbasi ya Ruznameh-yi, p. 412; Alam-ara-yi Abbasi, vol. 3, p. 1674; Shah
Abbas, vol. 2, pp. 122930.
212. Mahmud b. Hidayatullah Afushtai Natanzi, Naqawat al-Athar fi Dhikr al-Akhyar,
ed. Ihsan Ishraqi (Tehran, 1350/1931), p. 539.
213. Blake, Half the World, p. 150.
214. Lutfullah al-Maysi al-Amili, Al-Itikafiyya [also known as Ma al-Hayat wa Safi
al-Furat], MS, in M. T. Danishpazhuh, Fihrist-i Nusakh-i Khatti-yi Kitabkhana-yi
Astana-yi Muqaddasa-yi Qum, collection 2244 (Qum, 1355), no. 34, folio 1b.
215. Blake, Half the World, p. 148.
216. Ibid. pp. 107, 1134.
Notes 201
217. Mehdi Keyvani, Artisans and Guild Life in the Later Safavid Period: Contributions to
the Social-Economic History of Persia (Berlin, 1982), p. 125.
218. Ibid. p. 142.
219. Ibid. p. 125. The extent to which a trade or craft is spread in the city depended to a
certain extent on how profitable and esteemed it was for the Safavid Shahs.
220. Ibid. p. 145.
221. Lutfullah al-Maysi, Al-Itikafiyya, folio 1b. Lutfullah addresses one anonymous
guildsman as the main agitator against him, yet his treatise is replete with references
to artisans, and a merchant who tried to rally some sayyids and notables to their
cause.
222. Ibid. folio 9a.
223. Similar remarks were made by Ali b. Zayn al-Din al-Amili, half a century later
and under different conditions.
224. Ibid. The Arabic sentence reads idh qad ishtahara bi-Khurasan wal-Iraq bianna sahib
al-dawla wal-ashwaq.
225. Lutfullah, Al-Itikafiyya, folio 10a. R. D. McChesney doubted that Shah Abbas
had built such a mosque for Lutfullah al-Maysi. The latters direct quotations from
the Shah in Al-Itikafiyya, however, discount such doubts. Lutfullah Hunarfar
and Stephen Blakes conclusions in this respect seem more accurate. See Lutfullah
Hunarfar, Ganjina-yi Asar-i Tarikh-i Isfahan (Tehran, 1350/197172); Blake, Half the
World, pp. 1489. Blake correctly noted that Lutfullah lived in the precincts of the
mosque and received a stipend from the imperial household; R. D. McChesney,
Four Sources, pp. 1234.
226. Lutfullah, Al-Itikafiyya, folio 9b.
227. Ibid. folio 1a.
228. The Pilgrim: The Travels of Pietro Della Valle, tr. George Bull (London, 1989), p. 169.
Della Valle noted that the Shah found it favorable to pass around a wine cup to
court visitors during wine-drinking sessions, presumably as an enactment of an
ancient Arab custom.
229. Lutfullah, Al-Itikafiyya, folio 5b. Lutfullah also mentioned with admiration a
number of Persian scholars, particularly Mawlana Abdullah al-Shushtari.
230. Ibid. folios 1b, 9a9b.
231. Al-Itikafiyya, folios 1a1b.
232. See Savory, Iran Under the Safavids, p. 185; Keyvani, Artisans and Guild Life, pp. 40,
1934. Lutfullahs onslaught on the artisans is not unique among the ulama, as I
indicated in previous chapters. It is doubtful whether, as Keyvani suggested, the
ulama, based on the sharia or the Quran, truly honored artisan and craftwork.
Savory also noted the close alliance between the ulama and the artisans which
was supported by inter-marital ties. It is important, however, to distinguish between
various classes of ulama. High-ranking ulama like al-Karaki and Lutfullah al-Maysi
belittled guildsmen and their social rank. In comparison, the lower-ranking ulama,
who enjoyed none of the economic and social privileges of their superiors, tended
to inculcate artisan following and some even worked in the bazaar with them.
202 Converting Persia
233. See Jafariyan, Ilal-i Bar Uftadan-i Safaviyyan (Qum, 1993), p. 318. It is possible that
ahya was first introduced to Persian Shiite rituals by al-Karaki.
234. Ibid. pp. 31321. Jafariyan brought my attention to Lutfullahs treatise on seclusion
and had devoted a chapter for this question in Ilal bar, namely Shaykh Lutfullah
va Risala-yi Itikafiyya.
235. Ibid. folios 1b, 8b. Lutfullah mentions an anonymous artisan or guild master who
directed slander (tashni) and defamation (tashhir) against him.
236. Jafariyan, Ilal-i Bar Uftadan-i, p. 318.
237. See Muhammad Jawad Mughniyya, Fiqh al-Imam Jafar al-Sadiq: Ard wa Istidlal,
part 2, vol. 3 (Beirut, 1402/1982), pp. 34.
238. The Pilgrim, p. 169.
239. Jafariyan, Ilal-e Bar Uftadan-i, pp. 3189.
240. Ibid. Several Shiite scholars accepted Lutfullahs rendering of the term imam adl.
Muhammad al-Hurr al-Amili argued that it was equivalent to a just witness (shahid
adl).
241. Lutfullah, Al-Itikafiyya, folio 2b. Lutfullah accepts the Traditions transmitted by
al-Halabi on seclusion.
242. Ibid. folios 3a, 6a, 9a9b.
243. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 2, p. 1417; Shah Abbas, vol. 2, p. 1070.
244. See L. Langles (ed.), Voyages du Chevalier Chardin, vol. 7, pp. 31920. See also
Chardins description of the madrasa of Lutfullah, p. 363.
31. On the insurrection of the sayyids of Gilan, who raised messianic claims, see Shah
Abbas, vol. 2, p. 1174; Alam-ara-yi, vol. 3, pp. 15745. Around 1029AH/161920CE,
a leader of the province of Duraq proclaimed himself the deputy of the Hidden
Imam and appointed agents.
32. James J. Reid, Studies in Safavid Mind, Society and Culture (Costa Mesa, 2000), pp.
2302, 2478. Reid questioned peasant support of the ambitions of a local governor
or commander when no direct or clear advantages for them could be discerned.
33. Shah Abbas, vol. 2, p. 1059; Alam-ara-yi, vol. 2, p. 1401.
34. Shah Abbas, vol. 2, p. 1063; Alam-ara-yi, vol. 2, p. 1406.
35. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 3, pp. 141920; Shah Abbas, vol. 2, p. 1073.
36. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 3, p. 1478; Shah Abbas, vol. 2, p. 1111.
37. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 2, pp. 14778; Shah Abbas, vol. 2, pp. 111112.
38. Floor, The Secular Judicial System in Safavid Persia, Studia Iranica, 1/29 (2000),
pp. 1415.
39. Ibid. p. 15.
40. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 3, pp. 16503; Shah Abbas, vol. 2, pp. 121819.
41. Ibid.
42. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 3, p. 1668; Shah Abbas, vol. 2, p. 1226.
43. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 3, pp. 15789, 1696; Shah Abbas, vol. 2, pp. 1176, 1243.
44. Floor, The Secular Judicial System, p. 16.
45. Ibid.
46. Abbasnameh, pp. 1901.
47. Floor, The Secular Judicial System, pp. 1617.
48. Ibid. p. 18.
49. Floor, The Economy, pp. 5960.
50. Abbasnameh, p. 307.
51. Ibid. pp. 623.
52. Reid, Safavid Mind, pp. 3067.
53. Floor, The Secular Judicial System, p. 18.
54. Reid, Safavid Mind, p. 362.
55. Floor, The Economy, p. 34.
56. New material based on provincial histories of the period and names of scholars
and clerics buried in several Iranian cemeteries revealed more Amili names than
those listed in Appendix II.
57. See Appendix I. Husayn b. Shihab al-Din al-Karaki, Hidayat al-Abrar ila Tariq al-
Aimma al-Athar, ed. Rauf Jamal al-Din (Baghdad, 1977), preface.
58. This account is based on the inextant biographical tract Bughyat al-Murid fi al-
Kashf an Ahwal al-Shaykh Zayn al-Din al-Shahid by Muhammad b. Ali b. al-
Hasan al-Awdi/Udi al-Amili al-Jizzini, a student of al-Shahid al-Thani.
59. Muhammad al-Hurr al-Amili, Amal al-Amil fi ulama Jabal Amil, vol. 2 (Najaf,
1385/1965), p. 16; Safa, Tarikh Jabal Amil, 233; Muhammad Kurd Ali, Khitat al-
Sham (Damascus, 1346/1927), p. 252.
60. Imam Jafar al-Sadiq was asked also to specify his awliya (legal guardians or
Notes 205
acknowledged legal sources) and to identify the righteous among the Shia who
adhere to the teachings of their Imams.
61. Mirza Habibullah married the daughter of Lutfullah al-Maysi.
62. Jamal al-Din grew up in Jabal Amil, emigrated to Mecca, visited Yemenand then
moved to Mashhad. From Mashhad, he moved to Haydarabad. See Ayan, vol. 4,
p. 217.
63. It is unclear whether it was in the late seventeenth or eighteenth century CE.
64. Ibid. folio 12b.
65. Chardin, Voyages, vol. 5, pp. 210212ff.
66. Ibid. pp. 211, 212ff,
67. Ibid. pp. 209210.
68. Ibid. vol. 6, pp. 4445.
69. Ibid. vol. 5, pp. 216217.
70. Ibid. p. 218,
71. Floor, The sadr or head of the Safavid, pp. 468471.
72. See Abbasnameh, p. 89.
73. Savory, Iran Under the Safavids, p. 185; A. K. S. Lambton, Landlord and Peasant in
Persia: A Study of Land Tenure and Land Revenue Administration (Oxford, 1953), pp.
1067. Lambton points to the tendency, at the time of Shah Abbas, to recognize
private property and full rights of disposal, which pushed many to transform
their lands into endowments. The interconnection between religious servicemen
and financial administration is reflected in the fact that the posts of sadr al-sudur,
sadr al-khawas and sadr al-mawqufat, though not dealing directly with the
administration of the sharia, were nonetheless categorized under spiritual posts
(manasib-i ruhani). See Abbasnameh, p. 338.
74. Chardin, Voyages, vol. 4, pp. 2301.
75. Savory, Iran Under the Safavids, p. 186.
76. Lambton, Landlord and Peasant, p. 113; Arjomand, The Shadow of God, p. 200; see
also Foran, Fragile Resistance, p. 28.
77. Fragner, Social and Internal Economic, pp. 5067; Savory, Iran Under the Safavids,
p. 186.
78. Fragner, Social and Internal Economic, p. 506; Floor, A Fiscal History of Iran, pp.
5960.
79. Chardin, Voyages, vol. 6, p. 6566; Lambton, Landlord and Peasant, pp. 1156, 1267;
Fragner, Social and Internal, pp. 51011. The small suyurghals were not generated
exclusively from state land but also from waqf and crown land.
80. Fragner, Social and Internal, p. 514; Floor, Fiscal History, pp. 467. Floor asserts
that since the time of Shah Abbas, and as a result of the practice of transferring
rank and assignments to a relative, the teyul also became hereditary.
81. Rawdat al-Jannat, vol. 2, pp. 11823. Khwansari explains that Mulla Azizullah, one
of the sons of Muhammad Taqi, who was a distinguished religious scholar and
composer of belles-lettres, accumulated so much wealth as to rival the affluent
merchant Mirza Muhammad Taqi Astarabadi.
206 Converting Persia
122. See Lockhart, The Fall of the Safavi Dynasty, pp. 74, 78.
123. Moreen, The Persecution of Iranian Jews, p. 289.
124. Ibid. p. 288. See also Chardin, Voyages, vol. 6, p. 134.
125. See Tadhkirat al-Muluk, pp. 1416.
126. Floor, Safavid Government, p. 142. He was a qurchi-bashi in 102140AH/161231CE.
Also in Zubdat al-Tavarikh, p. 99, it is noted that Fathullah Isfahani was the first
Mustawfi who was a qurchi and was highly regarded at that.
127. Floor, Safavid Government, p. 150.
128. Ibid. p. 151.
129. Alam-ara-yi, vol. 3, p. 1797; Zubdat al-Tavarikh, p. 105.
130. Zubdat al-Tavarikh , p. 105.
131. Qisas al-Khaqani, pp. 212, 524.
132. Abbasnameh, pp. 2989.
133. Matthee, The Career of Muhammad Beg, p. 34.
134. See Muroeh, Al-Nazaat al-Madiyya, vol. 1, pp. 61527, 642. I benefited greatly from
Muroehs assessment of the social and political forces, which led to the evolvement
and promotion of ideas of free will and rationalism in the early period of Islam. As
a corrective to much of the scholarship on Islamic philosophical thought, Muroeh
insists that social reality and class formations underwrite intellectual developments
in a given society. Much in the tradition of Marxism and the themes of The German
Ideology, Muroeh notes that there is no contradiction, fundamentally, between the
[fact] that thought is connected to objective reality or material conditions, and the
relative autonomy of [this thought].
135. Hossein Modarressi, Rationalism and Traditionalism in Shii Jurisprudence, p. 155.
136. Luluat, pp. 117119; Modarressi, Shiite Law, p. 52.
137. See Muhammad Amin Astarabadi, Al-Fawaid al-Madaniyya (Iran, 1321).
138. I concur with Norman Calder and Robert Gleave that akhbarism emerges as a coherent
legal method and gains an exclusive meaning around the time of Astarabadi. I add,
however, a corrective to the process of causation. It is not thinkers or jurists like
Astarabadi who initiated traditionist ideas or the akhbari movement, but rather such
thinkers become the expression of the early maturity of the social conditions defining
such a movement. See Norman Calder, The Structure of Authority in Imami Shii
Jurisprudence, Diss., London University, 1983, p. 231; Robert Gleave, Inevitable Doubt:
Two Theories of Shii Jurisprudence (Leiden, 2000), p. 7.
139. Ali al-Musawis work was published on the margins of Al-Fawaid al-Madaniyya. It
is also known as Al-Fawaid al-Makiyya. See Al-Dharia, vol. 14, pp. 2445.
140. Husayn b. Shihab al-Din al-Karaki, Hidayat al-Abrar ila Tariq al-Aimma al-Athar, ed.
Rauf Jamal al-Din (Najaf, 1396), p. 64.
141. Ibid. pp. 1356.
142. Modarressi, Rationalism and Traditionalism, p. 156.
143. Husayn b. Shihab al-Din, Hidayat al-Abrar, p. 3.
144. Ibid. p. 4.
145. Ibid. pp. 68.
Notes 209
146. Ibid. pp. 1011.
147. Ibid. p. 12.
148. Ibid. pp. 3456.
149. Ibid. pp. 789.
150. Ibid. pp. 1012.
151. Ibid. pp. 1023, 136, 143.
152. See Gleave, Inevitable Doubt, pp. 68. Gleave noted that, first, the central debate
between usulism and akhbarism circled around ijtihad and, second, that akhbarism
promoted an alternative form of scholarly and juridical and, as such, political
authority for the Shiite scholar but did not categorically reject the political activities
of the jurists. During the Safavid period this seems to be the case. The careers of
both Muhammad Baqir Majlisi and al-Hurr al-Amili, discussed in Chapter 5,
illustrate this point.
153. Ali b. Zayn al-Din al-Amili, Al-Siham, folio 14a.
154. Arjomand, The Shadow of God, p. 191.
155. Naturally, doctrinal and legal exchanges and appropriations in both directions,
Sunnite and Shiite, have occurred at different phases in response to local historical
demands. In the case of mid seventeenth century CE Persia, the ulamas association
with Safavid temporal authority set the stage for such adaptations from Sunnism
as I explained in Chapter 1.
156. Al-Durr, vol. 2, p. 245.
157. Al-Siham, folio 7b.
158. Ibid. folio 10b.
159. The spread of traditionism among the ulama of Bahrain needs to be studied
thoroughly in connection with internal historical developments within the society
of Bahrain and its relations to the Safavid government.
160. Al-Dharia, vol. 15, pp. 6282. For an accurate depiction of the diverse intellectual
make-up of the ulama at the time, see Khwatunabadi, Vaqayi al-Sinin, pp. 506522.
Look also through the numerous biographical sketches of seventeenth-century
CE scholars in Tehrani, Al-Kawakib al-Muntashira.
161. Roemer, The Safavid Period, p. 302.
162. Nasrabadi, Tadhkirah-yi Nasrabadi, p. 168.
163. Muhammad Masum Shirazi, known as Masum Ali Shah, Taraiq al-Haqaiq, vol. 1,
ed. M. Jafar Mahjub (Iran, 1970), pp. 175, 267.
164. Muhammad Masum Shirazi, Taraiq al-Haqaiq, pp. 175, 177.
165. Sayyid Husayn Nasr, Spiritual Movements, Philosophy, and Theology in the
Safavid Period, in The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 6, p. 690.
166. Ibid. pp. 680, 690.
167. Abbasnameh, p. 184.
168. Al-Kawakib al-Muntashira, p. 277.
169. Abbasnameh, pp. 255, 321.
170. Al-Kawakib, pp. 1468; Al-Dharia, vol. 15, pp. 667, 70, 79.
171. Al-Kawakib, pp. 6712.
210 Converting Persia
130. Ibid. A parallel proverb is included in Majlisi, Bihar al-Anwar, vol. 1 (Tehran, 1956
72), p. 208.
131. See Natanzi, Naqawat al-Athar, p. 514.
132. Zarinkoob, Justeju Dar Tasavvuf-i, p. 311.
133. Jafariyan, Din va Siyasat, pp. 1367. See also al-Dharia, vol. 15, p. 63. Agha Ibrahim
al-Mashhadi wrote his treatise against the observance of Friday prayer in 1120AH/
1708CE.
Conclusion
1. Mir Damad, Al-Qabasat, pp. 437, 4401.
Appendix II: The posts and activities of the migr Amili ulama
1. The same biographical and historical sources listed for Appendix I were utilized
for Appendix II, alongside one additional source, namely Mithalha-yi Sudur-i Safavi:
Bar Resi Kutahi darbare-yi Yek Now az Asnad-i Divani-yi Dore-yi Safavi (Qum, 1353),
by Hossein Modarressi Tabatabai.
8. Amili works of logic were scanty. Previous to the Safavid period, there is one
noteworthy work titled, Al-Luma fi al-Mantiq completed in 838AH/1434CE by
Zayn al-Din b. Muhammad b. Yunus al-Bayadi al-Nabati (d. 877AH/1472CE).
9. It is uncertain whether Mir Damad is its rightful author.
10. The Amilis seemed well exposed to kalam before their advent to Persia as their
legal tracts and fiqh works show. An example of that is Al-Risala al-Najmiyya on
both kalam and fiqh by al-Karaki. However, the true kalam works composed within
a philosophical-theological framework started to surface among the emigrant
Amilis during the early seventeenth century CE.
11. Sayyid Ahmad al-Husayni, the editor of numerous Shiite works and the
cataloguer at Marashi Library in Qum, noted that he had never come across
medical works for Husayn b. Shihab al-Din al-Karaki and does not believe that
such works exist. But we included them here because they are listed in Al-Dharia,
vol. 15, pp. 1367.
12. The few Amili history works which appeared in the seventeenth century CE do
not seem to be shaped by Persian traditions of historical writing. Zayn al-Abidin
b. al-Hasan al-Mashghari, and his brother Ahmad migrated to Iran at a mature
age when they were established jurists. Ahmad spent a long time in Yemen before
he left to Mashhad where he became the shaykh al-Islam in 1104AH/1692CE. The
almost total absence of history works in Jabal Amil , even if we were to accept the
argument that the Ottoman ruler Jamal Pasha burnt thousands of Amili books
that left no evidence of history works, calls for further investigation. In my opinion,
such works by Shiite scholars seemed to have been occasioned by the scholars
close contact to rulers and court life, in this case of Safavid Persia, and consequently
by the new emphasis given to a Shiite interpretation of history.
13. In Al-Durr al-Masluk, Ahmad al-Amili mentions two additional history works,
namely Tarikh Kabir and Tarikh Saghir that are inextant. Ali Naqi Munzavi
explained in Al-Kawakib al-Muntashira, pp. 3132, that Al-Durr al-Masluk might
itself be the Tarikh Kabir, and that Tarikh Saghir may be a reference to Al-Tibr
al-Maskuk, a Persian historical work based on Rawd al-Nazirin fi Ilm al-Awwalin
wa al-Akharin, completed at the Radawi Mahshad in 1087AH/1676CE.
14. Ahmad b. al-Hasan al-Hurr took the title of his work from Rawd al-Manazir fi
Ilm al-Awail wa al-Awakhir by Muhammad b. Shuhna al-Halabi. He changed
its parts and added new sections to it and called it Al-Durr al-Masluk which he
completed in 1086AH/1675CE. He also relied on fifty additional sources. Rawd al-
Nazirin is an abridged universal history of 940 pages divided into 4 parts. In the
first part, Ibn Shuhna covers the period from the creation of man until the death of
the Prophet. The following section covers the history from the Prophets death
until that of the Twelfth Imam in 260AH/874CE. In the same section he mentions
the rightly-guided Caliphs, Fatima, the ulama, and the mujtahids. The third section
highlights the incidents following the death of the Twelfth Imam until Timurid
times in 803AH/1400CE. The final part deals with the calamities and upheavals of
the end of time and the Day of Judgment. See Al-Dharia, vol. 11, pp. 2778.
Notes 219
15. This is a work on the ghazawat (battles) of Haydar al-Karrar, possibly the great
grandfather of the Safavids. It is mentioned in Ayan, vol. 9, p. 364.
16. It is a published work on Shiite creed (usul and furu), and ethics.
17. It is a work of two parts, the first on usul al-din, more specifically kalam, and the
second on usul al-fiqh.
18. It is not clear whether Ijaz al-Asnaf deals with the Quran.
19. Hadaiq presents the genealogies of kings, sayyids and prominent scholars and
men. It was arranged in a somewhat complicated manner, which motivated him
to write the simplified version of it, namely Kashf al-Niqab. See Al-Dharia, vol. 2,
pp. 3712. See also Al-Dharia, vol. 21, pp. 2323.
20. It was published in Fadail al-Sadat. See Al-Dharia, vol. 5, p. 193.
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Index
Al-Amili, Ibn Khwatun, 15, 172 72, 81-6, 141, 148, 153, 156-9, 162-3,
Al-Amili, Jamal al-Din b. Nur al-Din 165-172
Ali, 96, 150, 154, 169 Al-Amili al-Ridawi, Jafar, 96, 148, 155
Al-Amili, Mirza Baha al-Din Muhammad, Al-Baghdadi, Yayha b. Muhammad b.
96, 151, 155 Jarih, 46-7
Al-Amili, Mirza Habibullah b. Husayn Al-Bahrani, Abdullah b. Salih, 124
b. Badr al-Din, 72, 96, 148, 154 Al-Bahrani, Sulayman, 124
Al-Amili, Mirza Kamal al-Din Husayn, Al-Durr al-Manthur, 95, 167
96, 151, 155 Al-Ghazali, Abu Hamid, 34, 76, 110, 118
Al-Amili, Mirza Masum b. Muhammad Al-Habl al-Matin fi Ahkam al-Din, 58,
Mahdi, 105 156, 170
Al-Amili, Mirza Muhammad Jafar b. Al-Hilli, Amir Nimatullah, 17-18
Muhammad Mahdi, 105 Al-Hilli, Ibn Fahd, 128
Al-Amili, Mirza Muhammad Mahdi Al-Ihtijaj, 28
b. Habibullah, 96, 105, 121, 149, Al-Imam al-Mahdi (hidden, awaited
155 Imam), 7, 16, 21-22, 36, 46, 125, 136,
Al-Amili, Mirza Muhammad Shafi b. 138, 52, 80, 82, 126, 130-133, 135,
Baha al-Din, 96, 116, 151, 155, 167- 141, 159
9, 171, 174 Al-Iqaz min al-Haja, 131, 168
Al-Amili, Muhammad Ashraf b. Abd Al-Iqd al-Husayni, 38-39, 160
al-Hasib al-Musawi al-Karaki, 124, Al-Istibsar, 58, 109, 165, 166
151, 167, 168, 170, 171, 174 Al-Ithnaashariyya fi al-Radd ala al-
Al-Amili, Muhammad b. al-Hasan al- Sufiyya, 134, 168
Aynathi, 116 Al-Itikafiyya, 83-4, 162,
Al-Amili, Muhammad b. Ali b. Khwatun, Al-Itiqad, 28
157, 159, 167, 169-171 Al-Jadhawat, 71, 170
Al-Amili, Muhammad b. Ali b. Mahmud Al-Jawahir al-Saniyya, 131, 157
al-Mashghari, 96, 149, 155 Al-Jazairi, Ali b. Hilal, 15
Al-Amili, Muhammad b. Makki (see al- Al-Jazairi, Nimatullah, 116-117, 134-7
Shahid) Al-Kafi, 58, 109, 165, 166, 168
Al-Amili, Nur al-Din Ali b. Abil-Hasan Al-Kirmani, Mawla Awad al-Tustari,
al-Musawi, 71, 147 120, 124
Al-Amili, Zayn al-Din (see al-Shahid al- Al-Mabsut, 107
Thani) Al-Mashhadi, Agha Ibrahim, 138
Al-Amili al-Jubai, Husayn b.Abd al- Al-Maysiyya, 81
Samad, 3, 9, 13, 27, 29, 32-41, 59, Al-Mujtahid, Husayn, 3, 9, 19, 23, 28,
72, 81, 96, 116, 140, 147, 153, 156- 29, 33, 37, 39, 45-49, 51-52, 55, 58,
172, 174 60, 64, 147, 153, 159-162, 164-5,
Al-Amili al-Mashghari, Muhammad b. 167-8
Hasan al-Hurr, 130 Al-Munqidh min al-Dalal, 110
Al-Amili al-Mashghari, Zayn al-Abidin Al-Najafi, Mir Rahmatullah al-Fattal, 60
b. Hasan, 130 Al-Nawaqid fi al-Radd ala al-Rawafid, 44,
Al-Amili al-Maysi, Lutfullah, 3, 55-56, 50
Index 237
Al-Naysaburi, Mirza Muhammad, 120 Al-Zahira, 40, 169
Al-Qabasat, 71, 73, 77, 170 Al-Zawari, Ali b. al-Hasan, 28
Al-Qaim (the riser), 130, 132 Alam-ara-yi Abbasi, 86
Al-Qatifi, Ibrahim, 17, 22 Alavi, Ahmad, 3, 13, 55-6, 58, 70, 72, 79,
Al-Qazvini, Khalil b. Ghazi, 124 101, 130, 148, 150, 153, 158,
Al-Qudami, Zayn al-Din Ali b. Sulayman Aleppo, 34, 74
b. Darwish b. Hatim, 124 Ali Quli Khan, 49
Al-Qummi, Ahmad b. Ishaq, 46 Allahverdi Khan, 101
Al-Rawda al-Bahiyya, 100-1, 158 Amal al-Amil fi Marifat Ulama Jabal
Al-Risala al-Jafariyya, 28, 160 Amil, 95, 167
Al-Risala al-Khaliyya, 71 Amasya Treaty, 15, 42, 56
Al-Ruwaysi, Muhammad b. al-Hasan b. Amili clerical migration, 3, 50, 95, 139
Rajab al-Maqabi, 124 Amilism, 5, 95, 119, 143,
Al-Sab al-Shidad, 71 Aq-Quyunlu, 21
Al-Shahid (or al-Shahid al-Awwal), 11, Aras River, 62
15, 28, 84, 86, 106, 115, 157 Arjomand, Said Amir, 59, 78, 128, 129
Al-Shahid al-Thani, 13, 22, 33, 59, 86, Artisans and Guildsmen, 5, 24-6, 57, 66,
95, 100-2, 106-9, 117, 128, 139, 140, 82-3, 85-6, 92, 95
157, 158, 167, 172 Astane-yi Quds-i Radawi, 124
Al-Shahidi, Ali, 95, 101-2, 110, 113, 115- Astarabadi, Mir Fakhr al-Din Mu-
18, 120, 135, 137, 144, 156-8, 163, hammad Sammaki, 71
165-9, 172 Astarabadi, Jamal al-Din Muhammad,
Al-Shakhuri, Sulayman, 120 17
Al-Sharifi, Mirza Makhdum, 43-6, 49- Astarabadi, Muhammad Amin, 106-7,
50 110, 138, 144, 160, 164,
Al-Shawahid al-Makiyya, 106 Astarabadi, Muhammad Baqir (see Mir
Al-Siham al-Mariqa min Aghrad al- Damad)
Zanadiqa, 110, 168 Astarabadi, Shams al-Din Muhammad,
Al-sultan al-adil (the just ruler), 16, 22, 56
36, 71 Awzan-i Shari, 60, 171
Al-Taftazani, Farid al-Din Ahmad b. Ayn al-Hayat, 135
Yahya, 16 Azerbaijan, 29, 32, 53, 62-3, 90, 92-3, 143
Al-Uqayli, Muhammad Mumin Astar-
abadi, 55 Babayan, Kathryn, 50
Al-Wasiti, Abul-Ala al-Hamadhani, 46 Bada (changeability of Gods will), 76,
Al-wujub al-ayni or ayniyya (obligatory 167
observation of Friday prayer), 21, Baghdad, 15, 17, 46, 74, 86, 93, 105
39, 52, 56, 72, 82, 113-14, 120, 124- Bahai, 3, 40, 41, 48, 56, 58-61, 64-70, 72,
5, 138, 145,161 77, 79, 82, 85, 87, 96, 100, 108-9, 112-
Al-wujub al-takhyiri (optionality of 113, 116, 128, 131, 134-5, 141, 143,
Friday prayer), 21, 38, 39, 52, 56, 140 148, 154, 156-173
Al-Zahrat al-Dhawiyya fi Sharh al-Rawda Bahr al-Hisab, 59, 171
al-Bahiyya, 100, 158 Bahrain, 8, 11-12, 30, 40-41, 80, 110, 124-5
238 Converting Persia
Eclecticism (eclectic), 5, 101, 113, 141-3 Hadith (Tradition), 10, 18, 27-8, 30, 33-4,
Economic Conflicts/Grievance, 105, 111, 58, 73, 77, 82, 85, 106-9, 113, 117, 125,
118, 122, 136, 143, 144 130-4, 138, 165; Ahadith Qudsiyya
Economic Deterioration/Disintegration, Prophetic Traditions, 131, 166
121, 123, 135 Hallajiyya, 134
Index 239
Hamadan, 12, 46 Isfahan, 14, 16, 19, 20, 32, 55-7, 60-2, 64,
Hamawi, Muhammad b. Ishaq, 24 70-2, 80-7, 92-7, 99, 101, 103-5, 113,
Hamza Mirza, 121 115, 122, 124-7, 131, 138, 141, 150,
Hasan Mirza, son of Shah Muhammad 151, 153-5
Khudabanda, 49 Isfahani, Mir Muizz al-Din, 19-20
Haydarabad, 95-6, 154-5 Islamic Authenticity, 10, 12, 27, 112,
Herat, 13-17, 19, 28-9, 32, 39, 40, 43, 49, 139
56, 60, 81, 135, 153, 154 Itikaf (seclusion), 2, 83-6, 141, 162
Hetorodox, 2, 3, 5, 9, 10-13, 20-5, 44,
48, 50-2, 57, 87, 89, 111, 135, 139, Jabal Amil, 2, 3, 7-8, 11-15, 22, 29, 35,
140-2 45, 48, 51, 55-6, 59, 81, 95-6, 102, 115,
Hidayat al-Abrar, 106, 168 127, 130, 139-40
Hilla, 11 Jami al-Maqasid, 28, 157, 167
Hormuz, 79-80 Jamii Abbasi, 85, 158-9
Hulul (incarnation of God), 26, 134 Jawahir al-Uqul, 135
Jerome-Xavier, P. 79
Ibadat (acts of worship), 29, 58, 60, 67, Jews, 1, 2, 47, 63-5, 103-4, 127
72, 82, 139, 159-160,169, Jirmaniyya, 24
Ibn Arabi, Muhyiddin, 118, 136 Jizya (poll tax), 104
Ibn Babuya al-Qummi, 28, 58, 65, 166 Juba, 11, 22, 48, 59, 130
Ibn Tawus, 124 Julfa, 62, 64
Ibrahim Mirza, 49 Juridical/sharia-based/clerical Islam, 1,
Ihya Ulum al-Din, 110 4, 11, 20, 30, 96, 100, 102, 119-20,
Ijtihad (rational inference), 12, 27, 35, 37, 137, 143-4; and Political and Social
46, 51, 68, 71, 81-2, 97, 106-114, 119, Utility, 2, 30, 56-7, 67, 111, 129
126, 132, 134, 138-40, 141, 143-5, Justuju Dar Tasavvuf-i Iran, 5, 114
165; Proto-ijtihadi, 107
Imam Ali, 21, 23, 25, 27, 35, 47, 65, 77, Kaempfer, 97
127 Kalam (dogmatic theology), 14, 58, 79,
Imam Ali al-Hadi, 29 100, 130, 159, 160, 170-1
Imam Hasan al-Askari, 28 Kamarahi, Shaykh Ali, 115, 138
Imam Husyan, 25, 118, 123 Karak Nuh, 11, 15
Imam Jafar al-Sadiq, 24, 33, 85, 96, 118 Karamat (miracles, charismata), 5, 48,
Infidels, 24, 26, 31, 48, 62, 64, 66, 75, 78, 116, 136
104, 110, 128 Kashan, 24, 28, 93, 102, 127, 153, 168,
Inju, Mir Abul-Vali, 70 Kashani, Muhsin al-Fayd, 102, 113, 117,
Intellectual Hybridity, 4, 87, 89, 113, 120, 145,
119-120, 143-4 Kashf al-Hujja, 124
Iraq, 3, 4, 8, 11-13, 15-18, 22, 29, 30, 37, Kashif (Kamal al-Din Husayn Sabzavar),
62, 66, 84, 97, 130, 131, 139-40, 161 25
Iraq Ajam, 18, 37, 161 Kashkul, 59, 134, 169
Irq al-Khil al-Mutanajjis,81 Khalifa Sultan, 99-105, 113, 158
Ishraqi (Illuminationist) Philosophy, 72 Kharaj (land tax), 17, 22, 28, 164
240 Converting Persia
Khassah (crown states), 55, 90-1, 121, 143 Matain al-Mujrimiyya fi Radd al-
Khatam al-Mujtahidin (seal of juris- Sufiyya, 24
consults), 19, 26, 37, 45-6, 51, 109, Matthee, Rudi, 54, 91, 104, 121
140 Mawla Hayrati, 48
Khatunabadi, Mir Saleh, 55 Mawla Muhammad Amin b. Abd al-
Khulasat al-Hisab, 59 Wahhab, 114
Khums (fifth), 36, 118, 131, 162 Mazandaran, 53, 56, 63-4, 90, 99, 122,
Khurasan, 11, 14-16, 18, 24, 32, 37, 40, 127, 143,
56, 62-3, 69, 84, 90, 143, 161 Meydan-i Harun-i Vilayat, 82-3, 86, 141
Khwandamir, 16, 28 Meydan-i Naqsh-i Jahan, 82-3, 141
Khwansari, Jamal al-Din, 120, 125 Meydan-i Shah (new meydan), 57
Kirman, 56, 90, 124 Milal va Nihal, 59, 134, 171
Kitab al-Arbain, 61, 165 Millenarianism/millennial, 8, 12, 20, 87,
92, 94, 114, 120, 131
Lorestan, 56 Mir Ala al-Din Husayn (see Khalifa
Sultan)
Maalim al-Din, 102, 107, 165 Mir Damad, 3, 55-6, 58, 70-79, 81-2, 85-
Madhhab (school of law), 7, 112-113, 124, 141-3, 148
Jafari, 8, 11, 12, 19, 34, 68,168 Mir Findiriski, 89
Sunnite, 27, 34-5, 45, 66 Mir Sayyid Husayn (see Husayn al-
Madrasa (religious school), 9, 14, 22, 57, Mujtahid)
82-4, 87 Mirza Muhsin, 101
Mahdavi, Muslih al-Din, 128 Mirza Rafi al-Din Muhammad, 101
Mahd-i Ulya (Khayr al-Nisa Begum), Misqal-i Safa, 80, 168
14, 53 Mongol, 31, 47
Mahmud Beg Mohrdar, 17 Moreen, Vera, 103-4
Malamatiyya, 115 Muhammad Beg, 93, 103-5
Mir Lawhi, 134 Muhammad Shaibani Khan, 15
Majlisi, Muhammad Baqir or Majlisi al- Mughal Empire, 41, 61, 91, 122
Thani, 123, 125-32, 134-35, 137-38, Mujtahid (jurisconsult), 7, 9, 11, 13, 15-
144-45 17, 19, 21, 23, 30-3, 35-7, 39, 41, 43-
Majlisi, Muhammad Taqi or Majlisi al- 7, 49-51, 60, 64, 68, 71-4, 78, 82, 85,
Awwal, 114, 120 87, 97-8, 106-12, 114-16, 120, 125-6,
Malik Beg Khui, 17 129, 136, 138, 140-45
Mamalik (provinces), 90, 143 Mulla Ali Rida Tajalli, 112
Man la Yahduruhu al-Faqih, 109, 166 Mulla Sadra, 73-6, 78, 89, 113, 115, 125
Mashghara, 130 Munazare-ye Jubai ba Danishmand-i
Mashhad, 14, 16, 32, 39-40, 56, 71, 81, Sunni, 34,168
95, 130, 131, 138, 153-5 Munshi, Iskandar Beg, 19, 29, 40, 62, 86
Mashriq al-Shamsayn wa Iksir al-Saadatayn, Muroeh, Husayn, 2, 74
58, 156 Mutawallis (administrators of religious
Masjid-i Jami, 82-4 endowments), 98
Masjid-i Shah, 82-3
Index 241
Nafahat al-Lahut fi Lan al-Jibt wal-Taghut Prostration (zamin-bus, atabeh-bus), 18,
(Breath of Divinity), 27, 168 20, 29, 168
Nahj al-Balagha, 28, 169
Naini, Mirza Rafi al-Din, 115 Qadi (judge), 9, 17, 19, 22 28, 45, 67, 95,
Najaf, 11, 14-16, 22-3, 60, 81 97-99, 104, 127, 131, 153-5
Najm al-Din Abd al-Baqi, 19 Qadi Ahmad Ghaffari, 19
Najm-e Thani (Yar Ahmad Khuzani), 14 Qadi Mir Husayn Yazdi, 16
Nan va Halva, 134, 169 Qalandaris, 26, 44, 99, 115, 136
Nass (designation), 10 Qandahar, 128
Niyaba (deputyship), 18, 20, 21, 23, 28, Qarabagh, 62
39, 40, 46, 51, 71, 114, 116, 125, 136, Qars, 62
140 Qatif, 12
Niyaba Amma (general vicegerency), 21, Qawaid al-Ahkam, 17, 28, 157
71 Qazvin, 12, 26, 32-3, 39-40, 43, 46, 49,
Newman, Andrew, 50 61, 81-2, 85, 90, 92-3, 96, 113-114,
Nimatullahiyya, 120, 136 116, 124, 143, 153-5
Nuqtaviyya, 120 Qazvini, Muhammad Rida, 126
Qazvini, Mawlana Khalil, 113-114, 133,
Ottoman Empire/Ottomans, 3-5, 7, 9, Qibla (direction of prayer), 18, 29, 33,
11-14, 15-18, 22, 27, 31-6, 42, 44, 50, 37, 51,161
52-6, 60-7, 81-2, 85, 87, 90-1, 95, 103, Qisas al-Ulama, 136
112, 122, 139, 140-43 Qishm, 79-80
Qizilbash, 3, 5, 13, 31-2, 36; Beliefs and
Pari Khanom, daughter of Shah Tahmasb, Practices, 4, 10, 12, 50-2, 89, 139,
41, 49 140-1; and Clerics, 8, 13-15, 18-21,
Peasants, 25, 90, 93, 106; revolts, 91-3, 25, 27, 42-6, 49-50, 52, 100, 140; and
98, 123, 141 Factionalism/Civil Wars, 15, 31-2,
Perry, John, 62 53; and Shah Abbas, 54-5, 61
Persian Aristocracy, 11, 13-15, 17-20, 26, Qum, 47, 114, 127
32, 35-7, 43, 45, 51, 53, 55, 97, 106, Qummi, Muhammad Karim Sharif, 128
112, 119, 140, 144, Qummi, Mulla Muhammad Tahir, 110,
Persian Gulf, 80-1 128, 136
Persianization, 5, 56, 112, 129, 142-3
Philosophy (hikmat), 1, 10, 14, 58-9, 72, Rawafid (recusants), 118
75, 77-9, 96, 100, 113, 116, 119, 136, Rajat (the Mahdis return), 130-31
142, 144, 170 Rashti, Najm al-Din Masud, 14
Pish-namaz or Imam Juma (prayer Rawdat al-Shuhada, 25
leader), 8, 26, 28-9, 60, 82, 86, 95-7, Reid, James, 63, 123
124-5, 127, 153 Reyati, Haj Mahmud, 113
Popular Dissent, 3, 25, 57, 68, 75, 111- Risala fil-Rihla, 13, 172
112, 115, 117, 119-20, 123, 126, 137, Rumi, Jalal al-Din, 116
142-3, 145 Rumlu, 14
Portuguese, 79-80, 87 Rumlu, Hasan-i Beg, 11, 19
242 Converting Persia
Sabzavari, Muhammad Baqir, 113, 115, Shah Suleiman (Shah Safi II), 94, 111,
125 121-22; and al-Hurr al-Amili, 130,
Sadr (administrator of religious endow- 133; and Friday Prayer, 124-25, 126,
ments, sadarat), 13-19, 21, 37, 41, 43- 128
4, 52, 59, 61, 70, 72-8, 89, 96, 99, 104- Shah Sultan Husayn, 122-126, 129
5, 113, 115-16, 125, 127, 131, 140 Shah Tahmasb, 14-15; and Amili Clerics,
Safavi, Masum Beg, 105 8-9, 11, 15, 17-20, 23, 28, 37, 40-1;
Safavid Empire, 7-13, 16-20 and Mania, 38-9; and Politico-
Economic Policies, 42, 49, 89, 100, 104, Religious Transformation, 5, 32-3,
119, 121, 137 39; and Qizilbash-Tajik Relations
Politico-Religious Outlook, 21, 27, 30- 15, 17, 19-20
1, 37, 39, 50-3, 57, 63, 75, 102, 112, Shah Tahmasb II, 138
130, 132, 139-141 Shamlu, 14, 53
Safavid Order, 10, 21, 31 Shaykh al-Islam, 8, 10, 11, 13, 16, 19, 28,
Safavid-Ottoman Conflicts, 4, 52, 140 32, 39, 60-1, 82, 86, 95-7, 104, 111,
Safinat al-Najat, 106, 144 113-14, 116, 126-27, 131, 138, 153-5
Saru Taqi, 90, 99-100 Sheikhavand, Isa Khan, 105
Sayyid (Sayyids), 17, 36, 42-3, 45-6, 59, Shiism, Folk,/Popular, 8, 24-25, 31, 52,
71, 83, 90, 98, 124, 132-140 57, 140, 169; Orthodox, 3, 5, 9, 11,
Sayyid Muhammad Jabal Amili, 29 13, 20, 24-5, 50, 57, 135, 136; Sharia-
Shah Abbas I, 49, 54-5, 57, 78, 82, 89, based (see Juridical Islam)
92-3; and Conversion, 64, 66-7, 80- Shiite Eschatology, 47, 73, 129, 131, 137,
1; and the Clerics, 55-6, 67-70, 71-2, 145
74, 78, 83-4, 87-8; and Depopu- Shiite government, 2, 7, 12, 16, 22, 86,
lation-Forced Migration, 61-4, 87; 112, 125-6, 142, 144, 145, 163
and the Qizilbash, 42-3, 54-5; and Shiite-Sunnite Polemics, 2, 11, 29, 33-5,
Shiitization, 5, 56-9 40, 50, 59, 79-80, 110, 132, 143-4, 168
Shah Abbas II, 83, 89, 91-100, 102-3, 111, Shiraz, 12, 43, 56, 62, 97, 114, 126, 138
115, 119, 121, 124, 129, 133-4, 143, Shirazi, Sadr al-Din (see Mulla Sadra)
145 Shirvan, 63
Shah Ismail I, 8, 10, 15-16, 130; and the Shirwani, Akhund Mirza, 110, 125
Clerics, 21-22, 25, 30; and the Shushtari, Abdullah, known as al-
Persian Notables, 13-14; and the Shahid al-Thalith, 81, 86
Qizilbash, 14, 31-2 Shushtari, Mir Shams al-Din Asadullah
Shah Ismail II, 36; and the Clerics, 41- Marashi, 19, 20
2, 45, 46, 48-9; and the Qizilbash, Shuubiyya (glorification of the Persian
42-4, 48-9 civilization), 84
Shah Muhammad Khudabanda, 53, 60, Siyagh al-Uqud wal-Iqaat, 81, 163
71 Spicehandler, Ezra, 103
Shah Safi, 111; and Eclecticism, 113, 119, Stanfield-Johnson, Rosemary, 11, 26
143; and Economic Policies, 89-91, Suhravardi, Shihab al-Din Yahya, 72-75,
93, 98, 105, 143; and Amilism, 95; 142
and Dissent, 112-115, 119, 145 Sultan Abdullah Qutbshah, 61
Index 243
Sultan Suleiman, 15, 29, 33 Ulama (alim, religious scholar), economic
Sufism, 5, 10, 11, 16, 24-6, 29, 31-2, 44, privileges, 5, 19, 22-3, 30, 36, 45, 98,
47-8, 50, 57-60, 68, 72, 76, 78, 87, 89, 119, 124, 143; philosophically and
95-8, 102-3, 111-120, 123, 125-8, 131, Sufi bent, 4, 89, 96, 102-4, 112-15, 117,
134-41, 143, 145, 168, 171 119-20, 124-26, 128, 134, 138, 143-5
Suyurghals (land grants), 22, 42, 49, 98, Ulama Tekellu, 32
99, 112 Umar, second Caliph, 7, 18, 27, 34-5,
Syria, 3, 8, 13, 15, 34, 55, 58, 60, 65, 95, 44-7
96, 139 Umdat al-Maqal fi Kufr Ahl al-Dalal, 26,
168
Tabarraiyan (ritual cursing), 18, 24, 26- Ustajalu, 14, 41-3, 49, 53,
7, 34-5, 42-50, 118, 132 Usuli (jurisprudence), 10-12, 14, 34, 44,
Tabriz, 17, 21, 28, 53, 56, 92, 153 81-2, 107-9, 113, 127, 129, 137, 165
Tabrizi, Mulla Ali Rajab, 113, 125 Usul al-Kafi, 58
Tabsirat al-Muminin, 128 Usuliyya/Usuli (rationalism), 4, 15, 32,
Tafsir al-Quran, 28 35, 37, 51, 75, 81, 119-20, 125-6, 129,
Tahdhib al-Ahkam, 58, 109, 166 130, 132, 134, 144-5, 168
Talib Khan, 101 Usuli-akhbari controversy, 59, 106, 108-
Taqlid (imitation), 37, 108, 165 9, 105-111, 113-15, 117, 125, 132,
Tarjumeh-i Qutbshahiyya, 61 137-8
Tehran, 49, 96, 154 Uthman, fourth Caliph, 7, 18, 35, 44
Tekellu, 14, 43, 49, 53
Tiyul (military fiefs), 90, 98 Yaqub Khan, 43
Tobacco, 133-4, 164 Yazd, 19, 90, 114, 127, 143, 153
Transoxiana, 15, 29 Yazdi, Mulla Husayn, 113
Tuhfat al-Akhyar, 136 Yazdi, Mulla Muhammad Muqim, 114
Tunikabuni Sarab, Akhund Muhammad, Yazdi, Qadi Mir Husayn, 16
113, 125
Turkoman, 4, 8, 13, 14, 18, 19, 41, 43, 47, Zangineh, Ali Khan, 125
49, 53, 54, 90 Zarneshad, 62
Tustari, Mawla Hasan Ali, 120 Zeinab Begum, daughter of Shah Tah-
masb, 101-2
Ubayd Khan Uzbek, 29 Zoroastrians, 47, 65, 104