In recent years, political scientists, historians, and religionists have referred to a "Zaydi revival" in contemporary Northern Yemen. Pointing to such phenomena as the formation of Zaydi educational institutes and heritage foundations and the publication of Zaydi educational pamphlets, scholars have suggested that "Neo-Zaydi" 'ulama' have attempted to assert their influence in the public sphere to respond to the challenge posed by the modern nation state on the one hand, and alternative streams of Islam on the other. Such studies thus portray contemporary Zaydism as, at base, a political identity born in the modern period. This paper discusses aspects of the scholarly life of the Zaydi 'ulama' in Northern Yemen which run against the grain of this characterization. Based on my discussions with Zaydi 'ulama' and participation in Zaydi durus (lessons) during the summer of 2009, and the readership statements on manuscript codices from the past two centuries, I argue that the curriculum, form, and methods of contemporary Zaydi scholarship betray strong continuities with its past. In this presentation, I will describe how the contemporary Zaydi dars (lesson) employs a number of old and durable scholastic techniques--qira'a (reading), sharh (commentary), mujadala (disputation), ijaza (license)--to connect scholars present to preceding generations. These techniques engender sets of relationships which form a crucial identity of the contemporary Zaydi scholar: as the recipient of an intellectual heritage from the scholarly benefactors of past generations. This paper thus provides a humanistic counter-weight to social science scholarship's tendency to reduce contemporary Zaydism to a political identity.