Since the ninth century, Shii Muslims have grappled with the question of authority in the absence of a physically present Imam. Today guidance is provided to the Shii community by religious leaders (mujtahids) who rely on rational techniques of deriving new rulings from sacred textual sources. Most scholars date the shift towards rational authority from the late eighteenth century when Vahid Bihbihani’s Usuli (rationalist) school of thought defeated the rival Akhbari (traditionalist) school. Just one generation after Vahid Bihbihani (d. 1791), Usuli scholars excommunicated Shaykh Ahmad Ahsa’i (d. 1825, the founder of the Shaykhi school of thought) from the Shii community for asserting that he derived knowledge directly from the twelfth Imam through intuitive revelation. However, scholars have sidestepped the fact that the founders of the modern rationalist school of thought had made similar claims. Vahid Bihbihani said that a book he had written (entitled Sharh al-mafatih) was given to him in a dream by the twelfth Imam as a scroll. Bihbihani’s most outstanding students, who are considered as the very exponents of Shii orthodoxy, made similar claims. Bahr al-‘Ulum (d. 1797), who was Shaykh Ahmad Ahsa’i’s most influential teacher and a student of Bihbihani, is well-known for his claims to intuitive revelation. Why then was Shaykh Ahmad cast out of the orthodox community? Based on unpublished manuscripts of Bihbihani’s work, nineteenth century Shii biographical dictionaries, and the work of scholars such as Bahr al-‘Ulum and Shaykh Ahmad Ahsa’i, my paper will argue that, although the founders of modern rational thought claimed to have supernatural access to the twelfth Imam, such claims to authority were on their way out as the nineteenth century began. Usulis elevated knowledge derived by rational means over knowledge derived from intuitive revelation. Conversely, Shaykh Ahmad Ahsa’i preferred intuitive revelation over rational knowledge. Although intuitive knowledge had been essential to Shiism from its inception, nineteenth century Usuli scholars could not allow it to trump the rationalism that they had built their school of thought around. Furthermore, Vahid Bihbihani had introduced the tool of excommunication (takfir) as a means to deal with unorthodox claims to authority. Bihbihani had used this tool against Akhbaris and his students continued the practice against both Shaykhis and Sufis. In broad terms, this paper will provide a better understanding of the development of modern Shii orthodoxy and will explain how the Shii definition of charismatic authority has changed over time.

The aim of this paper is to provide an analytical history of contemporary debates in Arabic surrounding modern political conceptions of wilayat al-faqih (guardianship of the legal scholar) and wilayat al-umma (guardianship of the community). The paper’s central claim—that there exists a rich body of writings among Arab Shi‘i political thinkers that offer critiques of and alternatives to the Iranian version of the just Islamic state—is put forth in two parts. In the first part, I examine debates among Shi‘i intellectuals in Lebanon and Iraq that circulated between 1970, when Khomeini presented a series of lectures in Najaf that became his major work wilayat al-faqih, and the aftermath of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. The paper’s second part looks closely at recent debates among Iraqi and Lebanese Shi‘i Islamists in order both to add complexity and nuance to Nasrallah’s assertions that Hizbullah is the party of wilayat al-faqih and to critically analyze an alternative to Khomeini's Iranian model of the rule of jurists, which is commonly traced to Muhammad Husayn Na'ini and Muhammad Jawad al-Mughniya. Focus on the two periods will allow study of the early and late works of Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah, Muhammad Mahdi Shams al-Din, and Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, and a rich discussion among a number of lesser known clerics in the pages of al-Ghadir, the monthly journal of the Higher Shi‘i Council in Lebanon. Recent contributions by non-clerics--such as Wajih Kawthrani, Farah Musa and Mukhtar al-Asadi--will shed light on the reception of these ideas among a broader Shi‘i intellectual class.

Historically, ayatollahs throughout the Shi‘i diasporic communities have maintained financial autonomy from the ruling elites through the collection of a religious tithe (khums) directly from their Shi‘i followers. Which ayatollah receives this khums tithe is the choice of the individual believer, ostensibly based upon the perceived trustworthy character and intellectual acumen of the ayatollah. The ayatollah should then distribute this money back into the Shi‘i community in the most efficacious way possible. This distribution can occur through religious educational institutions as well as other social service organizations such as clinics or subsidized housing. This symbiotic client-patronage system created by khums reception and redistribution forms the underpinning of the ayatollah’s authority and development of an individual constituency within local and transnational Shi‘i communities. The ayatollahs’s sources of income has had significant socio-economic and political implications, in that they often have rendered the ‘ulama financially, and therefore juristically and intellectually independent, and potentially immune to political manipulation by the ruling elites. Historically, Shi‘i religious authorities have discouraged one ayatollah from following the opinions of another, ensuring intellectual diversity. This financial and intellectual independence of local Shi‘i religious hierarchies distinguishes them from government patronage of the Sunni ‘ulama establishments in Egypt and Saudi Arabia during the contemporary period. However, since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the combination of political and religious authority in the Islamic Republic of Iran has blurred the boundaries of independent intellectual inquiry to the point that the khums is now subsumed under the taxation laws of the state. The effects of the collection and redistribution of the khums by the state, albeit voluntarily, has led to a certain level of uniformity in the Iranian Shi‘i religious leadership that differs from the diversity of opinions on legal and social issues characteristic of the ayatollahs in the Arabic-speaking Shi‘i communities. This paper will contrast the role of khums-collection and distribution in the development of institutional authority and socio-political independence among the ayatollahs of the Arabic-speaking Shi‘i communities and in Iran through a close historical analysis of the writings of ayatollahs Khomeini, Khamenei, Sistani, Fadlallah, Khu’i, Hakim, Montazeri and other lesser-known authorities. By contrasting their theoretical writings with events taking place in their various locales and the system of khums-collection in place, a clearer picture of the socio-political role of khums collection and redistribution will emerge.

This paper describes the role of Shia female authority in post-revolutionary Iran, and their political discourses since the rise of reformists in 1997. By focusing on Azam Taleqani, the paper argues that female Shia authority has carved out a counter-discursive space wherein new ideas of self and reality, justice and mobility are articulated and debated. The paper finally shows how Shia political theology should be understood in terms of an agonistic mode of interaction, rather than a set of male-dominated authorial Hawza spaces in Qom or Najaf.