The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought

source of emulation

For more than a century, the term marja‘ al-taqlīd, or “source of emulation,” has been used to designate the highest position of clerical authority in Twelver Shi‘i Islam, indicating that the jurist-scholar (faqīh) acts as the primary source (marja‘) of religious instruction and imitation (taqlīd) for lay followers (muqallids). In addition to providing instruction in following the dictates of Islamic law, the marja‘ is also responsible for the collection of religious taxes (zakat and khums) and their redistribution to the networks of charitable institutions, seminaries, and students over which he presides. Despite this clear hierarchical structure, the marja‘ achieves his position not through a formal institution but instead through what sociologist Said Arjomand calls a “hierarchy of deference” wherein the community of mujtahids, jurists capable of issuing religious opinions (fatwas), acknowledges the superior learning (a‘lamiyya) of a particular jurist and chooses him as their own religious reference. (Although given his own capability, a mujtahid does not need to follow a marja‘ but does so out of respect.) This process can lead to the presence of single or multiple sources of emulation in any given period. Of course, in addition to excelling in all areas of Islamic scholarship and especially in jurisprudence, a marja‘ must be ṣāliḥ (pious) and ‘ādil (of just character).

The institutionalization of the marja‘ al-taqlīd, like other major developments in contemporary Shi‘ism, coincided with the rapid decentralization of Iranian social and political structures under the Qajar dynasty (1789–1925). It was also the outgrowth of the fracturing of the Twelver Shi‘i community as seen in the rise of Shaykhism and Babism, the religious movements originating with Shaykh Ahmad al-Ahsa’i and Sayyid ‘Ali Muhammad Shirazi, respectively, that ultimately led to the development of the Baha’i religion. However, the doctrinal underpinnings of the institution and the clerical authority that supports it are rooted in the classic jurisprudential struggle to define a legitimate hermeneutical method of discerning Islamic legal ordinances during the Occultation of the Twelfth Imam. Identifying the basis of the authority of Twelver Shi‘i jurists—who act as the curators of the divine law—as the general representatives (al-nā’ib al-‘āmm) of the Imam therefore becomes a necessary attendant question. These classic jurisprudential debates were reinvigorated during and after the Safavid period (1501–1722) in what has come to be known as the Akhbari-Usuli conflict.

Deriving its name from the term for texts or reports (akhbār) of the imams’ words or deeds, the Akhbari school restricted the basis of the law to scriptural proof texts, quotes from sacred literature, arguing that legal injunctions and ordinances could not surpass or limit what was explicitly recorded in the Qur’an or in the reports of the Prophet and his legitimate successors, the Twelver imams. The Akhbari school thus rejected ijtihād, even when performed by a highly qualified jurist, as a source of law. In contrast, the Usuli school, a label that derives from uṣūl al-fiqh or “the roots of the law,” argued that a process of legal interpretation that included rational operations was the best method to understand God’s law in shifting contexts and thus ensure the application and survival of the Divine Law throughout time. This logic also underlies the mandate that only a living marja‘ can offer a religious opinion and that it is forbidden for the lay Shi‘i to follow the opinions of a past authority. Building upon the efforts of Agha Muhammad Baqir al-Bihbihani (d. 1793), who managed to cast Akhbaris as heretics, the Usuli jurist Shaykh Muhammad Hasan al-Najafi (d. 1849) is credited with heralding the demise of the most recent Akhbari intellectual movement. After his time, Akhbarism survived only in marginal settings in the Shi‘i world, particularly in Bahrain.

These theological debates were concomitant with structural changes in the world of 19th-century Shi‘i jurists. For example, in addition to providing intellectual grounds for the defeat of Akhbaris, Najafi was also the first mujtahid to delegate his clerical authority to lower-ranking scholars in other urban centers. Having a network of representatives, he thus created a centralized system of khums collection and legal administration that provided a source of income and political power that surpassed formal political boundaries and ensured clerical independence from state authorities. He also was the first to appoint a successor, Ayatollah Murtada al-Ansari (d. 1864)—generally recognized as the first to bear the title marja‘ al-taqlīd—as the chief mujtahid of the Twelver community. Between Najafi and Ansari’s jurisprudential and administrative contributions lie the clearest precedents for the contemporary Shi‘i hierocracy. It is no surprise, then, that Ansari’s student and successor, Ayatollah Hasan al-Shirazi (d. 1895), used the power vested in him by such a system in his famous fatwa against the tobacco concession granted to the British by the shah of Iran in 1891.

With the consolidation of the clerical establishment, doctrinal justification of religious authority naturally became a topic of Usuli jurisprudence. Among the first to provide coherence to the otherwise ambiguous arrangement of general clerical authority (al-wilāya al-‘āmma) was Mulla Ahmad al-Naraqi (d. 1829) in a wide-ranging treatise on Shi‘i jurisprudence titled ‘Awa’id al-Ayyam (Expectations of the millennium). True to his Usuli schooling, Naraqi justified the authority of Twelver Shi‘i jurists on more rational grounds (dalīl ‘aqlī) than on explicit textual authority. He wrote, for example, “It is obvious and understood by every common or learned man, that when the messenger of God was on a trip, someone behind him is assigned as his substitute, successor, trustee, [or] proof. . . . This person would be accorded all the powers that the Prophet enjoyed over his community.” Naraqi’s vision was foundational to Ayatollah Khomeini’s infamous treatment of the issue in his exposition of the doctrine of “the guardianship of the jurist” (wilāyat al-faqīh), according to which the constitution of a legitimate state depends on its being headed by a just jurist. Like Naraqi and other Usuli scholars, Khomeini justified his position on the issue through a combination of rational arguments and scriptural proof texts. His elaborations on Naraqi’s points should not be seen, then, as a spontaneous innovation. Rather, in the 150 years between Naraqi and Khomeini, the question of wilāyat al-faqīh had become an important question in Usuli jurisprudence that leading scholars addressed in different ways.

Khomeini’s joint occupation of the positions of both the singular temporal leader (rahbar) and marja‘ al-taqlīd was a unique development in Twelver Shi‘i Islam. Both before and after Khomeini’s occupation of the position of head of state, other sources of emulation in and outside of Iran were divided in their support of wilāyat al-faqīh, and the doctrine never received the unanimous sanction that its supporters sought. The requirement that the rahbar be the leading marja‘ was dropped from the Iranian Constitution shortly before Khomeini’s death in 1989, and though ‘Ali Khamene’i, Khomeini’s successor as head of state, eventually became recognized by his devotees as a marja‘, his status as such remains a heated point of contention among many clergy and lay followers. Ironically, the fusion of state and religious institutions in the Iranian experiment has had the counterintuitive effect of further decentralizing the Shi‘i religious establishment. Whereas the marja‘ al-taqlīd in much of the 19th and 20th centuries was an office held exclusively by one figure, in the early 21st century there were multiple sources of emulation throughout the Shi‘i world, divided once again on the question of the relationship between political and religious authority.