There exists a considerable bulk of outstanding scholarly research and writings on Shaykhīsm in Western academia, although, like ‘a prophet in her land’, Shaykhīsm has not received the same attention in Iranian academic circles as it has in the West. In spite of significant attention during the Qajar period, the Shaykhī school was the subject of limited intellectual interest during the Pahlavi era, although, on social and political grounds, it benefitted from the so-called secular socio-political atmosphere of the time. On the other hand, in the post-revolutionary era, the school not only lost its high social and economic ranking, but also was almost forgotten by domestic writers and researchers, so much so that the number of scholarly writings on Shaykhīsm can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
In the Western context, Comte de Gobineau, A. L. M. Nicolas and E. G. Browne (Richard, 2021, p. 340) are pioneers and forerunners, followed by Henry Corbin (d. 1978),[1] whose works opened the door for the next generation, chief among them Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, who shares Corbin’s interests in the study of Shīʿīsm, including minor references to the Shaykhī school.[2] Corbin diverges from his predecessors, the orientalists who had more or less taken for granted the closure or demise of Islamic philosophy after Ghazali (d. 505 H/1111). For him, Islamic philosophy not only survived Ghazali’s critiques, but also in the Eastern part of Islamic civilization it lived a vibrant life, with much to offer the West. Adopting phenomenology as his approach, Corbin shows how Islamic philosophy, unlike what his peers had argued, “preserved vital elements of the Gnostic tradition, [and] it did not go along with the radical separation between “reason and revelation” that had informed mainstream Western thought at least since the Renaissance” (Landolt, p. 484). Esoteric Shīʿīsm in general and the Shaykhī school in particular, therefore, were the genuine representatives of this heritage that had been vanished in the West.
Amir-Moezzi’s contribution to classical Shīʿīsm is massive and undeniable, although alongside Shīʿa studies, he has written on more contemporary trends including the Shaykhī school. His article “Remarques sur les critères d'authenticité du hadîth et l'autorité du juriste dans le shi'isme imâmite”, is innovative, as it sheds light on ḥadīth in the Shaykhī school, indeed an insufficiently covered subject. His book Divine Guide in Early Shi’ism: the Sources of Esotericism in Islam, has some references to Shaykhī teachings, when the Shaykhī writers, along with other esoterically-inclined thinkers, chief among them Ismāʾīlīs, criticize the Shīʿī rationalists.[3] To understand a religious phenomenon better, Amir-Moezzi argues, one needs to pay attention to the ways in which believers understood their religion and how they put their belief into action (Mutaqī, 1399 Shamsī/2020).
Dennis Hermann’s entire body of writings, including two books, Kirmānī Shaykhism and the Ijtihād: A Study of Abū al-Qāsim Khān Ibrāhīmī’s Ijtihad Wa Taqlid[4], and Le shaykhisme à la période qajare: Histoire sociale et doctrinale d'une Ecole chiite,[5] together with an encyclopedia entry, “Shaykhism”,[6] is a valuable addition to the existing scholarship in Shaykhī studies. In the first book, he discusses the Shaykhī narrative of ijtihād as opposed to the uṣūlī approach and shows how the Shaykhī definition of ijtihād was created and developed over centuries as a reaction to the uṣūlī account.[7] In his entry, he provides us with an adequate account of the school, from its formation to its growth and later its flourishing under Aḥsāʾī’s followers.
Hermann is totally right when he maintains that “only after the excommunication of Shaikh Aḥmad Aḥsāʾī, and then his death, could the Šayḵi school truly be said to be born” (Hermann, 2017), which itself is indicative of the fact that any investigation into the school must pay due attention to the uṣūlī factor as the main force behind the formation of what we know as the Shaykhī identity. In his newest writing on Shaykhī studies, Le shaykhisme à la période qajare: Histoire sociale et doctrinale d'une Ecole chiite, Hermann delves into primary sources, including key Shaykhī manuscripts, to study the formation of the school, its development by later generations and its diversification into the three schools of Kerman, Tabriz and Hamedan. Hermann rightly emphasizes the Akhbārī heritage of the Shaykhī initiative in rejecting ijtihād to stay faithful to the tradition or akhbār of the imāms (Hermann, 2017, p. 77).
Hassan Ansari’s all-reductionist outlook, which reduces the school to a piece of extremist ḥadīth (pāra-yī ḥadīth-i ghullāt), merits special investigation here. Ansari has expressed his disapproval of Shaykhīsm in a series of blog posts on Kateban, where he contextualizes Shaykhīsm in the intellectual activities of the Qajar era, labels it a bāṭinī trend and traces its genealogy back to a Nuṣayrī ḥadīth narrative. As I will argue in the following, Ansari’s viewpoint is at best incomplete and at worst wrong and biased, and by no means provides us with a coherent narrative of Shaykhīsm. Ansari has so far written ten pieces on Shaykhīsm, including a lengthy note on Aḥsāʾī’s entire body of writings[8], Aḥsāʾī’s religious and philosophical thoughts[9], the importance of Shaykhīsm for the study of Iran’s history[10], Shaykhīsm and taʾwīl (lit. interpretation) of aḥādīth[11], and last but definitely not least, the Nuṣayrī legacy of Shaykhīsm [12], which is my main concern here.
In Sarniwisht-i Yek Matn az Nuṣayrīyah ta Bahā’īyat (lit. the Fate of a Manuscript from Nuṣayrīyah to Bahā’īsm), Ansari investigates Risāla-yi Mufaḍḍalīyah (the Treatise of al-Mufaḍḍal), attributed to Mufaḍḍal Jaʿfī in his conversation with the sixth imām Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq. Ansari also brings in another name, one of the ghullāt, Ḥussayn ibn Ḥamdān Khaṣībī, whose usage of the narration in an extremist context, i.e., the Nuṣayrī tradition, has made the text known and available to others. The ḥadīth, according to Ansari’s account, discusses two things: the divine nature of the imāms and the Nuṣayrī teachings on divine trinity, though the ḥadīth had remained in obscurity for a long time until it became known to the Imāmī tradition in the late Safavid era. However, it is in the late Safavid era that, for the first time the ḥadīth became accessible to a number of Shīʿī scholars, chief among them the famous Imāmī jurist-theologian, Qāḍī Saʿīd Qumī (d. 1071 H/1691) as well as Quṭb al-Dīn Muḥammad Nayrīzī Shīrazī (d. 1173/1758).
Ansari is somewhat surprised as to how this ḥadīth leaked into the mainstream Shīʿīsm of this period, although he clarifies that the “transcendental tendencies” (girāyish-hāyi tanzīhī)[13] of these two figures may have drawn their attention to the ḥadīth. It must be Nayrīzī, as well as the whole Dhahabī deployment of the ḥadīth that has made it attractive to Aḥsāʾī and following him to other Shaykhī leaders. The ghālī ḥadīth, according to Ansari, finally and through the Shaykhī teachings, shows up in the Bahāʾī tradition where Mirza Ḥussayn ʿAlī Nūrī, later Bahāʾullāh, in his book Jawāhir ul-Asrār (lit. the Jewelry of the Secrets) has used some parts of it[14]. But, what does this controversial ḥadīth say? According to Ansari, it is about the divine nature of the imāms, the idea of tafwīḍ, the doctrine of wilāyat al-takwīnīyah and ascribing divine attributes to them. Ḥadīth-i akwān-i sittah (the ḥadīth of the six books), is presumably “the founding principle of their [the Shaykhī] worldview and the basis of their cosmogony”[15], and that is why Ansari hastily concludes that Shaykhīsm should be regarded as “the inheritor of the Nuṣayrī legacy”[16], which, with regard to our explanations above, is a baseless claim.
This is a general picture Ansari draws on to recount the story of a ghālī ḥadīth from the time of Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq to the early twentieth century. However, we do not know if Bahāʾullāh has taken the ḥadīth from Aḥsāʾī or other Shaykhī texts. We also know that he lived like a wandering dervish in the mountains of Sulaymaniyah in northern Iraq for four years and may have been exposed to ghālī teachings through mediums other than the Shaykhī texts Furthermore, the idea of the divine incarnation of the imāms (tajasum-i ilāhī-ya imāms), which is obviously the backbone of the ḥadīth, is not just a Shaykhī characteristic that has been initiated by Aḥsāʾī. Some of Aḥsāʾī’s contemporaries and the ḥakīms of the school of Ṣadrā in particular, believed in the divine nature of the imāms as well. Therefore, Shaykhīsm is definitely more than just a piece of a ghālī ḥadīth that had been trickled into the so-called ‘rationalist’ Shīʿa tradition through unknown intermediaries.
As Amir-Moezzi shows, extremist Shīʿīsm is in fact the classic Twelver Shīʿīsm of the formative period up to the 4th century, and therefore, it is impossible to separate classic Shīʿīsm of the early ages from the ghālī thoughts and doctrines. In some cases, like the abovementioned ḥakīms of Tehran, the boundaries between the rational and non-rational are so blurred that one can easily pinpoint such non-rational interpretations of the divine status of the imamate in their writings. Ansari continues with his controversial viewpoint that rukn-i rābiʿ of Kirmānī Shaykhīsm has a Nuṣayrī foundation[17], and it is but “the reconstruction of the worldview of the ghālī mufawaḍa”[18], which, with regard to our arguments in the second chapter of this book, Persianization of Shaykhīsm: The Doctrine of Rukn-i Rābiʿ from Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī to Karīm Khān Kirmānī, is but an exaggeration about the ghālī background of the Shaykhī school. It also intentionally ignores other intellectual infiltrations into Shaykhīsm. Furthermore, the Shaykhī cosmogony is not founded on just the abovementioned Nuṣayrī ḥadīth, but also on numerous other traditions of mainstream Twelver Shīʿīsm.[19]
Besides, as we argued above, what Ansari downgrades as tashayuʿ ghālīyāna (the extremist Shiism), is identical to classical Shīʿīsm. Pertinent to this is another claim according to which Aḥsāʾī has had insufficient familiarity through his use of second-hand sources with the philosophy of Ṣadrā and the mysticism of ibn ʿArabī.[20] While I agree with Ansari on his opinion about the insufficient familiarity of Aḥsāʾī with ibn ʿArabī’s mysticism, his viewpoint about the exposure of Aḥsāʾī to Ṣadrā’s philosophy through the second-hand writings needs further investigations. He was called “the Philosopher of the Era” (Hamid, 2019, p. 66) by the well-known biographer Muḥammad Bāqir Khwānsārī, however, as Idris Samawi Hamid discusses, we really “do not know whether or to what degree Shaykh Aḥmad attended formal lectures in the falsafs of Mullā Ṣadrā or other philosophers” (Ibid., p. 69). Therefore, until more scholarly research sheds light on this sophisticated, though poorly covered issue, any opinion about the artificial familiarity of Aḥsāʾī with Ṣadrā’s philosophy, is just a claim.
Nevertheless, Ansari is right when calls Shaykhīsm a bāṭinī school, which, like all esoteric tendencies, puts a special emphasis on taʾwīl as opposed to exegesis (tafsīr) to grasp the true meaning of the Qurʾān. Also, there is a special emphasis on the dreams of the imāms, as a source of gnosis which is not available to anybody but Aḥsāʾī and his followers.[21] Equally, he is right when he maintains that for Shaykh Aḥmad and his students unveiling and illumination (mukāshafa wa shuhūd) were more important than rationality and ʿaql.[22] As Ansari ascertains, Shaykh Aḥmad and his followers were ahl ul-taʾwīl [23], which in this and other similar cases, is inseparable from their esoteric inclinations. Relevant to this, is Aḥsāʾī’s belief that one must read and interpret the Qurʾān in light of the akhbār of the Prophet and the imāms.
Before turning our attention to the Shaykhī juridical orientations, Ansari’s assertion of Shaykhīsm being a marginalized school merits special attention here. Much evidence exists that testifies otherwise: one such is Denis MacEoin’s investigation into the political status of Rashtī and his circle in Karbala, and another is Aḥmad ʿAbdulhādī Al-Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ’s book, entitled Aʿlām Madrasat al-Shaykh al-AwḥadFī Qarn Thālith ʿAshar Hijrī (lit. Famous Figures in the School of the Most Unparalleled Shaykh in the Thirteenth Century), which shows how popular and widespread Shaykhīsm really was. Addressing Shaykhī political influence, MacEoin rightly ascertains that it was in fact because of Rashtī’s relatively young death and Aḥsāʾī’s inability “to preserve the unity of the school and maintain Karbala as its center” (MacEoin, 2009, p. 135), that Shaykhīsm could not exercise much influence in politics.
Therefore, in the absence of these two factors, the Shaykhī school had the potential to be more attractive to statesmen, as it was to “Muḥammad ʿAlī Mīrzā Dawlatshāh, Ibrāhīm Khān Ẓāhir al-Dawla, and Sulaymān Khān Afshār” (Ibid.), who had been drawn to both Aḥsāʾī and Rashtī in the past. Pertinent to this, is Mohammad Reza Shah’s respect for the Shaykhī leader of the time, Abu l-Qāsim Khān Ibrāhīmī, who died on a pilgrimage to Mashhad in 1969. The Shah “himself defied anti-Shaykhi sentiment in signifying that he be buried with ceremony in the precincts of the shrine and that a large memorial meeting be held in the capital” (Ibid.).
We do have plenty of information about the juridical inclination of the school. For instance, we know that Aḥsāʾī had adequate studies with a number of Uṣūlī clerics in ʿAtabāt, who eventually endowed him with ijāzas,[24] although here again Ansari downgrades these permissions, arguing that at the time under consideration, “the permission of ijtihād was apparently uncommon” (Ansari, 1396 Shamsī/2017)[25] among seminarians and therefore, those guwāhīs (lit. certificates and not permissions) given to him lacked value and credit. Ansari rightly categorizes the school as an Akhbārī one, with the main difference being the concept of rukn-i rābiʿ, a replacement for the Uṣūlī office of mujtahid and an appointment (naṣb) from the top, and therefore a historical continuation (with a one-thousand-year interruption, of course) of nīyābat al-khāṣṣah (special vicegerency) of the imām, which has now resurfaced again through Aḥsāʾī and been completed by Muḥammad Karīm Khān Kermānī. Rukn-i rābiʿ is considerably different from mujtahid in the Uṣūlī sense, in which in the latter, people or muqalids (imitators), find and turn their attention to the most suitable mujtahid of time.[26]
Other than Ansari’s writings, the most recent Persian output on Shaykhīsm is Bījan ʿAbdulkarīmī’s book, Dun Kīshut Hāy-i Īrānī (Iranian Don Quixote), in which the author discusses Shaykhīsm, and the two subsequent trends of Bābīsm and Bahā’īsm from a literary and historical perspective. The author calls his book a “historical novel” (ʿAbdulkarīmī, 1393 Shamsī/2014, p. 6), however, it suffers from so many deficiencies and is marred by historical errors, such as the undeniable mistake of assigning a son, in fact the second Qajar king, Fatḥ ʿAlī Shah to the first Qajar monarch, Āqā Muḥammad Khān (d. 1211 H/1797) (Ibid., p. 20), or a fabricated ḥadīth attributed to the sixth imām, Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, about the tawqīt (lit. specifying a definite time) of the Twelfth imām stating that “wa fī sinat u-sittīn, yuẓhirihu wa yaʿlū dhikruhū” (and in the year sixty, He will reveal him and lift up his name) (Ibid., p. 13).
There exists no such ḥadīth in the Shīʿa compilations, yet ʿAbdulkarīmī makes another mistake when he states that Aḥsāʾī received this ḥadīth through ibn ʿArabī[27] (Ibid., p. 14 & 37). Furthermore, there are numerous other historical errors such as “Aḥsāʾī left his family for ʿAtabāt when he was forty” (Ibid., p. 17). We know that he left his homeland, Qatị̄f, in 1186 /1772–73, which means that he was twenty at the time of his departure to ʿAtabāt. Pertinent to this is another controversial statement that “Aḥsāʾī’s presence in Karbala and Najaf made him famous and popular” (Ibid), which, in light of historical facts, is not acceptable, because he made his fame, both among people and the courtiers including the abovementioned Fatḥ ʿAlī Shah, when he was in Yazd, circa 1222/1807 onwards.[28]
ʿAbdulkarīmī goes all the way with his disputable statements about Aḥsāʾī and his students when he claims that they were “furious with the ẓulm of local khāns to people” (Ibid., p. 18), and that is why Shaykhī messianism should be regarded as a response to social injustice at the time. Of course, as Abbas Amanat, among others, has discussed, the long-term chaotic circumstances of the post-Safavid era played a significant role in the general messianic yearnings of the time; however, regarding Aḥsāʾī’s aloof and apolitical personality as well as his respectful status in the Qajar court, his rage with the ẓulm of the local governors and its conversion into a messianic school is highly debatable. Yet, one of the most sarcastic statements of Dun Kīshut Hāy-I Īrānī appears when ʿAbdulkarīmī, against all historical facts, claims that the abovementioned Āqā Muḥammad Khān took Fatḥ ʿAlī Khān Zand’s eyes with his hands (Ibid.).
The first Qajar monarch wrought many misdeeds on his ill-fated Zand rival, but ‘taking his eyes with hands’ is too unrealistic and fictious a historical account to be believed. In his distortion of Qajar history, ʿAbdulkarīmī mentions the name of Mīrzā Buzurg Nūrī (d.) as one of the viziers of Muḥammad Shah Qajar (d. 1264 H/1848) (Ibid., p. 19), which does not seem to be correct, because the monarch had only two prime ministers, Sayyid Abulqāsim Qāʾim Maqām Farāhānī (d. 1251 H/1835, who had also been granted chancellorship of Persia) and Ḥājjī Mīrzā ʿAbbās Īrawānī, known as Ḥājj Mīrzā Āqāsī (d. 1265 H/1849). Furthermore, it is highly suspect that Fatḥ ʿAlī Shah, who had invited Aḥsāʾī to Tehran, had asked him about politics (Ibid., p. 27), although he wrote three treatises in response to religious questions from the monarch.[29] Moreover, since their conversations were not documented anywhere in history, we really do not know if the Shah had asked Aḥsāʾī for an istikhārah (lit. seeking good from God, which is done either by subḥa or the Qurʾān), on the right decision to sign a treaty with Britain or France against Iran’s northern neighbor, Tsarist Russia (Ibid., p. 28). According to ʿAbdulkarīmī, the Shah had not only requested such a thing out of despair (istīṣāl), but also Aḥsāʾī promised to do so and added that “maybe the imām of time [the Twelfth imām] himself will help the Shah in this matter” (ibid).
Time and space do not permit adding to this list of historical inaccuracies and religious slips; hence, I leave it to interested researchers to evaluate Dun Kīshut Hāy-i Īrānī themselves. However, ʿAbdulkarīmī’s historical novel has received a serious critique by Ḥasan Irshād[30], as he believes that the book is just a copy and paste of the famous Tārīkh-i Nabīl by Nabīl Zarandī, and basically subject to plagiarism. To this date, ʿAbdulkarīmī has not responded to Irshād’s critiques. Other than Ansari and ʿAbdulkarīmī, Sayyid Miqdād Nabawī Raḍawī, a prolific young scholar with an outstanding credential on Bābī studies, has recently (1396 Shamsī/2017) published a book entitled Maktab-i Sheykhīyah dar Nigāh-i Maktab-i Maʿārif Khurāsān (the Shaykhī School from the Perspective of the School of Khurasan). The book is a discussion of the life and intellectual journey of Mīrzā Muḥammad Mahdī Ghirawī Iṣfahānī (d. 1365 H/1946), a close disciple of the famous Mīrzā Muḥammad Ḥusseyn Nāʾīnāī (d. 1355 H/1936), who after finishing his studies in ʿAtabāt, settled down in Mashhad and founded the School of Khurasan (also Maktab-i Tafkīk). Focusing on A-Ṣawārim ul-ʿAqlīya (lit. the Rational Axioms), Nabawī shows how Iṣfahānī and Aḥsāʾī’s “fundamental dissimilarities” (Nabawī, 1396 Shamsī/2017, p. 9), finally culminated in their successors taking two opposing directions: the formation of the Ḥujjatīya Society by Shaykh Maḥmūd Ḥalabī, and the emergence of the Bābī movement out of the Shaykhī context.
Rūḥ-i Mujarrad: Yād Nāma-yi Muwaḥid-i ʿAẓīm wa ʿĀrif-i Kabīr, Ḥājj Sayyid Hāshim Mūsawī Ḥaddād (lit. the Immaterial Soul: In Honor of the Great Monotheist and Mystic, Ḥājj Sayyid Hāshim Mūsawī Ḥaddād) by Sayyid Muḥammad Ḥusseyn Ḥusseynī Tihrānī is another Persian book discussing Shaykhīsm and its differences from Akbarīan mysticism, focusing on themes such as the gnosis of God, divine names and attributes (asmā wa ṣifāt), wilāya of the imāms, the Shaykhī inclination toward tafwīḍ (or the idea of wilāyat al-takwīnīya), and ghuluw (pp. 462 ff). However, despite its brief references to Shaykhīsm, Rūḥ-i Mujarrad provides us with a decent set of sound critiques of the Shaykhī school and its leaders, particularly Aḥsāʾī.
And last but not least is Moojan Momen’s “The Struggle for the Soul of Twelver Shiʿism in Qajar Iran”, wherein the author places Shaykhīsm in the tradition of opposition to Uṣūlī jurisprudence, seeking the true and authentic Twelver Shīʿīsm which is presumably distorted by the jurist-theologians of the mainstream trend. From this perspective, Shaykhīsm, in line with the Akhbārī school and the two subsequent movements of Bābīsm and Bahāʾīsm, should be regarded as the true heir to the non-clerical affinity and “love for the representative of the Divine among humanity and on the development of personal spiritual qualities” (Momen, 2020, p. 31). Corbinian in itself, this approach views Bahā’īsm as the culmination of the soul and the true message of Twelver Shīʿīsm.
Given this lengthy introduction, what does Shaykhīsm really represent? As a Bāṭinī school, based on the priority of taʾwīl over tafsīr and the centrality of the akhbār for understanding the hidden meaning of the verses of the Qurʾān,Shaykhīsm should be regarded as an invitation to the tradition of salaf al-ṣāliḥ, i.e., the imāms, whose gnosis obtained through dreams is the backbone of spiritual authority and political leadership. It is this imāmology, front and center, which determines the juridical inclination of the school on one hand, and the necessity of the office of ruknīyat al-rābiʿ as the only legitimate discoverer of the opinion of the imām on the other. Shaykhīsm is rightly labeled as a messianic school, representing the messianic yearnings of its time, although its messianism remained latent and inactive until it resurfaced in the Bābī movement. Furthermore, Shaykhīsm is the climax and the perfection of the doctrine of nīyābat al-khāṣṣah, a designation from the top, which had been eclipsed since the death of the last vicegerent of the imām, ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad Samarī in 329 H/941. Truth rests somewhere in between, between a reductionist outlook that intentionally and purposefully tends to downgrade Shaykhīsm to a piece of a ghalī ḥadīth, and an opposite viewpoint arguing that “the whole truth of Shīʿīsm is to be known through Shaykh Aḥmad Aḥsāʾī and his teachings” (Corbin, 1346 Shamsī/1967, p. 31).
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- Corbin, Henry, En Islam Iranien: Aspects spirituels et philosophiques, IV: L'Ecole d'Ispahan, L'Ecole shaykhie, Le Douzième Imâm, 1978, (Paris: Gallimard), Livre VI.
- Corbin, Henry, the Man of Light in Iranian Sufism, translated into English by Nancy Pearson, 1994 (New York: Omega Publications INC, pp. 48, 58, 158.
- Corbin, Henry, the History of Islamic Philosophy, translated into English by Liadain Sherrard, n.d. (London & New York: Kegan Paul International).
- Eschraghi, Armin. “Kāzem Raŝti.” 2013. < http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/kazem-rasti-sayyed >, last accessed 05/05/2021.
- Hamid, Idris Samawi. “Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī.” In Philosophy in Qajar Iran, ed. Reza Pourjavady, 2019 (Leiden: Brill), pp. 66–124.
- Hermann, Denis. Kirmānī Shaykhism and the Ijtihād: A Study of Abū al-Qāsim Khān Ibrāhīmī’s Ijtihad Wa Taqlid. Bibliotheca academica, Reihe Orientalistik, Band 24. 2015 (Wurzburg: Ergon-Verlag GmbH).
- Hermann, Denis. Le shaykhisme à la période qajare: Histoire sociale et doctrinale d'une Ecole chiite, 2017, Miroir de l'Orient Musulman, 3 (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers).
- Hermann, Denis. “Shaykhism.” 2017. < http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/shaykhism >, last accessed 05/05/2021.
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- Jaʿfarīyān, Rasūl, Khāb dar Zabān-i Dīnī (lit. Dream in the Religious Tradition), Sāzandigī Newspaper, 3, No. 864, 12 Bahman 1399.
- Landolt, Hermann, Henry Corbin, 1903-1978: Between Philosophy and Orientalism, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 119: 3, Jul. - Sep., 1999, pp. 484-490.
- MacEoin, Denis M. The Messiah of Shiraz. Vol. 3. 2009 (Leiden: Brill).
- Al-Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ, Aḥmad ʿAbdulhādī, Aʿlām Madrasat al-Shaykh al-Awḥad Fī Qarn Thālith ʿAshar Hijrī (lit. Famous Figures in the School of the Most Unparalleled Shaykh in the Thirteenth Century), 1st Edition, 1427 H/2006 (Beirut, Dār ul-Maḥajjat al-Bayḍāʾ).
- Moojan Momen, The Struggle for the Soul of Twelver Shiʿism in Qajar Iran, Die Welt Des Islams, 60, 2020, pp. 31-55.
- Mutaqī, Muḥsin, Shīʿa Pazhūhī-ya Tārīkhī Bā Rūykardī Intiqādī (lit. Historical Shīʿa Studies from a Critical Perspective), Faṣlnāma-yi Naqd-i Dīnī, Vol, 4, Nowruz 1400.
- Nabawī Raḍawī, Sayyid Miqdād, Maktab-i Sheykhīyah dar Nigāh-i Maktab-i Maʿārif Khurāsān (the Shaykhī School from the Perspective of the School of Khurasan), (1396 Shamsī/2017),
- Richard, Yann, Le Shaykhisme à la période qajare: histoire sociale et doctrinale d’une École chiite, Iranian Studies, 54:1-2, 2021, pp. 340-345, DOI: 10.1080/00210862.2019.1691437.
Website:
[1] - For the full list of Corbin’s studies on Shaykhīsm, see the following: Henry Corbin, Maktab-i Shaykhī az Ḥikmat-i Ilāhī-ya Shīʿa (L'ecole Shaykhie en Theologie Shi`ite), translation into Persian and introduction by Aḥmad Bahmanyār, 1346 shamsī/1967 (n. p., Tābān Publication). Henry Corbin, Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth from Mazdean Iran to Shiite Iran, translated into English by Nancy Pearson, with a new preface to the second edition by the author, 1977 (New Jersey: Princeton University Press). In addition to these two direct sources on Shaykhīsm, Corbin discusses the Shaykhī school indirectly in the following books: Henry Corbin, the Man of Light in Iranian Sufism, translated into English by Nancy Pearson, 1994 (New York: Omega Publications INC), pp. 48, 58, 158. Henry Corbin, the History of Islamic Philosophy, translated into English by Liadain Sherrard, n.d. (London & New York: Kegan Paul International). (part III, Shia thought, p. 319ff). Henry Corbin, En Islam Iranien: Aspects spirituels et philosophiques, IV: L'Ecole d'Ispahan, L'Ecole shaykhie, Le Douzième Imâm, 1978, (Paris: Gallimard), Livre VI, pp. 296-300. [2] - From among Amir-Moezzi’s books, I am particularly interested in these two: Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, The Divine Guide in Early Shiism; the Sources of Esotericism in Islam, translated into English by David Streight, 1994 (New York: State University of New York Press). Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, The Spirituality of Shii Islam; Beliefs and Practices, 2011 (London & New York: I. B. Tauris Publisher). [3] - For instance, Amir-Moezzi indicates a treatise entitled Um ul-Dirāya (lit. The Mother of Wisdom?) by ʿAbd u-Riḍā Khān Ibrāhīmī Sarkār Aqā, in which the author criticizes the Shīʿī rationalists. After investigating https://www.alabrar.info/ website for such a book to no avail, I exchanged some emails with people in charge of the website to see if they could help me find Um ul-Dirāya, and I was informed that there is no such a book by him (04/15/2021). [4] - Bibliotheca academica, Reihe Orientalistik, Band 24. Wurzburg: Ergon-Verlag GmbH, 2015. [5] - Miroir de l'Orient Musulman, 3, Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2017. [6] - < http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/shaykhism > 2017, last accessed 06/12/2021. [7] - Armin Eschraghi holds the same viewpoint. See: Eschraghi, Armin. “Kāzem Raŝti.” 2013. < http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/kazem-rasti-sayyed >, last accessed 05/01/2021. [8] - < https://ansari.kateban.com/post/4422 >, last accessed 06/12/2021. [9] - < https://ansari.kateban.com/post/4225 >, last accessed 06/12/2021. [10] - < https://ansari.kateban.com/post/3483 >, last accessed 06/12/2021. [11] - < https://ansari.kateban.com/post/3484 >, last accessed 06/12/2021. [12] - < https://ansari.kateban.com/post/3377 >, & https://ansari.kateban.com/post/3378 & https://ansari.kateban.com/post/3380 & https://ansari.kateban.com/post/3408 & https://ansari.kateban.com/post/3485 >, last accessed 06/12/2021. [13] - Ansari never explains what he means by girāyish-hāyi tanzīhī (lit. transcendental tendencies), but, as known tanzīh, i.e., to remove God from any human attributes (He is munazzah of any assembly to man), is used against tashbīh (simile, analogy), which means to avoid likening God with anything, particularly human traits. However, it is unclear why such a ḥadīth which attributes divine traits to the imāms should have been used by mystics with girāyish-hāyi tanzīhī. [14] - < https://ansari.kateban.com/post/3377 >, last accessed 06/12/2021. [15] - < https://ansari.kateban.com/post/3378 >, last accessed 06/12/2021. [16] - < https://ansari.kateban.com/post/3378 >, last accessed 06/12/2021. [17] - < https://ansari.kateban.com/post/3380 >, last accessed 06/12/2021. [18] - < https://ansari.kateban.com/post/3485 >, last accessed 06/12/2021. [19] - Even a quick look at the main Shaykhī manuscripts shows how controversial is Ansari’s assertion that Shaykhī is founded on the abovementioned Nuṣayrī ḥadīth. Aḥsāʾī, Rashtī and others have in fact made extensive use of some major Shīʿa ḥadīth, having been transferred by, and documented in the main ḥadīth compilations. [20] - < https://ansari.kateban.com/post/3485 >, last accessed 06/12/2021. [21] - Rasūl Jaʿfarīyān discusses how Aḥsāʾī has recourse to dreams to distinguish authentic and fake aḥādīth from each other. See: Rasūl Jaʿfarīyān, Khāb dar Zabān-i Dīnī (lit. Dream in the Religious Tradition), Sāzandigī Newspaper, 3, No. 864, 12 Bahman 1399, p. 11. [22] - < https://ansari.kateban.com/post/3483 >, last accessed 06/12/2021. [23] - < https://ansari.kateban.com/post/3484 >, last accessed 06/12/2021. Alongside his discussion on the Shaykhī taʾwīl, Ansari makes several controversial statements such as “whichever sources Aḥsāʾī had put together to make his school possible, he had understood that he could not rely only on the ẓawāhir of the ḥadīth in order to understand their meanings” (Ansari, Ibid., 1396 Shamsī/2017), and he had to go beyond the apparent in the narratives to grasp the intentions of the imāms. In this book, the author explains where Aḥsāʾī obtained his sources and how the Shaykhī school should be understood, although I am sure a scholar of Ansari’s rank knows Aḥsāʾī’s sources as well. Furthermore, in the same writing, Shaykhīgarī wa Taʾwīl-i Aḥādīth (lit. Shaykhīsm and the Interpretation of Aḥādīth), Ansari claims that it was only mediocre and unlettered (bīsawād) mullās who came to Aḥsāʾī with questions. Considering Aḥsāʾī’s respected status with the Qajar courtiers, particularly with Fatḥ ʿAlī Shah, such an analysis of the audience of Aḥsāʾī, must be accepted cautiously, unless we count the courtiers, including the Shah, as mediocre and low-ranking. [24] - I have discussed the issue in my book The Conceptualization of Guardianship in Iranian Intellectual History (1800–1989); Reading Ibn ʿArabī’s Theory of Wilāya in the Shīʿa World. 2019 (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 65-66. [25] - < https://ansari.kateban.com/post/3485 >, last accessed 06/12/2021. One needs to be alert to Ansari’s intention of lessening the school to a marginalized one, with no connection to mainstream Shīʿīsm or any impact on later developments. [26] - However, we never really know how rukn-i rābiʿ is to be discovered and who discovers it. Furthermore, the point is to grasp the democratic (demos meaning people, and not democracy as a political phenomenon) nature of the office of mujtahid, versus the hidden spirit of ruknīyat al-rābiʿ and its highly hierarchical structure, which again, stands in contrast to the different configurations of the Uṣūlī mujtahid. [27] - From my email exchanges with Professor William Chittick and Professor James Morris (01/13/2021), it is evident that ibn ʿArabī never made any prediction regarding the mujaddid/Mahdī of Islam, especially with a specific date. Therefore, ʿAbdulkarīmī’s claim is false and fictitious. [28] - Details regarding his travels and presence in different Iranian cities are cited in many sources including the first paper of this collection. [29] - In the first paper of this collective, Conflicting Worldviews, the author lists two books entitled Risālat al-Sultạ̄ nīya (Majestic Treatise) and Al-Khāqānīya fī Jawāb-i a-Sultạ̄n Fatḥ ʿAlī Shāh (The Treatise of the Great Khān in Response to Fatḥ ʿAlī Shāh), written by Aḥsāʾī in response to the questions of the Shah. However, Aḥmad ʿAbdulhādī in Aʿlām Madrasat al-Shaykh al-Awḥad Fī Qarn Thālith ʿAshar Hijrī claims that there is one more treatise written by Aḥsāʾī to Fatḥ ʿAlī Shāh, entitled Ajwabat al-Masāʾil al-Sultan Fatḥ ʿAlī Shāh (Responses to the Questions of al-Sultan Fatḥ ʿAlī Shāh), and it is published in the in the second volume of Al-Jawāmiʿ al-Kalim (Comprehensive Words). See: Aḥmad ʿAbdulhādī Al-Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ, Aʿlām Madrasat al-Shaykh al-Awḥad Fī Qarn Thālith ʿAshar Hijrī (Famous Figures in the School of the Most Unparalleled Shaykh in the Thirteenth Century), 1427/2006 (Beirut, Dār ul-Maḥajjat al-Bayḍāʾ), p. 32. After investigating Al-Jawāmiʿ, I could not find such a treatise, although there are two treatises written to the prince Maḥmūd Mīrzā (pp. 505-526 & 527-540), and not the second monarch. [30] - < https://www.aparat.com/v/O0Yns >, last accessed 05/05/2021.
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