4. Neo-Uṣūlism and Shaykhism (c. 1800-Present)
The prominence of the Akhbārī School dwindled with Wahid Bihbihānī’s establishment of the neo-Uṣūlī School in the late eighteenth century. Bihbihānī’s approach to Islamic law was taken directly from rationalists before him and has remained the dominant approach to Shiʿi thought for the past two centuries. Even though Bihbihānī was the founder of neo-Uṣūlism, claims to intuitive knowledge have been attributed to Bihbihānī and his successors. Since the rationalist approach has been discussed at length above and I have discussed the emergence of modern Uṣūlism elsewhere, this discussion of the rationalist Uṣūlī revival will focus on mysticism in the Uṣūlī movement.
Like Uṣūlīs before them, intuitive knowledge has been attributed to Bihbihānī and his successors. Ḥusayn Nūrī al-Ṭabarsī’s Jannat al-Maʾwā, which is a compilation of mystical encounters with the Imam, includes many Uṣūlīs, such as ʿAllāmah al-Ḥillī (d. 1325), al-Shahīd al-Awwal (d. 1380), Muḥammad Ḥasan al-Najafī (d. 1850), and Baḥ r al-ʿUlūm (d. 1797), who was especially known for his mystical experiences and miracles.
Bihbihānī was credited with several intuitive experiences. In the most important, Imam Ḥusayn appeared to him in a dream and gave him a scroll.
Bihbihānī’s Sharḥ al-Mafā tīḥ is supposed to be the same as the contents of the scroll. This experience differs drastically from his others because it transcends personal guidance from the Imam. In effect, the knowledge in Sharḥ al-Mafā tīḥ was not the result of textual research, or reason, but inspiration from a dream. If all lay Shiʿis must follow the pronouncements of a mujtahid and Bihbihānī was the mujtahid of the age as Uṣūlīs have claimed, then Bihbihānī’s followers were bound to follow his Sharḥ al-Mafā tīḥ , which was received in a dream. In other words, the Imam was using Bihbihānī as an intermediary to pass on knowledge to members of the Shiʿi community, who were expected to emulate Bihbihānī’s intuitive knowledge.
This is certainly not the first example of intuitive revelation producing a text. At a time of Portuguese influence during the reign of Shah ʿAbbās I, Aḥmad al-ʿAlawī wrote a refutation of Christianity. He claimed that the Mahdī had appeared to him in a vision and commanded him to write Miṣqāl-i Ṣafā in order to prove the superiority of Islam over Christianity.
As mentioned above, Ḥaydar Ā mulī claimed that Ibn al-ʿArabī received Fuṣūṣ in a dream of the Prophet and some of his own works were also the result of intuition. Al-Shahīd al-Thānī also had a dream that al-Kulaynī, the compiler of an early collection of hadith (al-Kā fī ), complained to al-Shahīd al-Thānī that the surviving copies of his work were poorly written and full of copyist errors. In the dream, al-Kulaynī gave his original copy to al-Shahīd al-Thānī, who was able to fix the errors.
These examples illustrate that stories attributing intuition to scholars like Bihbihānī, al-Shahīd al-Thānī, and others are a common feature of Shiʿi hagiography. However, none of Bihbihānī’s extant writings make references to his mystical experiences. The records of his encounters with the Imams are from his successors and Shiʿi hagiographers. The above-mentioned experience of Bihbihānī’s receipt of a scroll from the Imam Ḥusayn was recounted by a student of Bihbihānī. It seems, then, that Bihbihānī’s mystical experiences were projected back on him by his successors for the purpose of bolstering his authority and his status as an agent of God sent to save the Shiʿi community from Akhbārīs and establish Uṣūlī clerics as the rightful intermediaries of the Hidden Imam.
How then does intuition fit into Bihbihānī’s conception of knowledge and authority? In light of Bihbihānī’s uṣūl al-fiqh, his mystical experiences may seem like an anomaly. His conception of jurisprudence is firmly rooted in the rationalist tradition and his extant works say little about mysticism. However, this does not rule out the possibility that he promoted his own charismatic authority among his followers by claiming to communicate with the Imams. In other words, either Bihbihānī or his successors recounted intuitive experiences as a method of strengthening his authority, but not as part of his methodology for deriving perfect knowledge.
Bihbihānī’s life was almost wholly devoted to overthrowing the Akhbārī establishment and therefore his most important works are directed toward the Akhbārī-Uṣūlī debate. His successors saw him as the renewer (mujaddid) of the century and champion of the Uṣūlī School.
Therefore, he only included textual and rational sources in his theoretical approach to obtaining knowledge. However, claims to mystical experiences did not immediately decrease after Bihbihānī’s death. His disciples were well known for their spiritual adeptness, performance of miracles, and for their claims to divine knowledge. In fact, the Shaykhī movement, which attempted to incorporate intuition (kashf) into the theoretical framework of Uṣūlī thought, can partially be understood as a culmination of the charismatic claims made by Bihbihānī’s disciples. After the Uṣūlī victory over Akhbārīs, the last frontier for scholars on the path of gradually claiming the authority of the Imams was the ability to derive knowledge intuitively.
The Shaykhī School of thought, also known as Kashfiyyah, grew directly out of the Uṣūlī circle of Wahīd Bihbihānī and his disciples.
The school’s founder, Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī (d. 1241/1826), attended the classes of the most important Uṣūlī scholars, including Bihbihānī. Most of the ijāzahs that al-Aḥsāʾī received were from students of Bihbihānī (including Sayyid Muḥ ammad Mahdī ‘Baḥ r al-ʿUlūm,’ Mīrzā Mahdī Shahristānī, Shaykh Jaʿfar al-Najafī ‘Kāshif al-Ghitāʾ,’ Muḥammad Ibrāhīm Kalbāsī, and Sayyid ʿAlī al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī), indicating that his formal training was firmly in the Uṣūlī School. Baḥ r al-ʿUlūm, apparently impressed with al-Aḥsāʾī’s abilities, says ‘it would be more appropriate for you to give an ijāza to me.’
Al-Aḥsāʾī had also received ijāzahs from several Akhbārīs, including students of Yusuf al-Baḥrānī.
Although these ijāzahs certainly enhanced al-Aḥsāʾī’s influence and social standing, he was dissatisfied with his Uṣūlī education and he does not mention any of these teachers in his autobiography.
Challenging the Shiʿi establishment, he was convinced that the ʿulamāʾ were not exponents of authentic knowledge and authority, which should only be derived from divine sources instead of rooted in human interpretation. Corbin suggests, therefore, that ‘it is as though he had no teacher other than the ustadh-i ghaybī - that inner teacher…’
Al-Aḥsāʾī, perhaps, is best understood as a synthesizer of scripturalist, rationalist, and mystical trends in Shiʿism. Tunikābunī argues that his attempt to blur the lines between law and mystical philosophy and synthesize rational thought with the tradition was precisely the reason that Uṣūlīs declared takfīr against his movement.
Shaykhī thought was also built on the foundations laid by the School of Isfahan, even though he was a critic of its architects, including Mullā Ṣadrā and Fayḍ Kāshānī.
Todd Lawson has pointed out that ‘the world of images functions as a bridge between reason and revelation’ for both Shaykhīs and adherents of Mullā Ṣadrā. For both al-Aḥsāʾī and Kāshānī, the imaginal realm was the world in which the Hidden Imam and Fourteen Pure Ones could be accessed, the place where ‘spirits are embodied and bodies are spiritualised,’ the location where Resurrection occurs.
While the imaginal realm was more of a place for Kāshānī, it was part of a process and for al-Aḥsāʾī. Through devotion, the believer can gain access to this world of the Imam (Hūrqalyā) with the eye of the heart, which is capable of seeing the Imam. Absolute existence is static for Kāshānī, whereas it is dynamic for al-Aḥsāʾī.
According to Lawson, al-Aḥsāʾī’s critique of Kāshānī and Mullā Ṣadrā was primarily related to the latters’ acceptance of existential monism (waḥdat al-wujūd).
For al-Aḥsāʾī, waḥdat al-wujūd violates the transcendence of God, whose essence is fundamentally different than creation.
In his search for perfect knowledge, al-Aḥsāʾī’s meditations on the Qurʾan and long periods of fasting led him to have dreams of all the Imams as well as Muḥammad. Al-Aḥsāʾī explains that the Imams taught him the esoteric meaning of the Qurʾan and the hadith.
He recalls that his first dream of an Imam featured Imam Ḥasan when he was a child, and he says that he drank the Imam’s saliva in the dream and was able to ask the Imam questions.
Since he had additional dreams of the other Imams and the Prophet in which he could also ask them questions, he maintained that his knowledge was perfect and that the Imams were his only source of knowledge. He also claimed that each of the Imams gave him an ijāzah, which surely superseded the ijāzahs granted to him by living scholars.
It was his access to the imaginal realm, then, that gave al-Aḥsāʾī confidence that his knowledge was certain. Therefore, al-Aḥsāʾī’s ultimate source of knowledge was experiential rather than textual or rational.
Al-Aḥsāʾī explains that ‘the super-sense perceptible encounter with the Imams provides the believer with a ‘spiritual initiation (lit. “savour” dhawq) due to which he can immediately perceive the authenticity or otherwise of a tradition.’
As an affront to Uṣūlī scholars, he asserted that their arguments were based on human reasoning and were therefore faulty since they did not always produce sure knowledge (qaṭʿ). This issue would later be central for Uṣūlī scholars who declared infidelity (takfīr) on al-Aḥsāʾī’s followers. Al-Aḥsāʾī asserts, ‘The ulama derive their knowledge one from the other, but I have never followed in their way. I have derived what I know from the Imams of guidance, and error cannot find its way into my words…’
Further, he explains ‘Whenever any explanation was given to me in sleep, after I awoke the question would appear clear to me along with the proofs related to it…And, if a thousand criticisms were levelled against me, the defence against them and the answers would be shown to me without any effort on my part.’
Al-Aḥsāʾī usually referred to his dreams with reference to kashf, which implies the unveiling of hidden meanings.
Even though he claimed that the ultimate source of his knowledge was derived from mystical experiences, al-Aḥsāʾī continuously based his arguments on textual sources and reason in order to stay within the Uṣūlī framework in which he had been formally trained. Al-Aḥsāʾī claimed that his ideas were identical with the Qurʾan and hadith, especially the traditions of the Imams.
He says, ‘I found that all traditions were in agreement with what I had seen in sleep…I say nothing unless by virtue of a proof which is derived from them [the Imams].’
Similarly, al-Aḥsāʾī’s disciple, Sayyid Kāẓ im al-Rashtī (d. 1843), argues that al-Aḥsāʾī ‘did not receive these sciences and inner teachings so much in sleep, but rather, when he awoke, he discovered manifest proofs and evidences from the book of God and from the path of the explanations and instructions of the Imams of guidance.’
In his Risālat al-Uṣūl, al-Rashtī explains that the Shaykhī method is to consider the Qurʾan, Sunna, consensus, and reason, which are the four sources of uṣūl al-fiqh accepted by Uṣūlīs. This Risālah was surely meant for an Uṣūlī audience and supports many Uṣūlī principles, save for several major exceptions. Al-Rashtī even praises the great Uṣūlī scholars, including Shaykh al-Mufīd, Shaykh al-Ṭūsī, ʿAllāmah al-Ḥillī, Shahīd al-Thānī, and Muqaddas al-Ardabīlī. In another work, al-Rashtī clearly moves further from the Uṣūlī tradition by identifying a fifth source of law, which he calls the law of the universe, rooted in the Qurʾanic verse: ‘We will show them Our signs in all the regions of the earth and in their own souls, until they clearly see that this is the truth.’
It is not exactly clear how this source is used in practice, but it is possibly a claim to intuition (kashf) as a direct source of knowledge, especially since al-Rashtī explains that al-Aḥsāʾī used both external reasoning and internal meaning.
This departure from the Uṣūlī School places Shaykhīs within the illuminationist tradition. Although Uṣūlīs claimed authority on the basis of kashf, they did not include it as a source of law.
The difference between Shaykhīs and Uṣūlīs, therefore, can be understood in terms of emphasis. The foundation of the Shaykhī system is rooted in Suhrawardī’s illuminationist system of hierarchical worlds and interworlds, which are related to worlds of being. Al-Aḥsāʾī referred to the interworld as Hūrqalyā, which can be perceived by spiritually enlightened people. Al-Rashtī explained that followers of al-Aḥsāʾī were known as Kashfiyyah because God removed (kashf) the veil of ignorance from their hearts and minds and illumined their hearts with the light of knowledge.
Although al-Aḥsāʾī criticized Mullā Ṣadrā for his reliance on philosophy and Sufism, the two operated in the same illuminationist system. Corbin argues that they were part of the same family of Shiʿi gnosis
and concluded that Shaykhīs were not innovators, but instead revivers of the ‘fundamental teachings of the holy Imams.’
Additionally, Vahid Rafati argues that al-Aḥsāʾī was the ‘leading nineteenth century religious commentator’ on Mullā Ṣadrā’s works.
The most fundamental shift in the neo-Uṣūlī establishment after its formative period was the establishment of Uṣūlīs in power following the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran. As Ayatollah Khomeini was on the verge of initiating changes within Shiʿi establishment, he revived claims to intuitive knowledge and even criticized Uṣūlīs for diminishing its importance. Soon after Khomeini became a student in Qum in his younger years, he began studying philosophy and mysticism. In 1937 he wrote a commentary on Sharḥ al-Fuṣūṣ, which is a commentary on Ibn al-ʿArabī’s Fuṣūṣ by Sharaf al-Dīn Dāwūd al-Qayṣarī (d. 1350). Khomeini came to the conclusion that there is no contradiction between Islamic mysticism and law. Like many illuminationists, Khomeini publicly conformed to mainstream legalistic Shiʿism, while privately leaning towards mysticism. He considered himself a follower of Mullā Ṣadrā’s illuminationist philosophy and became interested in the idea of the Perfect Man, first spoken of by Ibn al-ʿArabī as the pupil of God’s eye.
In his commentary, he claims that the Perfect Man ‘is the beginning and the end…[and] whoever knows the Perfect Man has known God.’
He also accepted the idea of cosmic guardianship, believing that guardians inherit Muḥammad’s mystical nature. These mystic saints are the Prophet’s personal representatives and carry out his invisible governance, without which the world would fall into decay. Khomeini may have considered himself to be a Perfect Man and one of Muḥammad’s guardians, who had reached the highest stage of mystical experience in which the mystic claims to be the truth.
Because Khomeini was the most transformational figure since Bihbihānī, it is no wonder that he made an appeal to mystical knowledge and authority, a perennial tool of Shiʿi reformers.
Author: Syed Baqir Nisar Zaidi
