Alhassanain(p) Network for Heritage and Islamic Thought

SAYI 36 • 2010

OSMANLI ARAŞTIRMALARI

THE JOURNAL OF OTTOMAN STUDIES

Beyond Dominant Paradigms in Ottoman and Middle Eastern / North African Studies

A Tribute to Rifa‘at Abou-El-Haj

Misafir Editörler / Guest Editors

Donald Quataert and Baki Tezcan

The Shi‘ite ‘ulama’, the madrasas, and Educational Reform in the Late Ottoman Period

Rula Jurdi Abisaab*

www.academia.edu

www.alhassanain.org/english

Notice:

This workis published on behalf of www.alhassanain.org/english

The typing errorsaren’t corrected.

Table of Contents

Social Divisions and Land Reform in Jabal ‘Amil 7

The Shi‘ite ‘ulama’, ‘Heresy,’ and the Ottoman State 10

The ‘Amili ‘ulama’ and the state in the nineteenth century 14

The ‘ulama’, the madrasas and the Ottoman Public Schools 17

Educational Modernization and the ‘Amili madrasas 19

Afterthought 22

Notes 23

[Introduction]

Jabal ‘Amil’s history is associated with renowned Shi‘ite madrasas (schools) and illustrious jurists who left their mark on the history of Twelver Shi‘ite law and jurisprudence. Jabal ‘Amil was part of the coastal range of Syria that stretched from the Mediterranean Sea in the west to Jabal al-Shaykh in the east and from Jabal al-Rihan in the north to Jabal al-Karmil in the south.1 Jabal ‘Amil was shared during the Ottoman period by two governorships, namely, the sancak (region) of Sidon-Beirut which covered the northern districts and the sancak of Safad which covered the southern districts. Both belonged to the eyalet (province) of Damascus.2 This study throws light on the socio-economic conditions in Jabal ‘Amil during the late Ottoman period, the complex relations of its Shi‘ite ‘ulama’ to the state, and their approaches to Ottoman educational modernism. This study elucidates also the transformation in Ottoman legal-doctrinal ‘orthodoxy’ and the activities of the Shi‘ite ‘ulama’ who claimed some power through both adjustment and dissent toward this ‘orthodoxy.’ It underscores the expansion in the public functions of the Shi‘ite ‘ulama’ from the 1870s until 1919-20, the optimism they expressed about the reign of Sultan Abdulhamid II (r. 1876-1909) and the general adaptations they made to Ottoman educational reforms.

The increase in Ottoman bureaucratic specialization and private ownership of land among the provincial elites were symptomatic of early modern centralization in the state (and nascent secularizing initiatives) during the seventeenth century, as Rifa‘at Abou-El-Haj has suggested.3 This development had long-term implications for the Ottoman educational system in the eighteenth century which adapted European educational methods (particularly French) with the hope of increasing the control of the ruling elites over state service in the provinces.4 By the nineteenth century the expanding and intricate Ottoman bureaucracy needed functionaries with the expertise to run it, and an educational system that could produce such type of expertise.5 The recasting of the educational reforms especially during the Hamidian era brought significant developments in the functions of the Shi‘ite ‘ulama’ of Jabal ‘Amil and their relations to the Ottoman state. With the encouragement of Ottoman provincial governors the ‘Amili ‘ ulama’ founded and administered new madrasas that integrated “modern” teaching methods and introduced new subjects of study. These madrasas also taught publicly Twelver Shi‘ite doctrine, law and jurisprudence. This period marked an expansion in the official clerical and scholarly services which the Shi‘ite ‘ulama’ offered to lay society. The scope of this study does not permit an analysis of the local ‘Amili approaches to the larger question of legal and cultural islah (reform) or the social forces shaping it. Suffice to mention that themadrasas which embraced reform during this period considered such reform part of tajdid, “renewal” from within Islam’s discursive traditions. This was manifest in the preservation of the legal-religious sciences while introducing modern scientific fields of study and placing emphasis on literature. In terms of pedagogy, the madrasas used simplified textbooks and set up shorter and more structured classes. On the long run, however, increasing secularization disrupted theshari‘a’s rubric and the ‘ulama’s functions as muftis and teachers. With the end of Ottomanrule the ‘ulama’ struggled to assert their relevance to a modernizing society and its young nation-state, Grand Liban, established under the auspices of the French in 1920.

Social Divisions and Land Reform in Jabal ‘Amil

The Ottoman administration had experienced increasing specialization and bureaucratic diversification since the late sixteenth century that marked the onset of its modernization.6 Abou-El-Haj suggested that modernization was not the outcome of a decision to Westernize in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries through the Ottoman Tanzimat (re-organization) but was a natural outcome of socio-economic transformation evident in the seventeenth century. He noted that the central treasury’s need for cash led to the spread of tax farming. The state relied on local elites across its provinces to supervise tax collection and expected them to “finance their own retinues of armed men” to help levy these taxes locally.7 The tax farmers, appointed initially for short periods of time, reached oppressive levels in extracting taxes from the taxpayers. This weakened the peasants’ ability to pay and undermined the tax farming system altogether.8 For this reason, life-term (instead of short-term) tax farming, known as malikane, was instituted in the eighteenth century by the state to protect the taxpayers and tenants against extreme exploitation and subsequently bring benefit to the state. In return for their supervision of tax collection, the provincial eliteswere granted land as private property. Yet the increase in malikanes became a source of worry to the Ottoman central administration.9 Some provincial elites had intensified their control of the peasantry, enjoyed greater autonomy from the state, and possibly started to profit from increased trade with Europe.10

In the early nineteenthcentury another phase of Ottoman administrative and rural reform was underway. The Ottomans tried to collect taxes more effectively and reverse the debilitating effects of the tax farming system on the peasants. They also aimed to decrease the autonomy and arbitrary practices of tax farming officers and large landowners. In Jabal ‘Amil, Ottoman officials urged commoners and notables alike to register fixed areas of lands in their names. In this manner the Ottoman state was no longer preoccupied with whether the landwas planted or not, as was the case with the miri (or ‘ushr) lands where tax was collected in kind. Rather the Ottomans levied directly a permanent annual tax on the land.11 Ottoman land reforms, however, faced many hurdles because peasants had to come up with registration fees for the land and pay taxes on it. Some neglected to register these lands in their names or decided to sell them for a cheap price to thetax farming officers or large landowners.12 This picture was compounded by the onset of World War I (1914-1918). The Ottoman army required that land taxesbe paid in kind rather than in cash. Tarif Khalidi argued that in Jabal ‘Amil the agricultural produce was inaccurately assessed leaving the peasants and the multazims (tax collectors) with more than their “allotted portion of tax revenue at the expense of the militarized state.” 13 He suggested that the ‘Amilis benefited from this system of taxation and improved their social conditions. The system may have introduced a new upper social stratum, namely, the wujaha’, or notables made up of intermediary financial and administrative officials in the three major municipal districts of Jabal ‘Amil – Sidon, Tyre, and Marji’yun. It is doubtful, however, how profitable the underassessment of crops was for the ‘Amili peasants who struggled with taxes, forced military conscription, hunger, and epidemics during the World War. The Ottomans leviedan a‘shar tax which was one-tenth of the value of agricultural production. It was the state’s share of peasant production from all cereals and fruits like figs and grapes, and from olive oil and beeproduction.14 Several notables competed over tax farming (iltizam) privileges from the Ottoman state which specified before the start of each agricultural season, the duration of a tax farming assignment. In order to avoid loss of profit, the zu‘ama’ (provincial chieftains or leaders) competing for iltizam started to dividethe a‘shar tax of all villages among themselves irrespective of who is given the iltizam in a particular year.Each za‘im (pl. zu‘ama’) then had a portion in the tax farmed village areas. He exempted at times influential village members from the ‘ushr tax or appeased them with money whenever his agents who were entrusted with the collection of the ‘ushr engaged in abusive acts to extract extra profit.15

‘Amili society witnessed greater stratification and intra-elite divisions in the late Ottoman period. The zu‘ama’ of al-As’ad family dominated Jabal ‘Amil’s politics and divided tax farming revenues on peasant landholdings among themselves.Meanwhile, the wujaha’ vied with the zu‘ama’ for power, deriving their social status from a combination of commercial activity and education.16 Khalidi explained that the wujaha’ comprised the small urban grain merchants who became civil servants and multazims following the promulgation of the Ottoman land law of 1858.17 The two social strata, the zu‘ama’ and the wujaha’, at times overlapped and were identified together as the afandiyya.18 Among the wujaha’ families were the ‘Usayrans, al-Khalils, and al-Zayns.19 Their intermarriage with prominent ‘ulama’ families cemented alliances between a mercantilist culture and a tradition of Islamic-Shi‘ite learning. It also expanded the power of the ‘ulama’ not merely as religious-legal guides but as social leaders. The growth in the commercial activities of the wujaha’ came to restructure society away from its traditional feudal base which the zu‘ama controlled and justified ideologically.

The ‘ulama’ were a diversified body of kuttab instructors (teachers of the Qur’an), prayer leaders, scholars, seminarians, judges, jurists, and local or regional mujtahids. Some mujtahids were recognized as maraji‘, that is, ideal sources of legal emulation for Shi‘ite believers.20 A mujtahid is a jurist who has command of ijtihad (rational legal inference) deriving legal rulings on questions pertaining to worship and social contracts. “Houses of learning” (buyutat al-‘ilm) included clerics and mujtahids from the Muruwwa, Mughniyya, Sharara, al-Amin, and Sharaf al-Din families who cultivated juridical-legal learning and contributed to discursive Islamic traditions. Several ‘ulama’ were sayyidswho claimed descent from the house of the Prophet but varied in their economic status and power. The marja’, Sayyid ‘Abd al-Husayn Sharaf al-Din (d. 1957), for instance, owned vast properties in Jabal ‘Amil and emerged as a local political leader in the early twentieth century. Themarja‘ who competed with him, namely, Sayyid Muhsin al-Amin (d. 1952) was less affluent. He moved to Damascus where he established his famous school al-Muhsiniyya.21 He maintained his scholarly and teaching activities partly through the awqaf (religious endowments) set up by a group of Damascene merchants.

The conditions of the peasants in Jabal ‘Amil were hardly improved by the 1858 law. The peasants for the most part did not achieve a direct ownership of land or a stable source of livelihood due to the taxes, commissions, and fees they had to pay to intermediary chiefs and civil servants on the land. The ‘Amili peasants were not of equal economic standing for there were those who owned a small land and/or sheep that could barely cover their needs, and others who secured from their land and sheep a little more than their needs which they sold in the market. There were also the falatiyya, “untied” peasants without any land or animals who occupied the lowest stratum in ‘Amili rural society. They did not even own the means of their production andwere hired temporarily for diverse tasks. Common peasants avoided marrying their daughters to falati men.22

The Shi‘ite ‘ulama’, ‘Heresy,’ and the Ottoman State

The relationship of Ottoman state officials to the Shi’ite ‘ulama’ of Jabal ‘Amil developed significantly over time but the full picture for the sixteenth century remains unclear. The period extending from 1516 until the 1570sis poorly documented . Data about Ottoman appointments of qadis in the ‘Amili regions and the administrative procedures relating to questions of heresy and apostasy in the Syrian districts is sporadic. Ottoman archival sources for the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century are largely unexamined. What we do know is that the role of émigré ‘Amili jurists in establishing Twelver Shi‘ism as the state religion of Safavid Iran, the new adversary of the Ottomans in the sixteenth century, did not go unnoticed by the Ottoman state and its chief jurists.In his recent book The Shiites of Lebanon under Ottoman Rule, Stefan Winter illuminated the particular links which the Ottoman state drew between the jurists of Jabal ‘Amil and the public defamation of the first two Caliphs, Abu Bakr and ‘Umar, who represented Sunnite ‘orthodoxy’ and political legitimacy.23 In Safavid Iran, leading ‘Amili jurists such as al-Muhaqqiq al-Karaki (d. 940/1534) encouraged the public denunciation of these Caliphs as the enemies of ahl albayt (the Prophet’s family) and the Imamis. In earlier studies, I discussed the significance of the polemical treatises which the ‘Amili jurists in Iran produced to prove the blasphemy of the first two Caliphs and justify public cursing of them.24 These treatises aimed to challenge the discourse of legal- doctrinal ‘orthodoxy’ underlying Sunnite rule, as well as draw sharper lines between an urban legalistic Shi‘ism on the one hand, and various forms of Sunnism and heterodox Shi‘ism in Iran, on the other.

The case of Zayn al-Din al-‘Amili (d. 965/1558), an outstanding Shi‘ite mujtahid (jurist) from Jabal ‘Amil executed by the Ottomans, deserves a close look. It reveals that an Ottoman legal-doctrinal framework for heresy was applied to Shi‘ite jurists under particular historical circumstances.Based on new sources examined by Richard Blackburn and Stefan Winter these circumstances can now be sought in state legitimacy, provincial Ottoman politics, and local social events.25 Known as al-Shahid al-Thani or “the Second Martyr,” Zayn al-Din was captured in Mecca and executed in Istanbul in 965/1558 at the hands of Rüstem Pasha, the Grand Vizier of Ottoman Sultan Süleyman (r. 926/1520-974/1566).26 The main account of al-Shahid al-Thani’s life provided by his student Muhammad b. ‘Ali b. Hasan al-‘Awdi al-Jizzini reads as a biographical entry at times and at other times as a hagiography that emphasizes al-Shahid al-Thani’s karamat (miracles).27 This valuable account mentions that al-Shahid al-Thani had a conflict with “the qadi Ma‘ruf” in Sidon before he took his trip to Istanbul in 952/1545.28 Al-Shahid al-Thani avoided asking this qadi for an ‘ard, a letter which confirms a scholar’s credentials and integrity as the basis for obtaining an endowed teaching post.29 Al-Shahid al-Thani did not trust the qadi to present him in the best light; he thought that he may in fact jeopardize his professional aims. In this particular reference, the conflict between the qadi and al-Shahid al-Thani seems unrelated to the latter’s activity as a Shi‘ite mujtahid. The information about the ‘ard is somewhat detailed and historically accurate. Normally, the district’s qadi writes such an ‘ard for a scholar who then presents it to the officials in Istanbul. Ibn al-‘Awdi’s account states also that the qadi and al-Shahid al-Thani were friends for some time (kanat baynahu wa baynahu suhbatan wa mudakhala) and does not show that al-Shahid al-Thani’s Shi‘ite identity was the reason for the conflict between them. This is the more significant given that Ibn al-‘Awdi identified another person in the account as “extremely hostile to the Shi‘ites.” 30 In any case, al-Shahid al-Thani’s favorable relations with one or more Sunnite ‘ulama’ in Istanbul allowed him to get a teaching post at an important madrasa, namely, al-Nuriyya in Ba‘labak without recourse to the ‘ard of the qadi of Sidon.31

Al-Shahid al-Thani was proficient in Shi‘ite and Sunnite law and jurisprudence.32 He was well-integrated in Sunnite learning circles and drew vital connections to influential scholars which enhanced his career opportunities.33 Ironically, the same process which allowed al-Shahid al-Thani to gain respect and intellectual recognition in Syria led also to his demise. His practice of ijtihad (rational legal inference) on the basis of the Ja‘fari madhhab (school of law) became publicly known and hence treated by Ottoman officials as a threat to the ‘orthodoxy’ as defined at that time.34 Knowledge about al-Shahid al-Thani’s ijtihad must have surfaced in connection to one or more of the following activities. The first was al-Shahid al-Thani’s private teaching of Shi‘ite law and jurisprudence to a small group of presumably Shi‘ite students at al-Nuriyya school in Ba‘labak.35 The second activity which could have established his practice of ijtihad was his issuing of legal opinions to Shi‘ite believers or his private adjudication of legal cases. A third source of knowledge about the practice of ijtihad was al-Shahid al-Thani’s juridical and legal writings which circulated among Shi‘ite scholars and their madrasas but were accessible to Sunnite scholars.36 We will delineate which of these activities led to the disclosure of al-Shahid al-Thani’s ijtihad. The recently found travel account of Qutb al-Din al-Nahrawali (d. 990/1582) gives a brief description of al-Shahid al-Thani’s execution and the role played by Hasan Beg Efendi, the judge of Damascus (and later Cairo and Mecca). It leaves much untold, however, about the persons who brought al-Shahid al-Thani to the attention of Hasan Beg and their relationship to al-Shahid al-Thani.37 Al-Nahrawali was clearly uninformed about Jabal ‘Amil which he erroneously refers to as “‘Amiri.” 38 He has scanty information about al-Shahid al-Thani’s contacts and activities prior to his interrogation at the hands of Hasan Beg.39 On the accusations directed against al-Shahid al-Thani, al-Nahrawali wrote that one or more ‘ulama’ told Hasan Beg about al-Shahid al-Thani’s activity as a Shi‘ite mujtahid. These ‘ulama’ described him in the following manner: “min kibar ‘ulama’ al-rafida wa huwa mujtahidu madhhabihim” (among the major scholars of the recusants (Shi‘ites) and the mujtahid of their legal school).40 As such, al-Shahid al-Thani was considered to have been deriving the law on the basis of ijtihad; a factor wellarticulated in Ibn al-‘Awdi’s account.41

When Hasan Beg first interrogated al-Shahid al-Thani, he had no actual proof that al-Shahid al-Thani was a Shi‘ite mujtahid. There was no mention of any of al-Shahid al-Thani’s books or writings during the interrogation.This leads one to believe that the ‘ulama’ who insisted he was a Shi‘ite mujtahid were drawing upon information about his legal activities in Ba‘labak or Jabal ‘Amil.42 On the other hand, there is evidence that a large number of Shi‘ite works reached Damascus (even if they did not circulate widely) including more than 100 works possibly handwritten by al-Shahid al-Thani.43 Damascus is an additional locale where al-Shahid al-Thani’s scholarship could have been known. Facing the threat of death, al-Shahid al-Thani pretended in front of Hasan Beg to be a Shafi‘ite Sunnite scholar.44 It was some time after Hasan Beg accepted al-Shahid al-Thani’s explanations and allowed him to leave his court unscathed that a group of Sunnite ‘ulama’ brought al-Shahid al-Thani’s books to Hasan Beg to prove that the former was actually a mujtahid of the “rafidites” or recusants, the Twelver Shi‘ites who rejected the caliphate of Abu Bakr and ‘Umar.45 On this basis, Hasan Beg furnished the ground for al-Shahid al-Thani’s ‘heresy’ and resented being outwitted by al-Shahid al-Thani in front of other ‘ulama’.

Within Shi‘ite circles al-Shahid al-Thani was already known to practice ijtihad at the age of 33, that is, around 948/1541-42.46 Al-Shahid al-Thani realized the gravity of practicing ijtihad under the Ottomans. When he was writing Sharh al-Irshad he did not show parts of it to anyone at first.47 Meanwhile , among Sunnite scholars, Sunnite-based ijtihad was increasingly suppressed which adds a further complexity to al-Shahid al-Thani’s case.Wael Hallaq argued that it was actually in the early sixteenth century, that a strong resistance to the claims of a Sunnite scholar to practice ijtihad emerged.48 The Hanafi and Maliki ‘ulama’ insisted that mujtahids in the Sunnite schools of law were no longer to be found.49 The tendency to reject ijtihad under the Ottoman Hanafi ‘ulama’, and the association which Ottoman officials made between Jabal ‘Amil and Safavid Shi‘ism during the sixteenth and seventeenth century played a significant role in al-Shahid al-Thani’s execution in Istanbul.50 Accusing al-Shahid al-Thani of heresy meant in this context that he violated the doctrinal-legal foundations of Sunnism as defined during the mid-sixteenth century and had thus challenged Ottoman political legitimacy.

During this period, ‘Amili jurists suspected of practicing ijtihad and deriving legal rulings on the basis of theJa‘fari legal school, were considered by state officials to have violated Ottoman Sunnite legal-doctrinal ‘orthodoxy.’ Which public ritual, idea, legal practice, or political alliancewas rendered “heretical” by Ottoman officials at a particular time is not always clear. Meanwhile, Shi‘ite jurists like al-Shahid al-Thani have challenged the foundations of this ‘orthodoxy’ or manipulated elements of it to enhance their social power. Winter noted that the legal framework of heresy did not prevent the Ottomans from readily reinstating a tax farmer or emir from the Shi’ite Hamadas or Harfushes of Ba‘labak-al-Hirmil for practical reasons.51 Shi‘ite subjectswere expected to mediate their needs and resolve their grievances through Sunnite legal courts. Privately, however, Shi‘ite believers turned to their own ‘ulama’ for answers to a wide array of legal questions dealing with worship and social contracts. The ‘Amili ‘ulama’ for the most part were able to manage their own local socioreligious affairs and maintain a sophisticated tradition of Islamic law and jurisprudence.52

There is evidence for a spectrum of taqiyya practices among Ottoman Shi‘ite ‘ulama’ which involves dissimulating one’s Shi’ite affiliation in certain contexts.In scholarly circles, taqiyya meant at times that a Shi‘ite scholar avoided public defense of Twelver Shi‘ite positions against Sunnism even where the identity of the Shi‘ite scholar in question was suspected by his Sunnite colleagues.53 At other times, taqiyya was demanded from Shi‘ite subjects by Ottoman officials themselves as was the case when the state required that Shi‘ites avoid public defamation of Sunnite figures during ‘Ashura’ in the late Ottoman period.54 It was clearly understood that Shi‘ites carried out such a defamation and could not possibly be censored in their private homes and locales by the Ottomans or any other system of governance for that matter. Taqiyya was also practiced and legitimized when a Shi‘ite jurist faced accusations of heresy by the Ottoman authorities and whose life was in real jeopardy.55 To add but another dimension to the manifestation of taqiyya, Muhammad Amin Astarabadi (d.1036/1626-7), an Iranian Shi‘ite jurist used the term taqiyya to describe how he was censored by his co-religionists, the powerful ‘Amili mujtahids in Iran and prevented from challenging their legal methods.56

The Shi‘ite and Sunnite ‘ulama’ were part of the same discursive Islamic traditions such as jurisprudence, theology, and science formed within and around the madrasas.For instance, during the sixteenth century the ‘Amili jurists were keen on discursing upon Shafi’ite juridical practices in order to find new ways to harmonize and systematize the sources of Shi’ite law.57 It is easy to ignore the inexorable connections between Shi‘ite and Sunnite scholars when relying on anti-Shi‘ite polemics and fatwas.58 Shared experiences of civil life and scholarly activity allowed Shi‘ite scholars agency and some measure of control. To complicate the picture even further, some Sunnite scholars seemed to have been described in Shi‘ite sources as sympathetic to the Shi‘ites or loyal to ahl al-bayt despite belonging to a Sunnite legal school. The example of Abu al-Ma‘ali al-Taluwi (d.1014/1605), a Damascene mufti and poet is noteworthy. Shi‘ite sources note that he believed in the Imamate of ‘Ali b. Abi Talib and that he was a Shi‘ite who nonetheless followed the Hanafi legal school in positive law.59

The ‘Amili ‘ulama’ and the state in the nineteenth century

From the late 1860s on, the Shi‘ite ‘ulama’ of Jabal ‘Amil entered a distinct phase in their relationship to the Ottoman state and Shi‘ite believers.The Ja’fari legal school became licit and Shi’ite scholars received appointments as judges in Beirut (Burj al-Barajina), Sidon, Tyre, Marji’yun, al-Nabatiyya, Ba’labak, and al-Hirmil.60 The scholars received land privately registered in their names in return for clerical and administrative services to the Ottoman state as judges and muftis.61 Ideally, the Shi‘ite mufti was expected to be a mujtahid, that is, a licensed jurist trained in Najaf who mastered legal inference based on the rational procedures of the usuli school of jurisprudence. Yet, several Shi‘ite muftis had expertise in one area of the law and normally consulted a mujtahid when issuing injunctions in other legal areas.The ‘ulama’ enjoyed a degree of juridical autonomy and arbitrated a large number of civil cases in accordance with the Ja‘fari legal school.62 This development aimed to organize on a new basis socio-legal relations between Shi‘ite subjects and the state.63 The judges’ functions were restricted to marriage and divorce, the implementation of dissimulation (taqiyya), inheritance (mawarith), wills (wasaya), and the administration of religious endowments (awqaf) or land possessions for children who are under the legal age (wilayat al-awqaf wa alqasirin). A few ‘ulama’ owned land but most of them relied on community contributions.64 Occasionally they received from Shi’ite believers the tithe of one-fifth (khums), levied on war booty, jewelry, and valuable stones, mined treasure and products, net income, land sold to non-Muslims, and any financial source touched by unlawful dealings.65 Yet, khums was not a reliable or systematic source of support for the ‘ulama’ and their students. Some ‘ulama’ who took up posts in qada’ (judgeship) were able to finance their own schools and rely less on the zu‘ama’s contributions. The Shi‘ite muftis in particular obtained social visibility and became an important link between the locals and the Ottomans. The mufti could receive the kharaj land revenues of seven villages that amounted to a one-hundred dunams (a dunam is ca. 0.227 acres) for each village. Thesewere registered in the personal name of the mufti. For one, Sayyid ‘Ali al-Amin (d. 1910), an ‘Amili jurist, who was appointed mufti, “revived” religious-legal learning in Shaqra’ in 1893 by building the ‘Alawi madrasa believed to have trained 400 students.66

From the mid-nineteenth century onward the Ottomans permitted the performance of ‘Ashura’ as long as Shi‘ites practiced self-censoring and avoided public attack on the first three Caliphs and ‘A’isha, his wife.67 Musa Amin Sharara (d. 1886) reorganized the ‘Ashura funereal councils in harmony with their counterparts in Iraq and held them regularly in Jabal ‘Amil. Ottoman officials expected the Shi‘ite muftis to maintain self-censorship with respect to Sunnite figures during ‘Ashura. Yet, the Ottomans were not consistent in their prohibition of aspects of the ‘Ashura’ ritual. Sometime during the 1880s or the 1890s the Shi‘ite mujtahid Sayyid Hasan b. Yusuf al-Husayni asked the qaim-maqam (district governor) of Sidon, a subdivision of the province of Beirut, to prevent a group of Iranian residents in al-Nabatiyya from holding the Passion Play.The latter known as ta‘ziya and a‘mal al-shabih enacted the events at Karbala’ where Imam Husayn was martyred at the hands of the Umayyad ruler Yazid on the tenth day of the Islamic month of Muharram in 61/680.68 The qaim-maqam, however, could not ban the ceremony because his superior, the vali of Beirut, wanted to fulfill the wishes of an influential group of Iranians in al-Nabatiyya. He permitted the Shi‘ites to hold their religious rituals undeterred. ThePassion Play was performed and not only Iranians participated in it but Arab ‘Amilis as well. Meanwhile, ‘Amili Shi‘ites observed ceremonies marking the birth of the Mahdi and performed hajj (pilgrimage) to the shrines in al-‘Atabat (Najaf, Karbala’, al-Kazimayn, Samarra’) and holy sites in Syria.

The implications of Ottoman legal reform for the ‘Amili ‘ulama’ deserve some attention. A new application of theshari‘a in legal matters was called upon to assist in the empire’s centralizing thrust. The Ottoman reformists sought to reorganize legal administration in ways that placed theshari‘a (Islamic legal principles) in both a synthetic as well as a competitive relationship with European legal codes - that in the long run deprived it of autonomous growth and efficacy.The promulgation of the mejelle was the initial step in the codification of the shari‘a between 1869 and 1876, which involved fitting particular Islamic legal principles to a Western juridical system and turning them into law (especially in penal and commercial fields).69 Though aiming to codify and standardize the state’s relationship to Muslim and non-Muslim subjects, these changes created multiple and overlapping courts with diverse bases for adjudication as was the case with the shari‘a, minorities, and consular courts.70 With the emergence of the Ottoman Ministry of Justice in 1868, the modernizing state wrested from the ‘ulama’ a good part of their administration of the shari‘a. Some ‘ulama’ tied to the empire’s political center and provincial governorates were replaced by a group of legal experts thus losing their teaching posts and institutional base.71 Nonetheless, other ‘ulama’ took part in the process of modifying and rearranging areas of the shari‘a to respond to the state’s modernizing initiatives and hoped to offset European economic and cultural forays. Then it should come as no surprise that several Shi‘ite ‘ulama’ at the time expressed optimism about Ottoman educational and legal reforms.72 Their social base and functions as teachers, judges, and muftis - as several of them attested - were positively altered by these developments. In retrospect, the transition relating to the reforms carried contradictory historical forces. On the onehand the modernizing ‘ulama’, driven by historical forces internal to their societies, adapted to the legal reforms. Yet, over the long term this adaptation undermined theshari‘a , the socio-legal world that gave them public responsibilities and power. A number of ‘Amili ‘ulama’ found justification for legal-cultural “tajdid” (renewal) in the usuli (rationalist) Shi‘ite juridical tradition itself and argued that it was necessary for preserving the religion under changing historical circumstances.73 The term “islah” (reform) underwent change and was approached differently by various intellectuals and sectors of the elite during the late Ottoman and French colonial periods. During the Hamidian era, the reformists had already placed value on cultural “progress” which valorized some experiences of European modernism. But the dominance of Eurocentric concepts of “progress” and intense clashes over “reform” became evident during the French colonial period especially with the formation of the modern nation-state in 1920.74

The ‘ulama’, themadrasas and the Ottoman Public Schools

The ‘Amilis who pursued religious learning in the late Ottoman period were roughly drawn from three social strata. The first stratum included wealthy to self-sufficient families with a long tradition of learning, such as al-Amin, Mughniyya, Nur al-Din, and Sharaf al-Din.75 Many of them were distinguished by their social status as sayyids, descendants from the house of the Prophet.Another stratum of learned ‘Amilis included members of the notables like Al Jabir, Al Safa, and al-Zayn, whose scholarly interests dated to the late Ottoman period.76 In general they acquired mixed training in the religious-legal sciences and “modern disciplines” at the local madrasas and the Ottoman public schools.77 In the last social stratum were students from families with a long tradition of legal-religious learning but of modest economic background like Muruwwa, Sharara, and Sadiq.78 Shaykh Musa Sharara (d. 1886), for instance, was a reputed scholar in Bint Jubayl and founder of a madrasa but he did not own land.79 A number of scholars from these strata moved away from clerical careers toward the end of the Ottoman period. They became philologists, historians, and poets, and expressed enthusiasm for particular features of the Enlightenment.80

Early on young boys were sent to the kuttab schools of Jabal ‘Amil that specialized primarily in teaching the Qur’an and its recital, and incorporated the study of calligraphy, rules of writing, and arithmetic.81 A range of elementary classes in Arabic grammar, reading and writing, mathematics, and logic supplemented the study of the Qur’an. After this stage, students studied at one of the local Shi‘ite madrasas and some attended an Ottoman public school. A brief description of the madrasa here is useful.George Makdisi viewed the madrasa primarily as an institutional, religiously endowed “College of Law,” training students to become jurists.82 The ‘Amili Shi‘ite madrasas placed primary emphasis on the legal-juridical Islamic sciences but they were far from being institutional “Colleges” supported by awqaf that normally guaranteed continuity in financial and scholarly administration.83 The ‘Amili scholars and historians described their schools simply as “madrasas” or “al-madaris al-diniyya” (religious schools) to distinguish them from public Ottoman schools. The urbanity of the Islamic madrasa painted by Makdisi stands in sharp contrast to the ‘Amili madrasa which did not emerge around “the masjid…. and its nearby khan” nor was managed by a bureau but rather by informal and formal networks of family, village, as well as scholarly communities.84 Sayyid Muhsin al-Amin, the ‘Amili marja‘ wrote,

Out of these madrasas emerged a great number of outstanding ‘ulama’ and to them many [students and scholars] migrated from far regions.The Mays madrasa at the time of al-Muhaqqiq al-Shaykh ‘Ali al-Maysi, author of “Al-Maysiyya fi al-fiqh” had numerous talaba (students). From [this madrasa] graduated al-Shahid al-Thani, Zayn al-Din b. ‘Ali al-‘Amili al-Juba‘i and that was in the early tenth century Hijri. These madrasas continued [teaching] in every century due to a succession of great scholars even though they did not have waqf (religious endowment) unlike the case in Syria, Iran, India, Egypt, Iraq and Morocco and other Muslim regions. In theseareas most of the schools had religious endowments that secured the students’ provisions and elicited the desire to seek learning. The madrasas of Jabal ‘Amil lacked this [condition] except rarely …and they [the madrasas] appeared and disappeared with the appearance and disappearance of [individual] teachers or those who took their place after their death.85

The characteristics of the madrasas of Jabal ‘Amil reveal the limitations of overarching and formulaic depictions of the Islamic madrasa. In comparison to Makdisi, Michael Chamberlain emphasized the state’s sociopolitical manipulation of the madrasas in as far as theywere established through religious endowments. He counterbalanced Makdisi’s emphasis on the charitable and scholarly dimensions of the madrasas.86 The ‘Amili madrasas, however, were not amenable to state politics even if they witnessed scholarly competition and cross-regional rivalries. The autonomous scholarly impetus for founding these madrasas was evident in thepride which their founders derived from them and the thrust to keep the madrasas’ intellectual traditions alive. The local maintenance of a tradition of learning despite the lack of an institutional base draws our attention to diverse functions and dimensions of Islamic learning. Influential leaders extended at times financial support for the Shi’ite madrasas. A number of ‘ulama’ families also funded their own schools such as the Khatunfamily which was a large landholder especially in the village of Juwayya.87

The ‘Amili madrasas were free under the late Ottomans to teach the religious-legal sciences pertaining to Twelver Shi‘ism. These madrasas taught the following: grammar/philology; morphology; and rhetoric (including the art of metaphors); logic; and Islamic theology.The latter covered the foundations of religion - the belief in unity and divine justice, the necessity for prophets in human society, the continuation of divine guidance through the infallible Shi’ite Imams, and the belief in resurrection on the day of judgment.88 The madrasas also taught rational theology, metaphysics, jurisprudence, law, Qur’anic exegesis, arithmetic, history and literary arts.89 Sabrina Mervin discussed the texts which students studied at the madrasas of Jabal ‘Amil before pursuing specialization in law and jurisprudence in Najaf.90 It is difficult, however, to know from the sources all the texts introduced and those eliminated and the particular branches of study expanded at these madrasas during the Hamidian period.

The sources allow us to deduce only the general alterations made at thesemadrasas which we will highlight in the following section.