Politics of Collective Biographies of Shiʿi Ulama in the 17th and 18th Centuries: The Case of Amal al-Āmil and Luʾluʾat al-Baḥrayn

Abstract

This study attempts to problematise the locus of the collective biographies in the historiographical tradition of the Safavid and post-Safavid eras. The collective biographies are the primary sources for studying the erudite figures’ lives and the Islamic world’s scholastic tradition. However, treatment of these sources as databanks has been proven to be problematic. This study strives to contextualise these works and demonstrate the ideological and intellectual underpinnings of these works. This could help the scholars of Safavid learned figures and the Shiʿi scholastic tradition to glimpse the ideological and authorial premises that formed these texts. More importantly, it reveals the inner structures of collective biographies and the strategies in various text layers that the author deployed to present a specific agenda. The intellectual context also contributes to making sense of the findings of the content and form analysis of the text. This research aims to document the flourishing of collective biographies in the 17th and 18th centuries among Shiʿi scholars. It provides close reading and analysis of two case studies, Amal al-āmil fī ʿulamāʾ Jabal ʿĀmil by Muḥammad b. Ḥasan al-Ḥurr al-ʿĀmilī (d. 1104/1693) and Luʾluʾat al-Baḥrayn fī al-ijāza li-qurratay al-ʿayn by Yūsuf b. Aḥmad al-Baḥrānī (d. 1186/1772). These two texts are examined in the broader intellectual context that culminated in guiding these two authors. This study proposes a category, “tradition of al-Shahīd II”, that explains the developments in the Shiʿi legal tradition during the Safavid period. The tradition of al-Shahīd II was a network of scholars and texts that propagated the ideas and the works of Zayn al-Dīn b. ʿAlī al-Shahīd al-Thānī (d. 965/1557 or 966/1558) in Persia, Iraq, Jabal ʿĀmil and Baḥrayn. It consequently became the hegemonic way of thinking about law and religious scholarship from the late 16th century onwards. The two case studies were written in this context, and they were responses to the developments in this tradition. The authors’ lives and intellectual formations are meticulously investigated to provide the researcher with a solid ground to discover the prime agenda of the authors. This research reveals how and why the authors inserted themselves into the tradition of al-Shahīd II. It documents the various strategies that the authors deployed to achieve their goals. Throughout this study, one other thread also runs parallel with the main argument. The detailed examination of the case studies demonstrates that although both authors were Akhbārī scholars, their main agenda was to connect themselves to the tradition of al-Shahīd II, which had been the very target of Muḥammad Amīn al-Astarābādī’s (d. 1036/1626) attacks in his manifesto of Akhbārī thought. Al-Astarābādī, also famed as the “reviver” of Akhbarism, levelled the disparaging criticism against the tradition of al-Shahīd II in his magnum opus, al-Fawāʾid al-madaniyya. Al-Ḥurr’s and al-Baḥrānī’s approaches to the legacy of al-Shahīd II suggest that the conventional narrative, which states that the 17th and 18th centuries were dominated by Akhbārī thought, is in need of substantial adjustment. To revise the perception of the rise of Akhbarism and then, the revival of Usulism in the late 18th century by Muḥammad Bāqir al-Bihbahānī (d. c. 1205/1791), the present thesis traces the intellectual developments of Shiʿi legal thought in the 17th and 18th, through a detailed re-examination of narrative and documentary sources. I argue that from the late 16th century onwards, the hegemony of al-Shahīd II tradition to a great extent remained unchallenged. The narrative of Akhbārī dominance and revival of Usulism was a later construction to glorify al-Bihbahānī by one of his disciples. This very narrative, later on, was embraced by the Shiʿi biographers of the 19th century and became the foundation of the conventional narrative.