IRAN AND THE WORLD IN THE SAFAVID AGE
Abstracts

Newman, Dr. Andrew, Edinburgh University, Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, Edinburgh, Arab 'Doctors', Iranian 'Notables' and the 'Revival' of Akhbari Shi'ism in Safavid Iran

The present paper provides an opportunity for reassessing our 1993 suggestion as to the limited extent of the influx of Arab Shi'i clerics into Safavid territory following the establishment of Twelver Shi'ism in Iran following the capture of Tabriz in 907/1501 by Shah Isma'il.

The paper assesses the 'debate' generated by our 1993 article on the subject and then considers the development of relations between those Arab clerics who did relocate to Iran over this period and the native Iranian clerical class.  It has been suggested that these incoming Arab clerics clashed with the established native-Iranian 'clerical notables' or the 'clerical estate', most of whom only 'formally' professed Shi'ism and entered government service, mainly as 'judges and clerical administrators' and were, in the seventeenth century, the principle beneficiaries, if not also the chief supporters, of the Akhbari 'revival'.  Others, in the aftermath of the 1993 article, have suggested both that large numbers of Arab, and especially Lebanese scholars, entered Iran in the late-sixteenth and especially the seventeenth-century and that Lebanese scholars drawn from the Jabal Amil region in particular occupied the key positions within the Safavid state.

It will be suggested that it remains true that, during the first half-century following the capture of Tabriz, very few Arab clerics migrated to Iran with the express purpose of contributing to the propagation of the faith within Safavid territory.  Nevertheless, beginning early on with Ali al-Karaki (d. 940/1534), a confluence of both spiritual and material interests rapidly obtained between those clerics who did enter Iran to participate in the Safavid 'project' and the Tajik clerical class, especially including Iranian Sayyids.  Too, the handful of Amili clerics who can be identified as having come to Iran over the period never occupied more than a very limited number of posts over the two hundred years of the Safavid period.  By contrast, large numbers of native Iranian clerics, including many Sayyids, occupied key 'national' and 'local' posts or otherwise important informal positions at both levels over the period.  Moreover, there seems very little evidence of any Akhbari sympathies among the native Iranian clerical 'estate'; indeed, the holding of discretely Akhbari sympathies by such clerics would have been antithetical to their own material interests over the period.  Indeed, and finally, the seventeenth century, as the sixteenth, is distinguished as a period of overall co-operation between Arab and Tajik clerics on both the key 'problematic' and less controversial issues of the day.

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