The Beginnings of Modern Shi’ism: The End of Akhbarism and the Beginnings of Usulism

The 18^th century CE witnessed the apex of a heated debate in Twelver Shi’ism between the Akhbari and Usuli schools. At the heart of the schools and their debate was a question: “How do we know what God wants us to do?”

The debate was, on one level, about hermeneutics.

Usulis argued that the scriptural sources only occasionally give one “certainty” as to the text’s message and God’s intended meaning. The Akhbaris responded, “Why did God reveal the Qur’an, and send Prophets and Imams, only to make the message’s meanings unclear?”

On another level, the debate was political. Theoretically, the Usuli view gives the jurist the decisive role in controlling scriptural meaning. Akhbaris, it could be argued, opened up the certainties of scripture to the whole community, thereby reducing scholarly authority. The battle took on further political aspects when both Akhbaris and Usulis tried to ingratiate themselves with political power in India, Iran and Ottoman Iraq in an attempt to promote their versions of Shi’sim. In this lecture, I will trace history of the Akhbari-Usuli dispute and explore how the eventual Usuli victory can be viewed as the real beginning of transnational “modern” Shiʿism.

Robert Gleave is Professor of Arabic Studies in the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter, UK. He researches the history of Shiʿi law, with a particular interest in legal hermeneutics. He has led international projects linked to these themes, and currently leads the SDIL project: Schooling and Deschooling Islamic Law, funded by the Gerda Henkel Foundation. He is author of Inevitable Doubt: Two Shīʿī Theories of Jurisprudence (Brill, 2000), Scripturalist Islam: The History and Doctrines of the Akhbārī Shīʿī School (Brill, 2007) and Islam and Literalism: Literal Meaning in Interpretation in Islamic Legal Theory (EUP, 2012). His most recent collaborative publications are (with Kumail Rajani) Shi’ite Legal Theory: Sources and Commentaries (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press/Gibb Memorial Trust, 2023) and (with Omar Anchassi), Islamic Law in Context: A Primary Source Reader (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).