ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books The Principle of Ijtihad in Islam The Appearance of the Akhbaris in Shi'i Islam Here we must mention an important and perilous current which first appeared around four centuries ago in the Shi`i world over the question of ijtihad - Akhbarism. If a group of the `ulama had not been forthright and challenged it, and had not taken a stand against this current and destroyed it, there is no knowing in what position we should be today.

The actual school of the Akhbaris is no more than four centuries old. Its founder was a man by the name of Mulla Muhammad Amin al­Astarabadi [d. 1033/1624], who was, personally, a gifted man who found many followers among the `ulama'. The Akhbaris themselves claimed that the original Shi`is, up to the time of the Shaykh al­Saduq [^20], were all followers of the Akhbari doctrine, but the truth is that Akhbarism as a school with basic postulates did not exist more than four centuries ago.

These postulates were: the denial of the possibility of arriving at certainty through exercising reason (`aql); the denial of the validity and the proof (dalil) of the Qur'an on the pretext that the understanding of the Qur'an lay exclusively in the hands of the Prophet's ahl al­bayt, and that our duty is to consult the hadith of the ahl al­bayt [for its interpretation and understanding]; the assertion that ijma` was the innovation of the Sunnis; the assertion that, of the four valid proofs (adilla), i.e., the Book, the Sunna, ijma` and `aql, only the Sunna is able to lead to certainty, the assertion that all the hadith that appear in the "four books"" are true and valid, and of categorical provenance [from the Imams] (qat`i al­sudur).

In his book, ''`Uddat al­Usul", the Shaykh al­Tusi mentions a group of former Shi`i scholars under the name of the "Muqallida", and adversely criticises them; but they had no school of their own, and the reason that the Shaykh called them "Muqallida" was that even in the fundamentals of dogmatics (usul al­din) they constructed their proofs with hadith. At any rate, the school of the Akhbaris took its stand against the school of ijtihad and taqlid.

They denied the legal competence, jurisdiction and technical expertise that the mujtahids believed in; they considered taqlid of anyone else than the ma`sumin [^22] to be illegal.