We know that in Imamism this “leader” can only be the imam himself...

We know that in Imamism this “leader” can only be the imam himself, or someone designated by him. According to the early corpus of the imams, the collective prayer of the two feasts of the Sacrifice at the end of the month of Ramazan are specifically declared as impossible to perform in the absence of the imam or his delegate.

702 On the other hand, since the leaders of the Imamite collective prayer on Fridays were named by the imams, once the imam is absent, it appeared as though the Friday prayer could no longer be practiced, or that it was at least suspended” (mutawaqqif al-ijra) until the Return of the Mahdi -asws and his designating new leaders for prayer.

This situation prevailed throughout the pre-Safavid period, since at the beginning of the Safavid dynasty (circa 927/1520 to 1009/1600) nearly a hundred books or treatises were written to justify the legal status of Friday prayer. 703 The composition of these books was linked to the religious politics of the Safavids, specifically to attempts at setting up another Islamic “pole” in the face of the Ottoman Empire, on the one hand, and the “ideologization” of Imamism, on the other.

We shall return to this. We find ourselves facing the same phenomenon when it comes to the holy war. With the arrival of the Safavids, a number of polemical works were composed to prove the legal or illegal status of jihad in the absence of the imam.

704 A solution was finally reached through compromise, and the doctor-theologians distinguished between two different holy wars: the offensive jihad, declared to be “suspended” during the period of Occultation, and the defensive, legal jihad, which may be obligatory in the case of an attack from outside. The polemics and the juridical-theological debates in the Safavid and post-Safavid periods show that the question was still moot until relatively recently.

Among the ahkam, religious jurisdiction (hukuma/qada”) and legal punishments (hudud) were subject to this debate. The need for justice based on the Law and religious science of the judge being beyond question, the question remains as to whether the judge should be a religious person, in the sense of a religious “professional,” or not. The problem is raised by later sources, once again starting in the time of the Safavids and the constitution of a class of Imamite religious professionals.