The Imamite Community’s situation was becoming untenable.

The Imamite Community’s situation was becoming untenable. Living in a socially and ideologically hostile environment, deprived of the physical presence of its charismatic leader, in possession of a body of beliefs that appeared “heretical” and “irrational” at a time when “orthodoxy” and “rationalism” had firm footing, Imamism felt forced to adopt a solution of compromise in order to survive as a religious community.

Everything seems to have begun with the slide of the meaning of the word ‘aql that, from the time of shaykh al-Mufid, was beginning to refer to the faculty of logical reasoning. From that time on, the traditions judged to be too “irrational?’ were quietly left unmentioned, or were even considered suspect.

716 The door was thus open for the principle of ijtihad (“the personal interpretation of the doctor-theologian regarding religious matters”), giving the doctor-theologian tremendous social and political power. The process nevertheless took a number of centuries to crystallize. 716 bis As we have seen, respect for the rules instituted by the imams began to get in the way of the application of the doctrine in collective matters. The great turning point was the rise of the Safavids in Iran.

The evolution of Imamite law and the chronological placement of sources coincide directly with this political and cultural change that transformed Imamite doctrine into a state religion beginning in the tenth/sixteenth century. Before the Safavids, the problem of a government drawing its legitimacy from its adherence to a doctrine does not even seem to have been an issue among the Imamites.

Imamite or proImamite powers like the Buyids (334/945 to 447/1055) and the Ilkhanids (from the sixth/twelfth to the eighth/fourteenth centuries) appear never to have been forced to justify their legitimacy by their profession of faith.

It is undeniable that this attitude had its political reasons, but we might also think that it was founded on the fundamental Imamite belief according to which any power before the Return of the hidden imam is by its very nature a usurper, or on some of the imam -asws s’ traditions where they vehemently impugn the very idea of government. 717 Things changed radically when the Safavids took power in 907/1501.

Shah Ismail, the founder of the dynasty, publicly called himself the precursor and the “representative” of the hidden imam -asws , and his followers looked upon him as a reincarnation of the imams.