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Institutional resilience in Modern Iranian Shiʿism: solidification of the ḥawza ʿilmīya of Qum between 1961 and 1979

2023; Routledge; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13530194.2023.2251113

1469-3542

Mohammad Mesbahi,

Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East

ABSTRACTThe modern history of the intellectual resilience within the ḥawza ʿilmīya of Qum and its contribution to the downfall of the Pahlavi regime in 1979 is of particular importance. Following the death of Ayatollah Borujerdi (1875–1961), the ḥawza ʿilmīya of Qum was led by Ayatollahs Golpaygani (1899–1993), Shariʿatmadari (1906–1986), and Marʿashi Najafi (1887–1990), offering informally structured collective leadership. The intention behind this article is twofold: firstly, to critically review the impact of the ʿulamāʼs political, social, and religious contributions in this period, secondly, to assess their involvement in positioning the ḥawza institution against the Shah’s regime prior to the exile (1964–1979) of Ayatollah Khomeini (1900–1989) from Iran and afterwards. Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Cyrus Vakili-Zad, ‘Organization, Leadership and Revolution: Religiously Oriented Opposition in the Iranian Revolution of 1978–1979’, Journal of Conflict Studies 10, no. 2 (1990): 5–25 (5).2 There are countless attempts at theorizing the 1979 Iranian revolution, but notable authors are Fred Halliday, Robert Graham, Nikki Keddie and Richard Yann, Said Amir Arjomand, Theda Skocpol, Farideh Farhi, and Michael Fischer.3 Seen as ‘responsible for the shape and nature of the State that emerged’; Anoushiravan Ehteshami, Iran: Stuck in Transition (London: Routledge, 2017), 127.4 A. Ansari and K. Aarabi, ‘Ideology and Iranʼs Revolution: How 1979 Changed the World’, Institute for Global Change (2019): 1–30 (1), https://institute.global/policy/ideology-and-irans-revolution-how-1979-changed-world (accessed February 11, 2022).5 Christian Caryl, Strange Rebels: 1979 and the Birth of the 21st Century (London: Basic Books, 2014); Jack A. Goldstone, ‘Theory Development in the Study of Revolutions’, in New Directions in Contemporary Sociological Theory, eds. Joseph Berger and Morris Zelditch (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002), 194–226 (194).6 Ervand Abrahamian, ‘The Causes of the Constitutional Revolution in Iran’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 10, no. 3 (1979): 381–414 (382).7 Theda Skocpol, Social Revolutions in the Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 4.8 Theda Skocpol, ‘Rentier State and Shiʿa Islam in the Iranian Revolution’, Theory and Society 11, no 3 (1982): 265–83 (268).9 Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Sahīf-i Imām (Tehran: Muʾassasah-i Tanẓīm va Nashr-i Athār-i Haḍrat-i Imām Khomeinī, 1999), 15, 396; Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Bāyānāt dar Khuṭbihā-yi Nāmāz-i Jumʿa 14.3.1361 (Khamenei.Ir, 1982), para. 12, online edition available at https://farsi.khamenei.ir/speech-content/1518 (accessed 6 June 2022).10 The three factors of Iran, Islam and Shi‘a are ‘ultimately bound together by the perceived universalism of the 1979 revolution’, frequently cited to give meaning to actions; Shahram Akbarzadeh and Barry James, ‘State identity in Iranian foreign policy’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies online (2016): 613–629 (616).11 As well as the Skocpol article mentioned, various theories are presented; Said Amir Arjomand, ‘Shiʿite Islam and the Revolution in Iran’, Government and Opposition 16, no. 3 (1981): 293–316; Robert Graham, Iran: The Illusion of Power (London: Croom Helm, 1979); Fred Halliday, Iran: Dictatorship and Development (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978); Michael Fischer, Iran: From Religious Dispute to Revolution (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003); Nikki Keddie and Richard Yann, Roots of Revolution: An Interpretive History of Modern Iran (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981); Farideh Farhi, ‘State Disintegration and Urban-based Revolutionary Crisis: A Comparative Analysis of Iran and Nicaragua’, Comparative Political Studies 21, no. 2 (1988): 231–56.12 Robert Looney, Economic Origins of the Iranian Revolution (New York: Pergamon Press, 1982), xi.13 Ansari and Aarabi, ‘Ideology and Iranʼs Revolution’, 28.14 It should be noted that the structure of the ḥawza ʿilmīya differs significantly from the modern university system, and each senior marjaʿ would run his own ḥawza without a formal connection to the others; Naser Ghobadzadeh, Religious secularity: A theological challenge to the Islamic state (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 177.15 One such example regarding is that of Michael Fischer, Iran: From Religious Dispute to Revolution (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003.16 Mansoor Moaddel, ‘Ideology as Episodic Discourse: The Case of the Iranian Revolution’, American Sociological Review 57, no. 3 (1992): 353–79 (355).17 Nikki Keddie and Farrokh Ghaffary, Qajar Iran and the Rise of Reza Khan, 1796–1925 (Costa Mesa: Mazda Publications, 1999), 9.18 Bianca Devos and Christoph Werner, ‘Introduction’, in Culture and Cultural Politics under Reza Shah: The Pahlavi State, New Bourgeoisie and the Creation of a Modern Society in Iran, eds. Bianca Devos and Christoph Werner (London: Routledge, 2013), 1–15 (1).19 Recent examples of such questioning include that of Elvire Corboz, Guardians of Shiʿism: Sacred Authority and Transnational Family Networks (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015), 9; Jan-Peter Hartung, ‘Making Sense of Political Quietism’, in Political Quietism in Islam: Sunni and Shiʿi Practice and Thought, ed. S. Al-Sarhan (London: Bloomsbury, 2019), 15–32 (19). Mohammad Mesbahi, ‘Dynamic Quietism and the Consolidation of the ḥawza ʿilmīya of Qum during the Pahlavi Era’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies online (2022): 1–22 (4).20 Such response is often based on perceived benefits for the religious institution as well as the marjaʿīyat hierarchy itself.21 Mohammad R. Kalantari, ‘The Shiʿi Clergy and Perceived Opportunity Structures: Political Activism in Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 48, no. 2 (2021): 241–55 (244).22 Roman Loimeier, Between Social Skills and Marketable Skills (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 64.23 Misagh Parsa, Social Origins of the Iranian Revolution (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1989), xii.24 Such as the prevalence of the Marxist influence in Iranian society during the revolutionary process can be seen at different levels within activities of the Ḥezb-e Tudeh, Jebhe-ye Mellī, Nehḍat-e Āzādī, Mujāhedīn-e Falq, Fadāīyī-e Falq and works of intellectual figures even those often identified as religious such as ʿAli Shariʿati.25 Said Amir Arjomand, The Turban for the Crown: The Islamic Revolution in Iran (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 83.26 Sadegh Haghighat, Six Theories about the Islamic Revolutionʼs Victory (London: al-Hoda, 2000), 251.27 Frank Coppa (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Modern Dictators: From Napoleon to the Present (New York et al.: Peter Lang, 2006), 135.28 Martha Howell and Walter Prevenier, From Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical Methods (Ithaka, NJ: Cornell University Press, 2001), 2.29 We have used the archive of the Islamic Revolution Document Centre, the Institute for Compilation and Publication of Imam Khomeiniʼs Works, as well as archives of seminary institutions established by the Ayatollahs Golpaygani, Shariʿatmadari, and Marʿashi Najafi in Qum. Moreover, the study benefited from published memoirs, oral history materials, and interviews of the senior scholars of the ḥawza, which the author conducted.30 Jacob Owensby, Dilthey and the Narrative of History (Ithaka, NJ: Cornell University Press, 2019), 3.31 The interpretation and understanding of social events through analysis of their meanings for the clerical participants involved in the events is crucial to this debate.32 Christian Emery, US Foreign Policy and the Iranian Revolution: The Cold War Dynamics of Engagement and Strategic Alliance (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 59.33 The importance of the relationship between hermeneutics and historiography becomes evident to the reader in the light of such revisionism. Verification and validation of sources (e.g. verify date and place of production, scrutinizing the authorship, undertaking a process of cross referencing among sources) are essential to this approach.34 Rasul Jafariyan, Ṣad sālegī-yiḥawza-yiʿilmīya-yi (Qum: Nashr-i Movarrikh, 2021), 313.35 Meir Litvak, Shiʿi Scholars of Nineteenth-century Iraq: The ʿulamaʾ of Najaf and Karbala (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 167.36 Ervand Abrahamian, Iran between two Revolutions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 103.37 Mohammad Reza Motamedi and Ali Akbar Amini, ‘Effect of Reza Shah Modernity on the Political Opposition Development’, Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences 7, no. 5 (2017): 84–8 (84).38 Parvin Qudsizad, ‘The Period of Pahlavi I’, in Pahlavi Dynasty: An Entry from Encyclopaedia of the World of Islam, eds. Ghulam Ali H. Adel and Mohammad J. Elmi (London: EWI Press, 2012), 31–58 (41).39 Abrahamian, Iran between Two Revolutions, 176.40 Mohammad Samiei, ‘Najaf and Iranian Politics: Analysing the Way the hawza of Najaf Influenced Iranian Politics between Two Revolutions’, Journal of Shīʿa Islamic Studies 5, no. 3 (2012): 277–94 (285).41 Arjomand, Turban for the Crown, 82.42 Abd al-Hadi Hairi, Shiʿism and Constitutionalism in Iran: A Study of the Role Played by the Persian Residents of Iraq in Iranian Politics (Leiden: Brill, 1977), 179 and 191.43 Mohammad H. Faghfoory, ‘The Impact of Modernization on the ulama in Iran, 1925–1941’, Iranian Studies 26, no. 3–4 (1993): 277–312 (272).44 Personal conversation in Qum with Ayatollah Shaykh Muḥammad Faẓil Lankarani on June 28, 2008; personal conversation in Qum with Ayatollah Shaykh Jaʿfar Subḥani on June 10, 2010’; personal conversation in Tehran with Ayatollah Sayyid Muḥammad Baqir Khunsari on October 30, 2010.45 Mohammad Mesbahi, ‘Collective hawza Leadership in a Time of Crisis: The Period of marajeʿ thalath (1937–1953)’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies online (2021): 1–22 (11).46 Mesbahi, ‘Dynamic Quietism’, 5.47 Mohammad Samiei, Nabard-i qudrat dar Irān (Tehran: Nashr-i Nay, 2017), 272.48 Hamid Dabashi, Theology of Discontent: The Ideological Foundation of the Islamic Revolution in Iran (New York: Routledge, 2017), 412.49 Majid Yazdi, ‘Patterns of Clerical Political Behaviour in Post War Iran, 1941–53’, Middle Eastern Studies 26, no. 3 (1990): 281–307 (285).50 Mesbahi, ‘Dynamic Quietism’, 11.51 This decisive arrangement is often eclipsed in English literature by only referring to the significant figures of Ayatollahs Ḥaʾiri and Borujerdi.52 Mesbahi, ‘Collective hawza Leadership’, 2.53 Ayatollah Muhammad H. Alavi Borujerdi, ‘Khātirāt-i zindāgī-i Ayatollāh al-ʿuẓmā Āqā-yi Borūjerdī’, Iṭṭilāʿāt (1962), 35.54 This marks the voluntary withdrawal of leadership by the marājeʿ thalāth in favour of Ayatollah Borujerdi; see Mohammad J. Ardalan, The Life and Work of a Grand Ayatollah in Historical Context, Doctoral dissertation (Oxford: Oxford University, 2013), 61; Ayatollah Musa Shubayri Zanjani, Jurʿae-ī az daryā (Tehran: Muʾassasah-yi Ketābshināsī Shīʿa, 2018), 3, 644.55 Personal conversation in Qum with Ayatollah Shaykh Luṭfullah Safi Golpaygani on September 16, 2010; personal conversation in Virginia with ʿAllamah ʿAbbas Mesbaḥzadeh on February 10, 2011; Ayatollah Khomeini is quoted by Ayatollah Murtaḍa Muṭahhari as wishing Ayatollah Borujerdi had arrived thirty years earlier; Hawza, ‘Muṣāḥabah bā Ayatollāh Vāʿiẓzādah-Khurāsānī’, Majalla-yiḤawza 8, no. 43 (1991): 195–238 (207).56 Personal conversation in Qum with Ayatollah Shaykh Luṭfullah Safi Golpaygani on September 16, 2010.57 Ghulam Reza Karbaschi, Tārīkh-i shifāhī-i inqilāb-i Islāmī: tārīkh-i ḥawzah-yiʻilmīya-yi Qum (Markaz-i Asnād-i Inqilāb-i Islāmī, 2001), 50; Ayatollah Ḥusayn ʿAli Muntaẓiri, Matn-i kāmel-i khāṭirāt-i faqīh va marjaʿ-i ʿĀlīqadr Āyatollah al-ʿUẓmā Muntaẓirī (Tehran: Nashr-i Bārān, 2000), 42.58 Ardalan, Life and Work of a Grand Ayatollah, 68.59 The cleric’s authority and responsibility are determined largely by the hierarchy and their place within the Shiʿi religious institution; Marsin Al-Shamary, ‘Clerics in Protest: Evidence from Ba’athist Iraq’, MEI Research Series (Harvard Kennedy School, 2020), 6.60 Sadegh Zibakalam, ‘To Rule or not to Rule? An Alternative Look at the Political Life of Ayatollah Khomeini between 1960 and 1980’, in A Critical Introduction to Khomeini, ed. A. Adib-Moghaddam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 256–74 (263).61 Mohammad Borghei, ‘Iranʼs Religious Establishment’, in Iran: Political Culture in the Islamic Republic, eds. S. K. Farsoun and M. Mashayekhi (London: Routledge, 2005), 39–55 (40).62 Ismail Baghistani, Ali Akbar Dhakiri, and Sayyid Abbas Radawi, ‘Qum’, in Hawza-yiʿilmiyya, Shiʿi Teaching Institution: An Entry from Encyclopaedia of the World of Islam, eds. Ghulam Ali H. Adel and Mohammad J. Elmi (London: EWI Press, 2012), 46.63 Particularly, his innovative works in demonstrative jurisprudence, principles of jurisprudence, knowledge of tradition, biographical and narrative studies; Personal conversation in Qum with Ayatollah Shaykh Luṭfullah Safi Golpaygani on September 16, 2010; Discussed by Ayatollah Murtaḍa Muṭahhari in his chapter ‘Mazāyā va khadamāt-i marḥūm-i Ayatollāh Borūjerdī’, in Baḥthī dar bāriyī Maraʿīyat va Ruḥanīyat (Qum: Shirkat-i Sahāmī-yi Intishār), 233–49 (242).64 Ayatollah Husayn Ali Muntaẓiri, Matn-i kāmel-i, 72.65 Rasul Jafariyan, Bargʿhāyī az tārīkh-i ḥawza-yiʿilmīya-yi Qum (Tehran: Markaz-i Asnād-i Inqilāb-i Islāmī, 2002), 76.66 The number is noted to have been 100 for Ayatollah Ḥojjat, 70–80 for Ayatollah Ṣadr, and 40–50 for Ayatollah Khunsari; see Ayatollah Husayn Ali Muntaẓiri, Matn-i kāmel-i, 43.67 Ayatollah Musa Shubayri Zanjani, Jurʿae-ī az daryā (Tehran: Muʾassasah-yi Ketābshināsī Shīʿa, 2018), vol. 4, 545.68 Muhammad H. Manzur al-Ajdad, Marjaʿīyat dar ʿarsah-ʾi ijtimāʿ va siyāsāt: Asnād va guzārishʼhāyī az Āyāt-i ʿiẓam Naʾīnī, Isfahānī, Qumī, Ḥāʾirī va Borūjerdī (Tehran: Pardīs-i Dānish, 2000), 408.69 Ayatollah Khomeini had sought to ‘utilize the potentialities of the position of supreme religious authority’ for political activism; Hamid Algar, Islam and Revolution: Writings and Declarations of Imām Khomeinī (London: Mizan Press, 2002), 14.70 Iraj Dhawqi and Rasul Afḍali, ‘The Period of Pahlavi II’, in Pahlavi Dynasty: An Entry from Encyclopaedia of the World of Islam, eds. Ghulam Ali H. Adel and Mohammad J. Elmi (London: EWI Press, 2012), 58–135 (69).71 Shahrough Akhavi, Religion and Politics in Contemporary Iran (New York: State University of New York Press, 1980), 63; Borghei, ‘Iranʼs Religious Establishment’, 41.72 Devin J. Steward, ‘The Portrayal of an Academic Rivalry’, in The Most Learned of the Shiʿa: The Institution of the Marja Taqlid, ed. L. S. Walbridge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 216–29 (218).73 Farid Mudarrisi, Jidāl-i Kashani bā Ayatollah Borujerdi (Qum: Markaz-i al-Nabaʾ, 2016), para. 17, online edition available at https://pe.annabaa.org/political/1163 (accessed February 11, 2020).74 Zohreh Salehi Siavoshani, ‘The Role of the Clerics and the Religious Forces in the Iranian Movement of Nationalization of Oil Industry’, Historia Actual Online 26 (2011): 7–19 (16).75 Ori Goldberg, Shiʿi Theology in Iran: The Challenge of Religious Experience (London: Routledge, 2011), 95.76 This could be seen by the position of superiority in his meetings with the Shah; personal conversation in Virginia with ʿAllamah ʿAbbas Mesbaḥzadeh on February 10, 2011; Hawza, ‘Muṣāḥabah bā Ayatollāh ʿAlī Sāfī Golpāyegānī’, Majalla-yiḤawza 8, no. 43 (1991): 108–17 (115).77 Ali Reza Amini, Taḥavvulāt-i siyāsī ijtimāʿī-i dar durān-i Pahlavi (Tehran: Sidā-yi Maʿāsir, 2002), 86–127.78 Abrahamian, Iran between Two Revolutions, 176.79 Anthony Lucey, ‘Iranian ulama & the CIA: The Key Alliance Behind the 1953 Iranian Coup D’état’, History in the Making 12, no. 1 (2019): 111–62 (151).80 Ardalan, Life and Work of a Grand Ayatollah, 132.81 Mesbahi, ‘Collective hawza Leadership’, 15.82 Kalantari, ‘The Shiʿi Clergy’, 253.83 Hamid Algar, The Roots of the Islamic Revolution (London: Open Press, 1983), 25.84 Kalantari, ‘The Shiʿi Clergy’, 248.85 Rahim Ruhbakhsh, Bar-resī mavāḍi ‘Ayatollāh Borūjerdī’ dar qibāl-i bʿaḍī taḥavolāt siyāsī maʾaṣir, majalle-yi zamāneh, para. 26, online edition available at https://psri.ir/?id=2mmwb6dxev (accessed October 27, 2022); Zahra Qasemi, Muhammad Kazim Kaveh Pishghadam, and Muhammad Husayn Behzadi, ‘Modelʼhāyi vorūd be siyāsāt dar ravesh-i “Amalī Ayatollāh Borūjerdī” va Imām Khomeinī dar dahe-yi 1340 va 1350’, Nashīye-yi Rāhburd tosaʿa 11, no. 1 (2015): 129–48 (129).86 Ervand Abrahamian, The Iranian Mojahedin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 19.87 In a rare move Ayatollah Borujerdi issued a fatwa, condemning the land reform as being against Islam, to which the Shah gave an unusual blunt reply, threatening a ‘white coup d’état’; see Ali Ansari, ‘The Myth of the White Revolution: Mohammad Reza Shah, “Modernization” and the Consolidation of Power’, Middle Eastern Studies 37, no. 3 (2001): 1–24 (8).88 Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Inqilāb-i sifīd (Tehran: Chāpkhānah-i Bānk-i Millī, 1967), 16.89 Martin Riesebrodt, Pious Passion: The Emergence of Modern Fundamentalism in the United States and Iran (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 115.90 Dariush Zahedi, The Iranian Revolution Then and Now: Indicators of Regime Instability (London: Routledge, 2018), 74.91 This was a ‘particular conception of modernity’ influenced by the ‘perception of the industrialized West’. It was packaged under the banner of the ‘White Revolution’, an idea of the influential politician Asadullah ʿAlam; Ansari, ‘Myth of the White Revolution’, 2.92 It was named the White Revolution to ‘distinguish it from the Marxist or the red variety’; Ali Akbar Dareini, Rise and Fall of the Pahlavi Dynasty: Memoirs of Former General Hussein Fardust (New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publications, 1998), 134.93 Babak Rahimi, ‘Democratic Authority, Public Islam, and Shiʿi Jurisprudence in Iran and Iraq: Hussain Ali Montazeri and Ali Sistani’, International Political Science Review 33, no. 2 (2012), 194–208 (195).94 Stephen C Poulson, Social Movements in Twentieth-century Iran: Culture, Ideology, and Mobilizing Frameworks (Lanham, ML: Lexington Books, 2005), 211.95 Baghistani, Dhakiri, and Radawi, ‘Qum’, 49.96 Touraj Daryaee (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Iranian History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 358.97 The ʿulamā were united in blaming the Americans for imposing the idea on Shah; Ansari, ‘Myth of the White Revolution’, 22.98 Ağah Hazır, ‘Beyond Religion: ʿUlama and Politics in Pre-revolutionary Iran’, Iran Çalışmaları Dergisi 1, no. 2 (2017): 39–57 (48).99 Hamid Algar, Religion and State in Iran, 1785–1906, the Role of the ulama (Berkeley: University of California Publications, 1969) 14.100 Hossein Bashiriyeh, The State and Revolution in Iran (London: Routledge, 2011), 28 and 64.101 The Shah had responded to the opposition of the clergy by characterizing the ulama as the ‘black reaction’, while the Left were identified as ‘red subversion’; Ansari, ‘Myth of the White Revolution’, 8.102 Hedayatollah Behbudi, Alif Lām Khomeinī (Tehran: Muʾassasah-yi Muṭāliʿāt va Pazhūhishhā-yi Siyāsī, 2018), 235–37.103 Ayatollah Khomeini is reported to have favoured centralized authority as ‘useful and justified, if in the right hands’; Charles Kurzman, ‘Critics within: Islamic Scholarsʼ Protests against the Islamic State in Iran’, International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 15.2 (2001): 341–59 (342).104 Akhavi, Religion and Politics, 100.105 Samiei, Nabard-i qudrat dar Irān, 549.106 Forough Jahanbakhsh, Islam, Democracy and Religious Modernism in Iran (1953–2000): from Bazargan to Soroush (Brill, 2001), 61; Denis MacEoin and Ahmed Al-Shahi, Islam in the Modern World (New York: St. Martinʼs Press, 1983), 306; Akhavi, Religion and Politics, 100.107 Although of Iranian descent, he delivered his lectures in Arabic and was considered Iraqi; Nematollah Ṣaleḥi Najafabadi; Abdul Wahab Furati, ‘Marjaʿīyat Imām Khomeinī’, Huḍūr 35 (1991): 70–91 (75).108 It was an intentional attempt to shift the centre of influence as stated by Muḥammad Taqi Shahrukhi and others; Furati, ‘Marjaʿīyat Imām Khomeinī’, 74.109 Roy Mottahedeh and Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Sadr, Lessons in Islamic Jurisprudence (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2014), 32.110 Corboz, Guardians of Shiʿism, 126.111 Among others the veteran scholar Ayatollah Sayyid Aḥmad Zanjani (d. 1973) is recalled as considering Ayatollahs Sayyid Muḥsin al-Ḥakim and Sayyid Abu l-Qasim Khoʾei (d. 1992) as pillars of the ḥawza in Najaf. He also said the same about Ayatollahs Sayyid Kaẓim Shariʿatmadari and Sayyid Muḥammad Riḍa Golpaygani concerning the ḥawza in Qum; Ayatollah Ali Ahmadi Miyanji, Khāṭirāt-i faqīh akhlāqī Āyatollāh Aḥmadī Miyānjī (Tehran: Markaz-i Asnād-i Inqilāb-i Islāmī, 1981), 137.112 Rasul Jafariyan, Jaryānhā va sāzmānhā-yi mazhabī sīyāsī īrān (Tehran: Nashr-i ʿElm, 2013), 318.113 Mohammad Hasan Rajabi, Zendegī-yi Sīyāsī Imām Khomeinī (Tehran: Markaz-i Asnād-i Inqilāb-i Islāmī, 1999), 225.114 Ayatollah Momen, Khāṭirāt-i Āyatollāh Muḥammad Moʾmen (Tehran: Markaz-i Asnād-i Inqilāb-i Islāmī, 2022), para. 1, online edition available at https://www.irdc.ir/fa/news/7611 (accessed July 17, 2022).115 Linda S. Walbridge, The Most Learned of the Shiʿa: The Institution of the Marja Taqlid (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 5.116 Regarded as the most distinguished student of Ayatollah Ḥaʾiri, Ayatollah Khunsari had come to Qum as early as 1923, following his previous studies in ḥawzas of Isfahani, Najaf, and Arak. He was sent to Tehran at behest of Ayatollah Borujerdi in 1950; Sayyid Abbas Radawi, ‘Tehran’, in Ḥawza-yiʿilmiyya, Shiʿ Teaching Institution: An Entry from Encyclopaedia of the World of Islam, eds. Ghulam Ali H. Adel, Mohammad J. Elmi, and Hasan Taromi-Rad (London: EWI Press, 2012), 225.117 Ayatollah Borujerdi had invited Ayatollah Milani to move to Qum prior to his death in 1961, but Ayatollah Milani did not want to move away from the sanctity of Imam Riḍa; personal conversation in London with Ayatollah Seyyid Faḍil Milani on August 19, 2022.118 He normally acted as the link between the ulama and the monarch; Hamid Algar, ‘Moḥammad Behbahānī’, Encyclopaedia Iranica 4 (1989): 96–7 (96).119 Based on quotations of Moḥammad Riḍa Fakir and Baqir Golpaygani for Furati, ‘Marjaʿīyat Imām Khomeinī’, 79; Sayyid Baqir Golpaygani, Naqsh-i Ayatollah Golpāygānī dar pīrūzī-yi Inqilāb-i Islāmī (Qum: Ufuq Hawzah, 2018), para. 3, online edition available at http://hawzah.net/fa/Discussion/View/51886 (accessed May 21, 2022).120 Personal conversation in Tehran with Ayatollah Shaykh Muḥammad ʿIsa Ahari on March 28, 2017.121 Golpaygani, ‘Naqsh-i Ayatollah Golpāygānī dar pīrūzī-yi Inqilāb-i Islāmī’.122 This represents the views of Ayatollah Ḥasan Ṭaheri Khuramabadi; Furati, ‘Marjaʿīyat Imām Khomeinī’, 78. Similar accounts of the event with some variations could be found in various memoirs and interviews of ḥawza personalities.123 Personal conversation in Virginia with ʿAllamah ʿAbbas Mesbaḥzadeh on February 10, 2011.124 Ayatollah Husayn Ali Muntaziri, Matn-i kāmel-i, 188; Akhavi, Religion and Politics, 100.125 Even those opposing him note that such political awareness dates back to the period of Dr Moṣaddeq; see Sayyid Ḥusayn Musavi, Irtibāṭ-i Jibhe-yi Mellī va Nehḍat-i Āzādī bā Sharīʿatmadārī (Tehran: Muʾassasah-i Tanẓīm va Nashr-i Athār-i Haḍrat-i Imām Khomeinī, 2008), 236.126 He was supported by Nehḍat-i Azadi (Freedom Movement); Nematollah Ṣaleḥi Najafabadi; Furati, ‘Marjaʿīyat Imām Khomeinī’, 89; personal conversation in Tehran with Ayatollah Shaykh Muḥammad ʿIsa Ahari on March 28, 2017.127 Ayatollah Ali Ahmadi Miyanji, Khāṭirāt-i faqīh akhlāqī Āyatollāh Aḥmadī Miyānjī, 137; Hawza, ‘Muṣāḥabah bā Ayatollāh Vāʿiẓzādah-Khurāsānī’, 203.128 As he had not published his book manual of Islamic law practice; quoted by Nematollah Ṣaleḥi Najafabadi; Furati, ‘Marjaʿīyat Imām Khomeinī’, 80.129 Hamid Algar, ‘ʿAllāma Sayyid Muḥammad Ḥusayn Ṭabāṭabāʾī: Philosopher, Exegete, and Gnostic’, Journal of Islamic Studies 17, no. 3 (2006), 326–51 (345).130 As Mohammad Reza Shah became more confident, he no longer felt a threat from the clergy, so when cutting the budget he is quoted as saying ‘I do not pay for nothing’; Akbar Dareini, Rise and Fall of the Pahlavi Dynasty, 382.131 Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Sahīf-i Imām (Tehran: Muʾassasah-i Tanẓīm va Nashr-i Athār-i Haḍrat-i Imām Khomeinī, 1999), vol. 1, 239.132 Alinaqi Alikhani, Yād-dāshthay-I ʿAlam (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Māzyār, 2003), vol. 4, 430.133 Akbar Ashrafi, ‘Naqsh-i Marjaʿīyat dar Rahbarī-yi Sīyāsī Imām Khomeinī’, Faṣlnāmah-i Matīn no. 11 (2003): 5–26 (20).134 DeWitt C. Smith, ‘Saudi Arabia: The Next Iran, Parameters’, The Journal of the US Army War College 9, no. 1 (1979): 2–8 (3).135 Jahangir Amuzegar, Dynamics of the Iranian Revolution: The Pahlavisʼ Triumph and Tragedy (New York: State University of New York Press, 1991), 271.136 Borghei, ‘Iranʼs Religious Establishment’, 46.137 Other notable active personalities include the likes of Ayatollahs Sayyid Maḥmūd Ṭaliqani (d. 1979) of Tehran, Sayyid Ḥasan Qumi (d. 2007) of Mashhad, and Sheikh Bahaʾuddin Maḥallati (d. 1981) of Shiraz.138 Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Sahīf-i Imām, vol. 1, 90.139 Mohammad R. Kalantari, The Clergy and the Modern Middle East: Shiʿi Political Activism in Iran, Iraq and Lebanon (London: Bloomsbury, 2021), 73.140 Baghistani, Dhakiri, and Radawi, ‘Qum’, 51.141 Ayatollah Khomeini rejected certain terminologies used by the Shah: ‘Are religious scholars and Islam the black reaction and you delivering a white revolution, why do you try to deceive the people?; Akbar Dareini, Rise and Fall of the Pahlavi Dynasty, 311.142 In doing so, he protested against ‘the cruelty and injustice of the Shah’s rule, his unconstitutional dismissal of the majlis, the torture and wicked suppression of all opposition, the Shah’s craven subservience to [the] United States, and his support of Israel which had deprived Palestinians of their homes’; Karen Armstrong, The Battle for God. Fundamentalism in Judaism, Christianity and Islam (London: Harper Collins, 2001), 248.143 Hedayatollah Behbudi, Alif Lām Khomeinī, 368.144 ‘It was during the exile years that Ayatollah Khomeini turned from a constitutionalist into a revolutionary calling monarchy illegal and offering a theological justification for a revolution’; Bashiriyeh, State and Revolution in Iran, 79.145 The full text is available at http://www.15khordad42.ir/?page=post&id=1239 (accessed May 31, 2022).146 Scott A. Merriman, Religion and the State: An International Analysis of Roles and Relationships (California: ABC-CLIO, 2009), 37.147 Ayatollah Khomeini was arrested a number of times, the last being for his speech against the Capitulation Bill when he was exiled; Algar, Islam and Revolution, 18.148 There were ‘outbreaks of insurrection in different cities’, but the government ‘surmounted the turmoil with hundreds of casualties’; Kalantari, Clergy and the Modern Middle East, 75.149 Said Amir Arjomand, Eric Hooglund, William Royce, and S. Heydemann, The Iranian Islamic Clergy: Governmental Politics and Theocracy (Washington, D. C.: The Middle East Institute, 1984), 21.150 Sohrab Behdad, ‘Islamic Utopia in Pre-Revolutionary Iran: Navvab Safavi and the Fadaʾian-e Eslam’, Middle Eastern Studies 33, no. 1 (1997): 40–65 (55).151 Navvab Ṣafavi (d. 1956) stated that elected members of the national consultative assembly should make decisions taḥt-i naẓar (under the supervision) of top ranking ʿulamā within the ḥawza establishment; Oliver Scharbrodt, ‘Khomeini and Muḥammad al-Shīrāzī: Revisiting the Origins of the Guardianship of the Jurisconsult (wilāyat al-faqīh)’, Die Welt des Islams 61, no. 1 (2020): 9–38 (12).152 Scharbrodt, ‘Khomeini and Muḥammad al-Shīrāzī’, 13.153 Akhavi, Religion and Politics, 116.154 Akhavi, Religion and Politics, 159.155 Borghei, ‘Iranʼs Religious Establishment’, 43.156 Although they were conservative in their religious stance, they were not considered as radical but rather moderate in their standing towards the government; Amir Yahya Ayatollahi, Political Conservatism and Religious Reformation in Iran (1905–1979): Reconsidering the Monarchic Legacy (Wiesbaden: Springer Nature, 2022), 84.157 Mesbahi, ‘Collective hawza Leadership’, 4.158 Golpaygani, ‘Naqsh-i Ayatollah Golpāygānī dar pīrūzī-yi Inqilāb-i Islāmī’.159 Borghei, ‘Iranʼs Religious Establishment’, 45; personal conversation in Qum with Ayatollah Shaykh ʿAbdullah Shahidiʼs family who represented the marājeʿ thalāth in his meetings with the Prime Minister Asadullah ʿAlam, on April 12, 2017.160 Personal conversation in Tehran with Ayatollah Shaykh Muḥammad ʿIsa Ahari on March 28, 2017; Ayatollah Khomeini and his close circle of companions are credited for starting the process; Ayatollahs Shariʿatmadari, Qumi, and Rouhani, Asnād-i Inqilāb-i Islāmī, (Tehran: Markaz-i Asnād-i Inqilāb-i Islāmī, 1995), vol. 5, 68–71.161 Ayatollah Ḥusayn ʿAli Muntaẓiri, Matn-i kāmel-i, 231; Jafariyan, Jaryānhā, 328.162 Advocating the correct implementation of the constitution; Misagh, Social Origins, 201.163 Jafariyan, Jaryānhā, 334.164 As seen by released sāvāk (secret service) papers; Jafariyan, Jaryānhā, 329.165 Personal conversation in Tehran with Ayatollah ʿIsa Ahari on September 10, 2017.166 Ayatollahs Shariʿatmadari, Marʿashi Najafi, Milani, and Amuli gathered in Tehran, but Ayatollah Golpaygani remained in Qum to ensure the ḥawzaʼs protection; Ayatollah Ali Ahmadi Miyanji, Khāṭirāt-i faqīh akhlāqī Āyatollāh Aḥmadī Miyānjī, 163; personal conversation in London with Ayatollah Seyyid Fāḍil Milani on 19 August 2022.167 The Iranian constitution had accepted the prominence of the senior clergy to oversee and supervise the approval of parliamentary legislation; Farhang Qavimi, ‘Khāsteh-