On the other hand, apart from corruption, fanaticism and other serious faults, many of the 'ulamá are prone to petty The worse side: jealousy and vulgar abuse. jealousy and mutual disparagement. A wellknown anecdote, given by Malcolm * and in the Qiṣaṣu'l-'Ulamá, * shows that great doctors like Mír Dámád and Shaykh Bahá'u'd-Dín al-'Ámilí could rise above such ignoble feelings; but, as the author of the latter work complains, their less magnanimous colleagues were but too prone to call one another fools and asses, to the injury of their own class and the delight of irreligious laymen. Nor was this abuse rendered less offensive by being wrapped up in punning and pedantic verses like this: * <text in Arabic script omitted>
“Thou art not worthy to be advanced; nay, thou art nothing more
than half of the opposite of ‘advanced’!”
The opposite of “advanced” (muqaddam) is “postponed” (mu'akhkhar), and the second half of the latter word, khar, is the Persian for an ass. This is a refined specimen of mullás' wit: for a much coarser one the curious reader may refer to an interchange of badinage between Mullá Mírzá Muḥammad-i-Shírwání the Turk and Áqá Jamál of Iṣfahán recorded in the Qiṣaṣu'l-'Ulamá. * That some mullás had the sense to recognize their own rather than their neighbours' limitations is, however, shown by a pleasant anecdote related in the same work * of Jamálu'd-Dín Muḥammad ibn Ḥusayn-i-Khwánsarí. As a judge he was in receipt of a salary of four thousand túmáns a year. One day four persons successively put to him four questions, to each of which he replied, “I do not know.” A certain high official who was present said to him, “You receive from the King four thousand túmáns to know, yet here to everyone who asks you a question you reply ‘I do not know.’” “I receive these four thousand túmáns,” replied the mullá, “for those things which I do know. If I required a salary for what I do not know, even the Royal Treasury would be unable to pay it.”
Jurisprudence (fiqh) and theology ('aqá'id), with the
ancillary sciences, all of which are based on a thorough
Akhbárís and
Uṣúlís.
knowledge of the Arabic language, normally
constitute the chief studies of the “clergy,”
though naturally there is a certain tendency to
specialization, the qáḍí, or ecclesiastical judge, being more
concerned with fiqh, and the theologian proper with doctrine.
We must also distinguish between the prevalent Uṣúlí and
the once important but now negligible Akhbárí school,
between whom bitter enmity subsisted. The former, as
their name implies, follow the general “principles” (uṣúl)
deducible from the Qur'án and accredited traditions, and
employ analogy (qiyás) in arriving at their conclusions.
The latter follow the traditions (akhbár) only, and repudiate
analogical reasoning. Mullá Muḥammad Amín ibn
Muḥammad Sharíf of Astarábád, who died in 1033/1623-4,
is generally accounted the founder of the Akhbárí school,
and was, according to the Lú'lú'atu'l-Baḥrayn,
*
“the first to
open the door of reproach against the Mujtahids, so that the
‘Saved Sect’ (al-Firqatu'n-Nájiya, i.e. the Shí'a of the Sect
of the Twelve) became divided into Akhbárís and Muj-
The very dry, narrow and formal divines are called by the Persians Qishrí (literally “Huskers,” i.e. externalists), and The Qishrí theologians. to these the Akhbárís in particular belong, but also many of the Uṣúlís, like Mírzá Ibráhím, the son of the celebrated Mullá Ṣadrá, one of the teachers of Sayyid Ni'matu'lláh Jazá'irí, who used to glory in the fact that his belief was that of the common people, and Mullá 'Alí Núrí, who used to pray that God would keep him in the current popular faith. * On the other hand we have the more liberal-minded divines, whose Latitudinarians. theology was tinctured with Philosophy or Ṣúfíism, the Mutakallimún, who strove to reconcile Philosophy with Religion and closely resemble the School-men of mediaeval Europe, and finally the pure philosophers, like the celebrated Mullá Ṣadrá of Shíráz, who, however little their ultimate conclusions accorded with orthodox theology, had generally had the training of the 'ulamá and were drawn from the same class.
The literature produced by this large and industrious
body of men, both in Arabic and Persian, is naturally
Literary
fecundity of
the 'ulamá.
enormous, but the bulk of it is so dull or so
technical that no one but a very leisured and
very pious Shí'a scholar would dream of reading
it. The author of the Qiṣaṣu'l-'Ulamá remarks
*
that the
'ulamá often live to a very advanced age, and as their habits
are, as a rule, sedentary and studious, and they devote a
large portion of their time to writing, it is not unusual to
find a single author credited with one or two hundred books
and pamphlets. Thus the author of the Qiṣaṣu'l-'Ulamá
enumerates 169 of his own works, besides glosses, tracts
and minor writings;
*
of those of Mullá Muḥsin-i-Fayḍ
(Fayẓ), 69 by name, but he adds that the total number is
nearly 200;
*
of those of Muḥammad ibn 'Alí…ibn Bába-