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Ideology, Ethics, and Philosophical Discourse in Eighteenth Century Iran

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Juan R. I. Cole
Juan R. I. Cole*
Affiliation:
University of Michigan
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Extract

Intellectual biography as a discipline assumes that the life and thought of an individual can shed light on an epoch. In some cases such a claim is justified, especially where the epoch is obscure and the thinker genuinely representative of the culture of a profession in a city or region. I shall argue the validity of this principle with regard to eighteenth century west-central Iran and Mohammad Mehdi Niraqi (d. 1794), a prominent Imami Shi˓i religious scholar who wrote prolifically and authored a huge three-volume work on ethics. Most of his voluminous writing remains in manuscript, but enterprising scholars in Najaf published the book on ethics, Jāmi˓ as-sa˓ādat (Compendium of Happiness), and it has recently been reissued in Beirut.

The political turmoil of eighteenth century Iran at least partially explains the difficulty modern historians have in understanding its cultural history between the fall of the Safavids in 1722 and the rise of the Qajars around 1785.

Type
Research Article
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , 1989 , pp. 7 - 34
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1989

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References

1 Niraqi, Mohammad Mehdi Jāmi˓ as-sa'ādat, ed. Kalantar, Sayyed Mohammad intro. Mohammad Rida al-Mozaffar, 3 vols. (Beirut: Mu'assasat al-A˓la li'l-Matbu˓at, 1985)Google Scholar; al-Mozaffar's introduction is the best modern biography; Niraqi is also noticed in Khvansari, Mohammad Baqer Rawḍat al-jannāt fī aḥwāl al-˓ulamā’ wa's-sādāt, 8 vols. (Tehran: Isma˓iliyan, 1972), vol. 7, pp. 200-203.Google Scholar

2 For the political and social history of eighteenth century Iran we have only a few published full-length academic works in Western languages, chiefly: Savory, Roger Iran under the Safavids (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980)Google Scholar; Lockhart, Laurence The Fall of the Safavi Dynasty and the Afghan Occupation of Persia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958)Google Scholar; Lockhart, Laurence Nadir Shah (London: Luzac & Co., 1938)Google Scholar; and Perry, John Karim Khan Zand (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 See Cole, Juan R. I. Roots of North Indian Shi˓ism in Iran and Iraq: Religion and State in Awadh, 1722-1859 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988)Google Scholar, esp. the introduction and chapter 6.

4 For Shaykh Yusof and his place in Eastern Arabian Shi˓i tradition see Cole, Juan R. I. “Rival Empires of Trade and Imami Shi˓ism in Eastern Arabia, 1300-1800,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 19 (1987), pp. 196-98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Cole, Juan R.I. “Shi˓i Clerics in Iraq and Iran, 1722-1780: the Akhbari-Usuli Controversy Reconsidered,” Iranian Studies 18, 1 (1985), pp. 3-34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Cole, Juan R. I. “‘Indian Money’ and the Shrine Cities of Iraq, 1786-1850,” Middle Eastern Studies 22 (1986), pp. 461-480.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 See Cole, “Shi˓i Clerics in Iraq and Iran.”

7 See Gumperz, John J. Discourse Strategies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ch. 4, “Conversational Code-Switching.”

8 For the School of Isfahan, see generally Arjomand, Said Amir The Shadow of God and the Hidden Imam (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1984), pp. 145-151CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Corbin, Henry La Philosophie iranienne islamique aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris: Buchet-Chastel, 1981)Google Scholar; Nasr, S. H. “Spiritual Movements, Philosophy and Theology in the Safavid Period,” in Jackson, P. and Lockhart, L. eds., The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol. 6, The Timurid and Safavid Periods (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), esp. pp. 666-697Google Scholar; Rahman, Fazlur The Philosophy of Mulla Sadra (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1975)Google Scholar; Morris, James W. The Wisdom of the Throne (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981)Google Scholar; Newman, Andrew “Towards a Reconsideration of the ‘Isfahan School of Philosophy’: Shaykh Baha'i and the Role of the Safawid ‘Ulama',” Studia Iranica 15 (1986), pp. 165-199CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bosworth, Clifford Edmund Baha’ al-Din al-˓Amili and his Literary Anthologies (Manchester: University of Manchester, 1989).Google Scholar

9 Arjomand, The Shadow of God and the Hidden Imam, p. 145.

10 Momen, Moojan An Introduction to Shi˓i Islam: The History and Doctrines of Twelver Shi˓ism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), p. 116Google Scholar; Arjomand, Shadow of God, pp. 151-59, presents a similar picture of “The Final Onslaught and Triumph of the Hierocracy under the Leadership of Majlisi.”

11 Momen, Shi˓i Islam, p. 218.

12 Kohlberg, Etan “Aspects of Akhbari Thought in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in Levtzion, Nehemia and Voll, John eds., Eighteenth-Century Renewal and Reform in Islam (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1987), pp. 133-160.Google Scholar

13 Mirza Mohammad Zaki Khan Akhbari, “Majmū˓eh-ye rasā'el-e taḥqīq-e maslake akhbāriyyīn va uṣūliyyīn,” Lucknow, Nasiriyyah Library, Usul al-Fiqh Shi˓ah, Persian MS. 28, foil. 4b-5a.

14 Kohlberg, “Aspects of Akhbari Thought,” especially pp. 136-146.

15 For Majlesi the Elder see Khvansari, Rawḍat al-jannāt, vol. 2, pp. 118-23Google Scholar; and Arjomand, Said Amir “Religious Extremism (Ghuluww), Sufism and Sunnism in Safavid Iran: 1501-1722,” Journal of Asian History 15 (1981), pp. 24-28.Google Scholar

16 Majlesi, Mohammad Taqi Lavāmi˓-e ṣāḥibqirānī, vol. 1 (Tehran: Baradaran-i ˓Ilmi, 1963), pp. 37-38.Google Scholar

17 Ibid., p. 38.

18 Amr, Yusuf Muhammad al-Madkhal ilā uṣūl al-fiqh al-ja˓farī (Beirut: Dai az-Zahra', 1981), pp. 161-166Google Scholar; Corbin, La Philosophie iranienne islamique, pp. 300-393. Cf. Nasr, “Spirituality,” pp. 695-96 for “The later hakims of the Safavid period.”

19 Kashmiri, Mohammad Ali Nujūm as-samā˓ (Lucknow: Matba˓-e Ja˓fari, 1302/1884-85), pp. 286-91.Google Scholar

20 al-Mozaffar, “Hayāt al-mu'allif,” introduction to Niraqi, Jāmi˓ as-sa˓ādat, vol. 1, p. 6.Google Scholar

21 Population estimates given in Perry, Karim Khan Zand, p. 238.

22 For Khaju˓i's biography, see Khvansari, Rawḍat al-jannāt, vol. 1, pp. 114-19Google Scholar; for Hezarjaribi, see Mohammad Ali Mu˓allim Habibabadi, Makārim al-āthār dar aḥvāl-e rijāl-e dowreh-ye qājār, 2 vols. (Isfahan: Matba˓-e Mohammadi, 1958), vol. 1, pp. 235-39Google Scholar; for some of the points made about continuity see also Cole, “Shi˓i Clerics in Iraq and Iran,” pp. 7-9, 17.

23 The prestige of Isfahani relaters of tradition is apparent in the biography of Hezarjaribi, cited above; Mu˓allim Habibabadi, Makārim al-āthār, vol. 1, pp. 127-29Google Scholar also notes the accusations against Imam-Jom˓eh Zayn al-Din Ali Khvansari Isfahani (d. 1787) that he had Sufi leanings; the information about Molla Mehrab comes from al-Mozaffar, “Hayāt al-mu'allif,” vol. 1, p. 5.

24 al-Mozaffar, “Hayāt al-mu'allif,” vol. 1, p. 3.

25 Mottahedeh, Roy The Mantle of the Prophet (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985), p. 96Google Scholar; pp. 94-98 sum up the vicissitudes of a seventeenth-century cleric's life, that of the Akhbari Ne˓matu'llah al-Jaza'eri.

26 al-Mozaffar, “Hayāt al-mu'allif,” vol. 1, pp. 11-12.Google Scholar

27 Leach, Edmund Genesis as Myth and Other Essays (London: Jonathan Cape, 1969), pp. 10-11.Google Scholar

28 al-Mozaffar, “Hayāt al-mu'allif,” vol. 1, pp. 12-13.Google Scholar

29 Ibid., p. 6; Mu˓allim Habibabadi, Makārim al-āthār, vol. 2, pp. 360-64Google Scholar; for Kashan's commodities, Perry, Karim Khan, p. 247.

30 The most complete listing is given in al-Mozaffar, “Hayāt al-mu'allif,” pp. 13-16.

31 For the text as an interwoven set of literary codes, see Barthes, Roland S/Z, tr. Miller, Richard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1974)Google Scholar and Kristeva, J. Semeiotike (Paris: Seuil, 1969)Google Scholar. For useful discussions of these issues see Culler, Jonathan Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics and the Study of Literature (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975), p. 139CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and the same author's The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981)Google Scholar, chapter 5.

32 Niraqi, Jāmi˓ as-sa˓ādat, 1:34. Hereafter references to this work will be given in parentheses in the text.

33 Mohammad Miskawayh, Abu Ali Ahmad ibn Tahdhīb al-akhlāq, ed. Constantine Zurayk (Beirut: American University of Beirut Press, 1966), pp. 69-70, 169.Google Scholar

34 Kashani, Mohammad Mohsen Fayz al-Maḥajjah al-bayḍā’ fi taḥdhīb al-iḥyā', 8 vols. (Beirut: Mu'assasah al-A˓lami li'1-Matbu˓at, 1983), vol. 6, pp. 291-357.Google Scholar

35 Arjomand, Shadow of God, pp. 144 ff.

36 Niraqi, Jāmi˓, vol. 3, p. 360Google Scholar; for the eighteenth century controversy in Twelver Shi˓ism over the legitimacy of Friday prayers during the Occultation, see Cole, Roots of North Indian Sh˓ism, chapter 4.

37 See Lévi-Strauss, Claude The Savage Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966)Google Scholar, especially chapter 2, “The Logic of Totemic Classifications.”

38 Schwartz, Barry Vertical Classification: A Study in Structuralism and the Sociology of Knowledge (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1981), pp. 28-29, 36.Google Scholar

39 The overt statement Niraqi makes is that the intellective faculty is like a king (malik) or philosopher (ḥakīm), the irascible faculty like a dog, the appetitive faculty like a pig, and the faculty of cunning like a demon; see Niraqi, Jāmi˓, vol. 1, p. 63.Google Scholar Such language reinforces my general argument about the totemic nature of these categories.

40 Gumperz, Discourse Strategies, especially chapters 3 and 4.