Usuli school

Usuli school is a living tradition within Twelver Shia Islam. Also written Osuliyya, Usuliyya, Mujtahid school.

Origin

No founding year is given below, because the sources read do not agree on one and a date has not been chosen for them. No founder and no founding year. Encyclopaedia Iranica traces the position, not an act of foundation: after the disappearance of the twelfth imam in 260/873 'the rationalist current within Imamism gradually asserted itself, in confrontation with the traditionist school, which at the time was based in Qom', and the leading Imami scholars of the Buyid period - al-Mufid (d. 413/1022), al-Murtada (d. 436/1044) and Abu Jaʿfar al-Tusi (d. 460/1067) - 'introduced a methodology of jurisprudence (oṣūl al-feqh) and elements of Muʿtazilite theology into Imamite thinking. Their readiness to allow a measure of speculative reasoning in the principles (oṣūl) of religious law earned them the title of Oṣūlīs. This occurred, however, at a later date; there is no evidence that the terms Aḵbārī and Oṣūlī were in use before the Saljuq period.' The name is therefore retrospective. The earliest text calling the opposing party Usuli is the Ketab al-naqz of ʿAbd-al-Jalil Qazvini, composed around 565/1170; Ibn Idris al-Hilli (d. 598/1202) 'seems to be the first who, in his Sarāʾer (composed in 588/1192), embarked on a detailed refutation of the Aḵbārī position'. The decisive systematiser, distinguished here from any founder, is Aqa Sayyid Muhammad-Baqir Behbahani (d. 1208/1793-94), 'champion of the Oṣūlī school in Shiʿite law (feqh)', born in Isfahan 'either in 1116/1704-05 or in 1118/1706-07' - two birth years, neither chosen - and commonly called the mujaddid, the renewer, of the twelfth Islamic century.