Scholarly Circles and the Transmission of Knowledge: Bahāʾ al-Dīn al-ʿĀmilī (d. 1030/1621) and His Mobile Scholarly Circle in Safavid Iran

Abstract

The history of education and transmission of knowledge in Islamicate societies has long recognized the importance of scholarly circles centered around scholars in medieval Muslim societies. As an illustration of the persistence of similar patterns of knowledge transmission in later periods, this paper focuses on the scholarly circle gathered around Bahāʾ al-Dīn Muḥammad al-ʿĀmilī (d. 1030/1621), the prominent Shiite scholar of the Safavid era, exploring the intellectual exchanges and personal interactions between this circle's members through the lens of the manuscripts they copied, read, collated, and studied. Drawing on information gleaned from manuscripts, I argue that Bahāʾ al-Dīn's highly mobile lifestyle, which was an offshoot of his socio-political engagements, rendered the scholarly circle around him into a mobile college, detached from localized madrasas and other educational institutions. This mobile scholarly circle helped propagate Shiite intellectual heritage in places far from the centers.

The history of education and transmission of knowledge in Islamic societies has attracted considerable scholarly attention from the late 19^th century to the present. Following initial works by prominent scholars such as Ignaz Goldziher (d. 1921) and Julian Ribera (d. 1934), several influential studies were produced in the last quarter of the 20^th century, affecting the field thereafter.¹ In 1981, George Makdisi published The Rise of Colleges, a comparative study of learning institutions in Islamic and European societies. In this book, Makdisi introduced the madrasa as “the Muslim institution of learning par excellence,” and presented an account of the evolution of the Islamic educational system from study-circles (ḥalqa) convened in mosques in the early centuries of Islamic history to the endowed madrasas widespread in the medieval period.² Makdisi's book was neither the first nor the only study on madrasas published around that time. In 1961, in fact, Makdisi himself had already published a study on madrasas in medieval Baghdad.³ In 1975, Heinz Halm published an account of the emergence and spread of madrasas in Islamic societies and continued, in his later works, to pay attention to the importance of madrasas in Islamic education.⁴ Nevertheless, with the publication of The Rise of Colleges, Makdisi came to be especially associated with the idea of the madrasa as the seminal “institution” of learning in the formalized education systems of Islamic societies; an idea that, as I discuss, did not withstand historical scrutiny.

More than a decade after Makdisi's work, in 1992, Jonathan Berkey wrote The Transmission of Knowledge in Medieval Cairo, in which he emphasized the informal and non-institutional character of medieval Islamic education. Arguing against Makdisi's focus on the madrasa as the archetypal institution of higher education in Islamic societies, Berkey noted that the transmission of knowledge in Islam was, first and foremost, via teaching circles formed around a shaykh and built on his personal authority and the intensive relationship between him and his students. According to Berkey, such an informal system of education survived the establishment and spread of madrasas in Muslim societies, and “Islamic education remained fundamentally informal, flexible, and tied to persons rather than institutions.”⁵ In 1994, in the same vein as Berkey's study on medieval Cairo, Michael Chamberlain wrote a social history of education and knowledge transmission in medieval Damascus. In his book, Knowledge and Social Practice in Medieval Damascus, Chamberlain emphasized the centrality of the teacher-student relationship in Islamic education and pushed Berkey's ideas even further, arguing that madrasas in medieval Muslim societies had little to do with education. Rather than institutions of higher education, according to Chamberlain, endowed madrasas were instruments by which their elite founders sought to associate themselves with the prestige of knowledge (ʿilm), safeguard their properties, and exert their control and influence on society through scholars and their teaching posts in madrasas.⁶

The aforementioned works cultivated the idea of a dichotomy between the formal/institutional and informal/personal methods of education and knowledge transmission in Islamic history, which continued to permeate later studies. In this dichotomy, “formal” and “institutional” were usually associated with madrasas with fixed curricula and a system of granting degrees (ijāzāt), while “informal” was associated with the personal relationship between a teacher, his students, and the oral transmission of knowledge between them. In her 2018 PhD dissertation, Paula Manstetten attempted to go beyond this dichotomy by focusing on the “processes of institutionalization” instead of the “institutions” of learning. Elaborating on the shortcomings of the perception of Islamic education as inherently informal and personal, playing down the significance of madrasas and similar educational venues, Manstetten argued that, over time, Islamic education became more organized and structured, and the appearance of the madrasa was probably “just one, albeit important, outcome of a long process of institutionalisation.”⁷ Manstetten nevertheless emphasized that the emergence and development of madrasas never replaced teaching in mosques, private homes, and the like.⁸

Modern scholarship on education and the transmission of knowledge in Islamic history has largely focused on the medieval period, but the outcomes of such scholarship have provided a framework for historical studies on Islamic education in later periods. In 2018, following the same line of scholarship, Maryam Moazzen wrote Formation of a Religious Landscape, an account of Shiite higher education in Safavid Iran.⁹ In this study, Moazzen presented madrasas as the primary instruments that spread and consolidated Shiism in early modern Iran, and elaborated on Safavid monarchs’ establishment and support for madrasas as part of their religious policies of promoting Shiism among their largely Sunni subjects. Moazzen's argument resonates with the now-largely-abandoned view of the establishment of madrasas in medieval Islamic society and their role in the revival of Sunnism after two centuries of Shiite dominance.¹⁰ Her work is one of the few studies in European languages that provides information on madrasas in Iran during the Safavid era. In Persian, Aḥmad Pākatchī published, in 2021, a long durée encyclopedia article on madrasas in the Shiite context, including Iran of the Safavid period, which provides an informative overview of religious schools in various Shiite centers, their structure and curriculum, and their associated intellectual traditions and scholars.¹¹

Avoiding insistence on a rigid dichotomy between formal and informal modes of knowledge transmission, the present study seeks to enhance our understanding of the transmission of knowledge in Safavid Iran by looking at the extra-madrasa side of education in the same Safavid context about which Moazzen wrote. This study focuses on the scholarly circle formed around Bahāʾ al-Dīn Muḥammad al-ʿĀmilī (953–1030/1547–1621), the prominent jurist, Quranic commentator, mathematician, and poet of the Safavid period, better known as al-Shaykh al-Bahāʾī. The case of Bahāʾ al-Dīn's scholarly circle in early modern Iran provides a vivid illustration of the persistence of the same patterns of teacher-centered knowledge transmission in the ḥalqas that scholars such as Makdisi, Berkey, and Chamberlain referred to as “study circles” or “teaching circles” in the context of medieval Islamic societies. I have chosen to use the more general term “scholarly circle” as a better designation for the ḥalqa of students and scholars around Bahāʾ al-Dīn, whose activities went beyond lecturing and studying to involve a great deal of travelling, book production, and entertaining exchanges between members.

As we shall see, what made Bahāʾ al-Dīn's scholarly circle particularly distinct was its “mobility,” a result of his extensive movements, largely due to his attachment to the Safavid court. Although Bahāʾ al-Dīn generally travelled many times throughout his life, whether as a child with his family or, later on, as a young scholar, this study focuses primarily on the last phase of his life, from 996/1588 until his death in 1030/1621, when he became closely associated with the court of Shah ʿAbbās I (996–1038/1588–1629). The focus on this period is simply due to the abundance of documentary evidence on Bahāʾ al-Dīn and his engagements with students during this period. There is only one earlier well-documented case, when his circle convened in Tabriz in 993/1585, which is also discussed.

This study draws on a corpus of manuscripts copied and/or read in Bahāʾ al-Dīn's scholarly circle. All the manuscripts cited in this study were made available to me in digital format. The variety of notes left in/on these manuscripts – including the marginal notes often left by students – and the scholarly certificates (ijāzāt, balāghāt, qirāʾāt, and samāʿāt) written by Bahāʾ al-Dīn for his students are used to situate him and the individuals around him in time and place, track their movements, and understand their interactions.¹² Traced here are the learned practices that, rather than being centered around a locality (madrasa), were centered around books as physical objects in which scholars documented their intellectual yet “informal” relationships. In particular, the handwritten notes in personal copies of individuals in this scholarly circle provide a first-hand image of education and knowledge transmission at a more personal and individual level.

In the manuscript citation, for folio numbers, I provide two numbers. The first number is what I have counted, also considering the commonly unwritten folia added for protection. The second number, which comes in brackets ([]), is the historical number appearing on the manuscript's page, usually added manually by cataloguers or other earlier users of the manuscript. If a folio lacks a historical number, I have used “n.f.” in place of the second number to indicate “not foliated.”

From Jabal ʿĀmil to the Safavid court

Bahāʾ al-Dīn Muḥammad al-ʿĀmilī was born in Baalbek, in Dhū al-Ḥijja 953/February 1547.¹³ He was born to a scholarly family from Jabal ʿĀmil, a mountainous, predominantly Shiite region in the south of present-day Lebanon, then under Ottoman rule. Bahāʾ al-Dīn came to Iran as a child, along with his father, Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd al-Ṣamad (d. 984/1576), a prominent scholar and representative of the Jabal ʿĀmil Shiite intellectual tradition.¹⁴ Prior to migration, Ḥusayn had been a close student and companion of Zayn al-Dīn al-ʿĀmilī (d. 965/1558), one of the most influential figures in the Shiite intellectual scene of the 16^th century, who came to be known as “al-Shahīd al-Thānī” (the Second Martyr) after he was executed by the Ottomans.¹⁵ Among the group of ʿAmilī scholars who migrated to Iran throughout the Safavid period, Ḥusayn was a distinguished figure and played a pivotal role in the formation of a Shiite polity in Iran.¹⁶

Bahāʾ al-Dīn arrived in Isfahan in 961/1554 as a seven-year-old child. After living in Isfahan for about three years, he moved to Qazvin – the Safavid capital city at the time – following his father's appointment as the capital's shaykh al-islām. After about seven years in Qazvin, Ḥusayn was appointed shaykh al-islām of Mashhad and then Herat, resulting in Bahāʾ al-Dīn spending his childhood constantly moving between different Iranian cities, from Isfahan to Qazvin, Mashhad, and Herat. In this period, Bahāʾ al-Dīn was studying both the religious sciences, including Shiite classical sources, with his father and the rational sciences, including logic, mathematics, and medicine, with high-ranking Iranian scholars. Well versed in a combination of the Jabal ʿĀmilī intellectual tradition of Shiite law and hadith and the Iranian intellectual tradition of philosophy, theology, and mathematics, Bahāʾ al-Dīn gradually rose to prominence, particularly after the death of his father and father-in-law, ʿAlī al-Minshār, the shaykh al-islām of Isfahan, in 984/1576. At this point, Bahāʾ al-Dīn replaced his late father-in-law as shaykh al-islām of Isfahan, then an important provincial center.¹⁷

For a period of approximately two years between 991/1583 and 993/1585, Bahāʾ al-Dīn, who, in his late 40s, had become a scholar of some renown, went for the Hajj through Ottoman lands.¹⁸ On his way back to Iran, he spent some time in Cairo, Jerusalem, and Damascus, meeting, studying, and conversing with prominent scholars. Bahāʾ al-Dīn returned to Iran through the Aleppo-Amid-Van route, arriving in Tabriz in early 993/1585. Upon arrival, Bahāʾ al-Dīn spent a few months in Tabriz, where he engaged in teaching and scholarly activities with a circle of students and scholars who took lessons from him, copied books, read and collated their copies, and received ijāza from him.

Although Bahāʾ al-Dīn had already started teaching well before this date, this is the first time the documentary sources portray him at the center of a circle of scholarly and book production activities. The texts involved were Arbaʿūn ḥadīthan (The Forty Hadith) authored by Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Makkī (d. 786/1386), al-Shahīd al-Awwal, the prominent figure in the ʿĀmilī Shiite tradition, as well as a book in the same Forty Hadith genre by Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd al-Ṣamad, Bahāʾ al-Dīn's father. In Ṣafar 993/February 1585, a student, ʿAlī al-Jīlanī, audited Ḥusayn's Arbaʿūn and received an ijāza on it.¹⁹ Over a period between Rabīʿ II and Jumādá I 993/April and May 1585, an unnamed student read and collated a majmūʿa (multiple-text manuscript) containing Ḥusayn's Arbaʿūn and Ibn Makki's Arbaʿūn.²⁰ The majmūʿa was copied some eight years earlier, in 985/1577, by ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn Muqaddam, who was likely a professional calligrapher, evident from the handwriting. Now that a prominent scholar such as Bahāʾ al-Dīn – the son of one of the majmūʿa texts’ authors and himself a representative of the ʿĀmilī intellectual tradition – was around, it was the best time to have the text collated and authenticated. In Jumādá II 993/June 1585, still in Tabriz, a student Bahāʾ al-Dīn referred to as “Mawlānā Jamshīd,” likely a local, audited Ibn Makkī's Arbaʿūn and received an ijāza. The text comes in a majmūʿa copied two months earlier by Malik Ḥusayn ibn Malik ʿAlī Tabrīzī in Tabriz, perhaps as a product of the scholarly activity around these texts that flourished during Bahāʾ al-Dīn's presence in the city.²¹

Already a well-known scholar by this time, Bahāʾ al-Dīn's prominence came about through his involvement and association with the court of ʿAbbās I (996–1038/1588–1629). In Dhū al-Qaʿdah 996/October 1588, in Qazvin, the seventeen-year-old ʿAbbās Mīrzā ascended the throne as “Shah ʿAbbās the Great,” ruling the Safavid realm for the following forty-two years. His reign came after an interregnum of more than a decade of weak rulers and precarious states. ʿAbbās came to power while the Safavid state was suffering from Ottoman infringements in the northwest and Uzbek assaults in the northeast, aside from the troubles caused by unruly provincial governors.²²

The early years of ʿAbbās's reign coincided with the time of Bahāʾ al-Dīn's increasing involvement in the affairs of the Safavid court. Not yet the top jurist of the age or “the Seal of the Mujtahids” (khātim al-mujtahidīn), a title belonging to Mīr Ḥusayn ibn Ḥasan al-Karakī (d. 1001/1592–3) at the time, Bahāʾ al-Dīn was a prominent member of the religious establishment that helped Shah ʿAbbās legitimize his rule and extend his control over the empire, which the shah actually had to reconquer.²³ In 998/1590, on behalf of Shah ʿAbbās, Bahāʾ al-Dīn negotiated with Yūlī Beg, a rebellious provincial governor in the Isfahan region.²⁴ In 999/1591, along with several other influential figures, Bahāʾ al-Dīn went on a mission to Gilan to act as a liaison, negotiating a marriage alliance between one of the shah's sons and the daughter of the ruler of Gilan.²⁵ In 1002/1593–94, Bahāʾ al-Dīn negotiated a peace treaty with Sayyid Mubārak Mushaʿshaʿī, the chieftain of the Mushaʿshaʿī dynasty who had rebelled in ʿArabistān, a southwestern province of Iran.²⁶ In the same year, Bahāʾ al-Dīn, along with other jurists, was involved in a meeting on the legality of the execution of several Nuqṭawī leaders, the activities and growing influence of whom did not make Shah ʿAbbās happy.²⁷

Bahāʾ al-Dīn's rise to prominence culminated in his emergence as the empire's leading jurist, after the death of Mīr Ḥusayn al-Karakī of plague in 1001/1592–3, and ensuing appointment as shaykh al-islām of the Safavid capital, which Shah ʿAbbās moved from Qazvin to Isfahan.²⁸ In this position, which Arjomand describes as “the highest office of the state reserved for the hierocracy,” even though its supremacy was tacit and unofficial at this time, Bahāʾ al-Dīn continued to serve the shah for the rest of his life, as an advisor/consultant, especially in matters of Shiite law.²⁹

The mobile scholar

Bahāʾ al-Dīn's responsibilities as shaykh al-islām of the capital and jurist-advisor attending to the affairs of the court did not prevent him from other scholarly engagements. In fact, scholarly activity continued to be his primary occupation and gained even more vigor in this phase of his life, during which his previous education came to maturation. A good part of Bahāʾ al-Dīn's intellectual contributions, especially in the religious sciences, were products of this period, often coinciding with his trips with the royal camp and sometimes within the context of court events.³⁰ He wrote, for instance, Tuḥfa-yi Ḥātimī (The Precious Gift for Ḥātim) in Persian on the astrolabe and its function, probably in Qazvin in 1004/1596, and dedicated it to Ḥātimī Beg, the grand vizier who had inquired about the device.³¹ In 1007/1599, in Mashhad, during the royal campaign against the Uzbeks in Khurasan, he finished al-Ḥabl al-matīn (The Strong Rope) on Shiite legal hadith. In Ṣafar 1015/1606, in the town of Ganjah in the Qarabagh region, as part of the shah's military campaign in Azerbaijan, Bahāʾ al-Dīn completed Miftāḥ al-falāḥ (The Key to Salvation) on daily rituals.³² In Dhū al-Qaʿda 1015/1606, in Qum, he finished Mashriq al-shamsayn (The Rising of the Two Suns) on Shiite law.³³ In 1020/1611, in Azerbaijan, in the context of a conversation between the shah and the Ottoman ambassador who asked about the Shiite legal status of the consumption of meat slaughtered by People of the Book (meaning Jews and Christians), Bahāʾ al-Dīn wrote Ḥurmat dhabāʾiḥ ahl al-kitāb (The Illegality of Meat Slaughtered by People of the Book). The work was presumably sent with the Safavid envoy to Sultan Aḥmad (r. 1603–17) in Istanbul.³⁴ Around the same time, on the shah's order, Bahāʾ al-Dīn began working on a legal manual in Persian. Entitled Jāmiʿ-i ʿAbbāsī (The Abbasid Compendium), the work remained incomplete in his lifetime, but was posthumously finished by a student to become the official Shiite legal compendium in the 17^th century.³⁵

Bahāʾ al-Dīn's extensive mobility, manifested, for instance, in the diverse localities where he completed his works, was a distinctive feature of his career, particularly in this phase of his life. While Bahāʾ al-Dīn's constant childhood moves were mainly dependent on his father's socio-political circumstances and career, Bahāʾ al-Dīn's mobility later in life was a direct offshoot of his attachment to the court of Shah ʿAbbās, himself a highly mobile ruler. Shah ʿAbbās lived more like a nomad, wintering (qishlāq) in Qazvin, Isfahan, Mashhad, Herat, Mazandaran, or Azerbaijan, and on the move conducting campaigns for the rest of the year. The shah would move not simply with his troops, but accompanied by what appeared as a mobile capital, i.e., a massive retinue of ministers, advisors, and administrative and religious representatives, including Bahāʾ al-Dīn and his entourage.³⁶ Bahāʾ al-Dīn often traveled with the royal camp in this phase of his life, save a few trips he seems to have made on his own.

In his travels, Bahāʾ al-Dīn appears as a scholar/teacher at the center of a scholarly circle, a small, moving madrasa, engaged in writing and teaching while his students busily copy, read, collate, and receive ijāzāt on the books. Bahāʾ al-Dīn's involvement in teaching, simultaneous with his trips in this period, is attested by the large number of scholarly certificates (ijāzāt, balāghāt,and samāʿāt) he wrote for his students in various places. Out of the 105 scholarly certificates he wrote throughout his life, 96 were written during the reign of Shah ʿAbbās in fourteen different localities, ranging from Mashhad, Marv, Qum, Qazvin, Isfahan, Semnan, Qarabagh, Tabriz, Farah Abad, and Georgia in Iran to Najaf, Karbala, Baghdad, and Kadhimiya in Iraq.³⁷ However, Bahāʾ al-Dīn's movements and scholarly circle went beyond the places he issued certificates. As we shall see, we learn of the group's other trips, for example, to Herat and Balkh, not through ijāzāt but through the notes his students left on their manuscripts.

His trip to the holy cities of Iraq, from about Jumādá I 1003/January 1595 to Shaʿbān 1003/April 1595, is a clear example of Bahāʾ al-Dīn's scholarly circle on the move.³⁸ The trip seems to have been a personal pilgrimage, without any connection to the court, during a winter when Shah ʿAbbās was settled in Qazvin. It is well documented by manuscript notes, especially in al-Karakī's “Kitāb al-ijāzāt,” a majmūʿa belonging to and largely copied by Sayyid Ḥusayn al-Karakī (d. 1041/1631–32), Bahāʾ al-Dīn's lifelong student and companion.³⁹ On this trip, we find Bahāʾ al-Dīn, on the one hand, engaged in writing and personal and spiritual reflection: he completed his work on prayer, al-Ḥadīqa al-hilāliyya (The Garden of the Crescent), which he had started writing earlier in Qazvin, and also composed several poems.⁴⁰ On the same original copy (nuskhat al-aṣl) of al-Ḥadīqa al-hilāliyya he was writing, Bahāʾ al-Dīn also wrote poems inspired by the Shiite shrines in Kadhimiya and his pilgrimage to Mecca in 991/1583.⁴¹ In a majmūʿa belonging to ʿAbd al-Kāẓim al-Jīlānī, one of his students (who we will also encounter later), Bahāʾ al-Dīn also wrote pages of poems about different spiritual stops in Samarra, Karbala, and Najaf, as well as a short ziyārah (pilgrimage) text to be read upon visiting any of the holy shrines.⁴²

Rather than a solitary scholar, preserving distance from his travel companions and sinking into his own spirituality and intellectual contemplation, Bahāʾ al-Dīn was actively engaged with his students, who read to him, listened to his lessons, and received ijāza from him. Sayyid Ḥusayn al-Karakī, for example, heard a variety of hadith from Bahāʾ al-Dīn at different locales and took extensive notes on their exchanges along the trip. Sayyid Ḥusayn particularly took note of the times and exact locations where he heard a hadith or lesson from Bahāʾ al-Dīn, such as “in Kāẓimayn, on the shores of the Tigris, on the afternoon of Thursday, 14 Jumādá I 1003”; “on the night of Friday, 7 Jumādá II 1003, in Baghdad, facing the shrines…”; or “on 27 Rajab 1003, in Najaf, facing the shrine of ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālīb.”⁴³ Following a session in Baghdad in which Bahāʾ al-Dīn related a hadith to his circle, he read his students the poem he had just written on his copy of al-Ḥadīqa al-hilāliyya. Sayyid Ḥusayn took note of the occasion and copied the poem into his own manuscript.⁴⁴ On this trip, Sayyid Ḥusayn received several ijāzāt from Bahāʾ al-Dīn, including a comprehensive ijāza on all Bahāʾ al-Dīn's works and those Bahāʾ al-Dīn had an ijāza for through his father.⁴⁵ In Karbala, Sayyid Ḥusayn also took the chance to study with and receive ijāzāt from other scholars, who were either part of Bahāʾ al-Dīn's entourage or merely in proximity to and in intellectual exchange with him and his circle. This is how Sayyid Ḥusayn received an ijāza from Mawlānā Maʿānī Tabrīzī and heard hadith from Sayyid Ḥaydar Bīzuwuy, both scholars of Iranian origin.⁴⁶ Probably during the same trip, also in Karbala, a certain Jamāl al-Dīn Aḥmad al-Saʿdī read aloud to Bahāʾ al-Dīn the work Mukhtalaf al-shīʻa (The Points of Disagreement among the Shiite), a Shiite source authored by al-ʿAllāma al-Ḥillī (d. 726/1325) on Imāmī scholars’ differing opinions in juridical rulings, and received an ijāza from Bahāʾ al-Dīn on all the works by al-Ḥillī.⁴⁷ ʿAbd al-Kāẓim al-Jīlānī, who we already met, copied a treatise in Shaʿbān, in Karbala, in the same majmūʿa in which Bahāʾ al-Dīn wrote his poems.⁴⁸ Bahāʾ al-Dīn's other student, Ḥājjī Bābā al-Qazwīnī, must also have been with him on this trip. We find Ḥājjī Bābā having a local resident of Baghdad write a poem in Turkish for him in his al-Mashkūl, a manuscript Ḥājjī Bābā had modeled and named after Bahāʾ al-Dīn's famous anthology al-Kashkūl (The Dervish's Bowl).⁴⁹ Ḥājjī Bābā noted that the poem was written in Shaʿbān 1003/April 1595, when they were returning from pilgrimage with their teachers (mashāyikhinā).⁵⁰ Thus, it must have been a group of students, scholars, and teachers on a spiritual-cum-intellectual tour together.

Similar, although probably less elaborate, pictures of Bahāʾ al-Dīn and his scholarly circle engaged in intellectual activities in locales across the Safavid realm can be drawn of many other trips in this phase of his life. This includes the several trips to Khurasan between 1007/1598 and 1011/1602 in the company of Shah ʿAbbās, who was busy dealing with Uzbek assaults in the northeast; the period between 1013/1604 and 1015/1606, with the royal camp in Azerbaijan; the time between 1018/1609 and 1020/1611, along with the royal camp on military expedition, again in the northwest, in Qarabagh; and the time in 1023/1614, in Georgia, as part of the royal retinue.⁵¹ The last episode, during which our documents show Bahāʾ al-Dīn and his circle, away from home in Isfahan, engaged in scholarly activities and intellectual exchange, took place in 1024/1615 in Mazandaran, at the time when the royal retinue came to winter in Farah Abad following the military expedition in Georgia. For the five final years of his life, Bahāʾ al-Dīn seems to have been more or less settled in Isfahan and continued teaching until a few months before his death.⁵²

Bahāʾ al-Dīn's scholarly circle seems to have convened at either his residence or the various holy places they visited, as we saw, for example, with his Iraq trip. Indeed, despite the prevalence of madrasas in Safavid Iran, particularly in the capital Isfahan, we do not see Bahāʾ al-Dīn attached to any specific madrasa in either the narrative sources, his certificates, or the colophons of manuscripts copied around him.⁵³ This is particularly surprising considering that Shah ʿAbbās founded mosque-madrasas with large charitable endowments and teaching positions assigned to specific scholars, such as Shaykh Luṭf Allāh al-Maysī (d. 1032/1622–23) and Mullā ʿAbd Allāh Shūshtarī (d. 1021/1612–13), both scholars of lower ranks whose names have been associated with those mosque-madrasas until today.⁵⁴ During the reign of Shah ʿAbbās, Bahāʾ al-Dīn was probably never a mudarris (lecturer) assigned to a teaching position in a madrasa, likely because his high status in the Safavid system and socio-political responsibilities were beyond those of a mudarris teaching at a school.

There are, instead, two references to the “madras” where Bahāʾ al-Dīn used to teach. Ḥājjī Bābā makes the first reference in the colophon of a copy of his Ithná ʿashariyya fī al-ḥajj (The Twelve-Chapter Treatise on Hajj), which he copied for himself in 1028/1619 in the shaykh's “madras.”⁵⁵ The second reference comes in Iskandar Beg's account of Bahāʾ al-Dīn's death, in which Iskandar Beg noted that the shaykh's body was transferred to Mashhad to be buried, according to his will, next to Imam Riḍā's tomb, in the same house that was Bahāʾ al-Dīn's “madras” when he resided in Mashhad.⁵⁶ Not a madrasa, a “madras” could mean any specified space, in a mosque or house, where students convened and he taught, wherever he happened to reside for a while. In any event, Bahāʾ al-Dīn's mobile lifestyle did not leave any room for a stationary teaching style, and his peripatetic teaching and scholarly circle were likely what best suited his life.

Inside Bahāʾ al-Dīn's scholarly circle

Our sources shed some light on the composition of Bahāʾ al-Dīn's scholarly circle and its inner relationships. Rather than lecturing to a large population of fans and followers from all walks of life, Bahāʾ al-Dīn seems to have been at the center of a small circle of students. The many certificates he wrote throughout his life are personal, written on personal copies of the individual students who studied with him in private gatherings or even individual lessons, sometimes at his house.⁵⁷ We rarely find certificates for the same date and same text given to several individuals, indicating that it was not a public lesson that many individuals attended and received ijāzāt.⁵⁸ This is in clear contrast to the practice reported for earlier periods; for example, the group certificates written for a long list of attendees from different social and professional backgrounds, as we see in the context of the public reading sessions in 13^th-century Syria depicted by Konrad Hirschler.⁵⁹

In the sources on Bahāʾ al-Dīn's life, whether historical narratives or modern studies, any individual who received an ijāza from Bahāʾ al-Dīn is usually listed among his students. For instance, Muḥammad Qaṣrī notes that in Āqā Buzurg’s al-Dharīʿa nearly one hundred individuals are mentioned as Bahāʾ al-Dīn’s students.⁶⁰ However, a closer look at the sources highlights a distinction between members of his circle and his more casual students. The traces left on manuscripts show that Bahāʾ al-Dīn's circle had an almost fixed core of long-term students, who remained with him for extended periods, whether on trips or in residence. The most prominent of this group were Sayyid Ḥusayn al-Karakī, Ḥājjī Bābā al-Qazwīnī, and ʿAbd al-Kāẓim al-Jīlānī, all of whom we have already met. In a later account of Bahāʾ al-Dīn's life, Sayyid Ḥusayn is reported to have said that he was at Bahāʾ al-Dīn's service for forty years in residence and on trips (Kuntu fī khidmatihi mundhu arbaʿīn sanat fī al-ḥaḍar wa-l-safar).⁶¹ We find Sayyid Ḥusayn often with Bahāʾ al-Dīn between 989/1581 and 1030/1621 (the shaykh's death), receiving some sixteen certificates from him throughout this period and traveling with him to, for instance, Iraq in 1003/1595, Mashhad and Herat between 1007/1598 and 1011/1602, and Mazandaran in 1024/1615.⁶² Ḥājjī Bābā was with Bahāʾ al-Dīn at least from 1001/1592, when Ḥājjī Bābā copied a three-page poem by Bahāʾ al-Dīn in praise of the Twelfth Imam, until the shaykh's death in 1030/1621.⁶³ Ḥājjī Bābā was with Bahāʾ al-Dīn on his trips, including the Iraq trip in 1003/1595, the Herat trip in 1010–1011/1601–2, and in a village near Qazvin in 1016/1607. Ḥājjī Bābā received six certificates from Bahāʾ al-Dīn between 1007/1598 and 1028/1618.⁶⁴ ʿAbd al-Kāẓim was with Bahāʾ al-Dīn in Iraq in 1003/1595, as we have already seen, and received three certificates from him in Mashhad in 1008/1600, 1010/1602, and 1011/1603.⁶⁵

In addition to the fixed core of students who remained in contact with Bahāʾ al-Dīn for long periods, his circle also had many members in its periphery, likely including local students who attended his teachings for short periods in the localities to which he traveled and Arab students from neighboring regions, who I discuss shortly.⁶⁶ In only a few cases, Bahāʾ al-Dīn's certificates were given without prior study, likely out of blessing and respect, to learned peers such as Mīr Dāmād (d. 1040/1631), the high-ranking jurist-philosopher; Shaykh Luṭf Allāh al-Maysī, the ʿĀmilī scholar teaching and leading prayers in Isfahan; and Sayyid Mājid al-Baḥrānī (d. 1028/1619), the Bahraini scholar who settled in Shiraz.⁶⁷ Although these scholars were part of Bahāʾ al-Dīn's intellectual network, I do not consider them to have been his students and part of his circle, as they did not study with him. These scholars had their own groups of students and scholarly circles, which sometimes overlapped with Bahāʾ al-Dīn's circle.

Bahāʾ al-Dīn's scholarly circle seems to have comprised several individuals who were/became scholars of some renown. In a list of “the great teachers and scholars of the period,” presented by Khūzanī in his contemporary chronicle, both Bahāʾ al-Dīn and many of his students – such as Ḥājjī Bābā and ʿAbd al-Kāẓim – are listed.⁶⁸ In the same chronicle, in the account of the royal meeting with religious scholars to discuss the execution of Nuqṭawī leaders in 1002/1593–94 in Qazvin, we find – along with Bahāʾ al-Dīn and Mīr Dāmād – two of Bahāʾ al-Dīn's students, Ḥājjī Bābā and Ḥājjī Ḥusayn al-Yazdī.⁶⁹ Some of Bahāʾ al-Dīn's students were likewise present at the court meeting convened to conclude the shah's extensive endowments in 1023/1614.⁷⁰ The acceptance of these scholars at court meetings testifies to their high social status. Moreover, we are informed that Sayyid Ḥusayn al-Karakī, Bahāʾ al-Dīn's lifelong student, became the muftī of Isfahan and remained connected to the court well after Bahāʾ al-Dīn's death.⁷¹

Bahāʾ al-Dīn's scholarly circle embraced a cosmopolitan, multi-ethnic, and multi-lingual group of students, as evidenced from the traces left in books. A note in Ḥājjī Bābā's al-Mashkūl, for instance, indicates the cosmopolitan nature of this circle. Giving a title to an amusing poem about the route Bahāʾ al-Dīn and his entourage traveled on an undated trip from Qazvin to Isfahan, Ḥājjī Bābā referred to “the Arab and non-Arab” (min al-ʿarab wa-l-ʿajam) students with Bahāʾ al-Dīn.⁷² In fact, following the establishment of Shiism as the official religion of the Safavid state, Iranian cities – including initially Tabriz, Qazvin, Mashhad, and Herat, and later on, throughout the 11^th/16^th and 12^th/17^th centuries, Isfahan and (to a lesser extent) Shiraz and Yazd – took on a central role in Shiite education. As such, Shiite students from Arabic-speaking regions were attracted to these cities in search of learning.⁷³ Scholars of Arab background residing in Iran, such as Bahāʾ al-Dīn, facilitated the connection and intellectual exchange with visiting Arab students and scholars, welcoming them into their scholarly circles.⁷⁴

Bahāʾ al-Dīn had several students in his circle who came from Arab regions to study with him for a short time. ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad al-ʿĀmilī al-Nabāṭī, a native of Jabal ʿĀmil and resident of Najaf, for example, spent some five–six months with Bahāʾ al-Dīn in Isfahan in 1012/1603, copying, studying, reading, and receiving certificates on Bahāʾ al-Dīn's books.⁷⁵ Sayyid Badr al-Dīn al-Ḥusaynī al-ʿĀmilī was another Jabal ʿĀmilī student who, having spent some years studying with Shaykh Muḥammad ibn Ḥasan ibn al-Shahīd al-Thānī (d. 1030/1621) in Mecca, traveled to Iran and studied with Bahāʾ al-Dīn. In 1026/1617, Sayyid Badr received a comprehensive ijāza from Bahāʾ al-Dīn for the major Shiite sources and all of Bahāʾ al-Dīn's works.⁷⁶ Bahāʾ al-Dīn received students also from Shiite regions in the south of the Persian Gulf. One such student was Muḥammad ibn Manṣūr al-Ṣāʾigh, from al-Aḥsāʾ, who traveled to Iran with his brother around 1024/1615. In this year, he finished copying Bahāʾ al-Dīn's commentary on Zubdat al-usūl (The Essence of the Principles [of Jurisprudence]), a work also authored by Bahāʾ al-Dīn, for the shaykh's library.⁷⁷ In the same year, also in Isfahan, Manṣūr al-Ṣāʾigh copied a majmūʿa containing several texts, including Bahāʾ al-Dīn's al-Ithná ʿashariyyāt, and heard and collated the text in Bahāʾ al-Dīn's presence.⁷⁸ Bahāʾ al-Dīn's two students from Bahrain were Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf al-Baḥrānī, who received ijāzāt in 998/1590, 999/1591, and 1000/1592, and ʿAlī ibn Sulaymān al-Baḥrānī, who played a pivotal role in the spread of the science of hadith in Bahrain after returning from his educational stay in Iran.⁷⁹

Bahāʾ al-Dīn's circle was also linguistically diverse. Most of its members, whether Arab or non-Arab, must have known Arabic, as it was the language of the religious sciences. ʿAbd al-Kāẓim al-Jīlānī, a native of the Iranian northern province of Gilan, for example, composed works in Arabic.⁸⁰ While visiting Arab students may have known only Arabic, especially if their stay in Iran was not long enough to learn the local language, Iranian residents of the circle knew Persian and may also have been familiar with Turkish.⁸¹ Ḥājjī Bābā al-Qazwīnī, a native Iranian likely of Turkish background, wrote in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish in his al-Mashkūl and composed poems in both Persian and Turkish.⁸² Bahāʾ al-Dīn himself was obviously well-versed in both Arabic and Persian, as he wrote books and composed poems in both languages. I have not come across any evidence of his familiarity with Turkish, even though the absence of evidence does not necessarily mean he did not know the language. He also composed a two-line poem in “rājī” – an old local dialect of the Iranian central regions – which appears in Ḥājjī Bābā's al-Mashkūl.⁸³

Beyond intellectual pursuits, likely the prime reason students gathered around Bahāʾ al-Dīn, his circle was tied together by a deep degree of friendship and sociability. The fact that the group often traveled together for extended periods, with the teacher and his students experiencing life together and holding lessons enroute, provided a learning atmosphere less rigid and formal than the madrasa. This is reflected in the students’ personal notes on their books. On one of their trips, in Rabiʿ II 1010/October 1601, probably on their way to Mashhad with Shah ʿAbbās's on-foot pilgrimage, at breakfast in a village near Semnan, Bahāʾ al-Dīn related a hadith on cheese and walnuts to Sayyid Ḥusayn al-Karakī and made him a cheese and walnut sandwich. The breakfast preceded a reading session on the same day in Semnan, where Sayyid Ḥusayn attended and audited parts of al-Ṭūsī's (d. 460/1068) al-Tahdhīb al-aḥkām (The Orderly Arrangement of Legal Rulings) read by some students (baʿḍ al-ikhwān).⁸⁴ Several months later, in Shawwāl 1010/April 1602, we find Bahāʾ al-Dīn and his circle in Herat, gathering together, reading poems, and writing notes for remembrance in their notebooks.⁸⁵ Bahāʾ al-Dīn wrote several poems for Ḥājjī Bābā in his al-Mashkūl, following which Ḥājjī Bābā also composed and wrote a poem in the same style.⁸⁶ In one of the gatherings, in a garden in a village near Herat, which may have been in the presence of Bahāʾ al-Dīn, Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ, a young member of the group (al-akh al-shābb), sang a song in a sad voice that deeply affected Ḥājjī Bābā, making him record the poem in his al-Mashkūl and take note of his feelings.⁸⁷ From Herat, in 1011/1602, along with the royal retinue, Bahāʾ al-Dīn's circle traveled to Balkh. The group was overtaken by a severe storm on the way and experienced hard conditions, which the teacher and students described in poems.⁸⁸ In Ṣafar 1016/June 1607, we find Bahāʾ al-Dīn and his circle in Āb-garm, a village with hot springs near Qazvin. The lessons were going on as Ḥājjī Bābā read Bahāʾ al-Dīn's al-Ithná ʿashariyyāt to him and received an ijāza.⁸⁹ During their stay, Ḥājjī Bābā also took note of a meeting they, probably along with Bahāʾ al-Dīn and his entourage, had with Mīrzā Ibrāhīm Daylamī, a local governor. It was a cultural gathering where poems were exchanged, and Mīrzā Ibrāhīm recited poems both of his own composition and by the late Malik Maḥmūd Daylamī.⁹⁰

A final point to be made about Bahāʾ al-Dīn's scholarly circle is the affectionate and supportive relationship between him and his students. In Dhū al-Qaʿda 1012/April 1604, at a time when Bahāʾ al-Dīn was about to leave Isfahan to join the royal camp in Azerbaijan, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥayy, a young student (al-walad) who had just finished reading some of Bahāʾ al-Dīn's works to him, noted the sorrow and sadness he and his peers felt due to the shaykh's departure, and added a few lines of poetry to the copy on which Bahāʾ al-Dīn wrote an ijāza.⁹¹ Similarly, writing about Bahāʾ al-Dīn after his death, Sayyid Ḥusayn al-Karakī noted the great love and friendship between him and the shaykh.⁹² In turn, Bahāʾ al-Dīn's support for his students is evidenced by the fact that he sometimes accommodated those who studied with him at his house, especially visiting students and scholars who came from other places. Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī al-ʿĀmilī al-Mashgharī, a native of Jabal ʿĀmil, for example, traveled to Isfahan, stayed at Bahāʾ al-Dīn's place, and studied with him until the shaykh's death.⁹³ In another instance, in a letter Bahāʾ al-Dīn sent with his young student (al-walad) Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ al-Māzandarānī to an acquaintance whose copy of Rasā'il al-Ṣābī happened to reach Bahāʾ al-Dīn, he asked the receiver of the letter to show kindness to Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ, insisting that the utmost attention be given to the young boy's needs.⁹⁴ The note may have functioned as a recommendation letter for Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ, who was from a very poor family.⁹⁵ Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ al-Mazandarani (d. 1086/1675) became a prominent scholar of Safavid Iran in the 11^th/17^th century.

Conclusion

In this paper, I portrayed the circle of students and scholars that convened around Bahāʾ al-Dīn al-ʿĀmilī in Iran of the Safavid period, shedding light on this circle's religious and intellectual activities. Bahāʾ al-Dīn's scholarly circle illustrates the persistence of the same informal and non-institutional modes of education and knowledge transmission in Muslim societies that scholars such as Makdisi, Berkey, and Chamberlain noted in the medieval period of Islamic history. The intellectual exchange in Bahāʾ al-Dīn's informal circle, which convened all over the place, whether during his trips or in residence, presents the informal modes of education that contributed to the transmission of Shiite sources and spread of Shiism in Safavid Iran, alongside the more formal and institutional education that the many madrasas of the Safavid period offered.

In the story of Bahāʾ al-Dīn and his scholarly circle, we see him as a mobile scholar, traveling from Qazvin to Mashhad, Isfahan to Azerbaijan, Semnan to Qum, and Qarabagh to Mazandaran. Far from an Ibn Baṭṭūṭah-style traveler exploring new places and discovering new cultures, and hardly in the typical style of a scholar traveling to distant places in search of knowledge, Bahāʾ al-Dīn's travels were an inevitable part of his responsibilities as a shaykh al-islām and high-ranking scholar of the Safavid court, which was itself highly mobile. Nevertheless, Bahāʾ al-Dīn took full advantage of his travels, propagating the knowledge he amassed in previous years, particularly his extensive knowledge of Shiite hadith and law rooted in the ʿĀmilī intellectual tradition, which stretched back to al-Shahīd al-Thānī. Wherever he traveled, Bahāʾ al-Dīn was surrounded by students, whether those in his entourage or locals, who copied his latest books, read their books to him, and received certificates.

The case of Bahāʾ al-Dīn's scholarly circle seems to be similar to other scholarly circles of Safavid Iran. As alluded to in this paper, we know that contemporary Shiite scholars – such as Mīr Dāmād and Shaykh Luṭf Allāh al-Maysī (in Isfahan), Mullā ʿAbdullāh Shūshtarī (initially in Mashhad and later in Isfahan), and Sayyid Mājid al-Baḥrānī (in Shiraz) – had their own scholarly circles. At the same time, other scholarly circles likely convened in Shiite regions beyond the Safavid realm: for example, in the holy cities of Iraq, India, Bahrain, and even Mecca, as we saw in the case of Shaykh Muḥammad ibn Ḥasan ibn al-Shahīd al-Thānī. Forming the nodes of the broader Shiite intellectual network of the early modern period, these circles were in intellectual and scholarly exchange with one another, and students seem to have moved freely between them. What gives Bahāʾ al-Dīn's scholarly circle a distinctive character was its mobility, which aided the propagation of knowledge beyond intellectual centers. Further study of these scholarly circles could shed considerable light on the broader Shiite intellectual network and its ways of collaboration and knowledge transmission in this period.