ABSTRACT
Most western analyses of pre-revolutionary Iranian thought have utilized works of political theory as their main sources. These include works such as the lecture notes of Ayatallah Khumayni (collected and entitled Velayat-e faqih, Hokumat-e Eslami), the short monographs of Ayatallahs Mutaharri and Taleqani and the pamphlets and lectures of lay thinkers such as Mehdi Bazargan and ‘Alî Shari’ati [Dabashi, 1992; Fischer, 1983; Abrahamian, 1993]. From these sources, an ideological map of the revolutionary Islamic movement in Iran is drawn and the various strands are identified and described. These sources provide an impression of the trends in late twentieth-century Shi‘ism, and a number of commentators have accurately identified innovatory and unprecedented elements of the postwar Shi‘ite intellectual discussions. However these sources represent only the most accessible end of a spectrum of writings by Shi‘ite Muslim clerics in Iran and elsewhere, the intended audience of which was broader and more diverse than that of traditional Shi‘ite genres of writings. The resultant analyses are often skewed by the populist nature of the sources employed. In the extensive corpus of academic literature which has been produced on the revolutionary movement, the technical, legal literature produced by clerics has been largely ignored.1
