Wahid Behbahani (d. 1791) is most likely the most significant scholar that the lay-Shia have never heard of. While scholars like Tusi, Hilli and Majlisi are undoubtedly house hold figures, with many hearing about their feats and accomplishments, outside of select seminary circles very few would have heard of Wahid Behbahani. This couldn’t be more ironic, given it was Behbahani who saw off the Akhbari movement and ushered in an entire new era of Shi’i thought.

In order to understand what he did, and why he is given so much importance, it’s important to briefly understand the intellectual milieu he was in and the scholarly adversaries he had. At the time of his birth, Shi’i scholars had been split into two groups, the Usulis and the Akhbaris. And while there are dozens of differences between them (Samahiji in his Munyat al-Mumarisin lists 40 differences, others have said the differences were up to 86), the main two differences were the Akhbaris considered many if not all of the traditions to be authentic and they were adamantly opposed to any rational reasoning (ijtihad) in deducing law.

From the 16^th century onwards, the Akhbari movement had flourished and were clearly in the ascendency. In the early 18^th century a number of Akhbari scholars had fled from Bahrain to Behbahan, a city in Iran close to Isfahan which was also the town in which Wahid Behbahani spent his childhood. One of the scholars who had migrated was a well-known Akhbari called Shaykh Abd-Allah Samahiji, he spent much of his time propagating Akhbari thought and was venerated greatly by the locals.

Having spent some years in Najaf studying, Behbahani returned to the town of Behbahan and upon witnessing the open propagation of Akhbarism it is narrated that he began his anti-Akhbari activities from there. It wouldn’t be farfetched to imagine a young Behbahani returning to the town of his childhood outraged at the open heresy he was seeing and deciding to do something about it. After spending 30 odd years in Behabahan, Wahid then moved on to Karbala to continue studies, teaching and providing guidance to the wider Shi’i community.

It is here in Karbala where things start to get interesting. The seminary in Karbala at that time was being run by a scholar called Yusuf Bahrani, an Akhbari (albeit a moderate one), and Wahid Behbahani, an accomplished scholar with zero tolerance for Akhbarism, has just come to town. An interesting report is found where Wahid dreams that Imam Hussayn commands him “to cut his nails”, and upon waking up he realizes that the nails being referred to was Yusuf Bahrani. Taking this dream to be a cryptic command from the Imam to take down the wider Akhbari movement he finds the motivation needed to start his demolition job. Things between them ended up getting so heated that at one point Wahid Behbahani passes a ruling that praying behind Yusuf Bahrani was not permissible.

Wahid Behbahani was a prolific writer and ends up successfully undermining Yusuf Akhbari and steering the destiny of the Shi’i out of the hands of the Akhbaris. Behbahani’s thoughts and ideas were then solidified by his students, who then through teaching their students, crystalized the framework even more. It is fair to say now that most seminaries, for better or for worse, are now operating within a very strict Behbahanian paradigm, however, that is a story for another day.

All the above was an introduction to what I actually wanted to briefly discuss. Wahid Behbahani authored many treatises and commentaries, one of of them was a work called Fawa’id al-Ha’iriyya. Within this book he pens a number of refutations to the core tenets of Akhbarism and attempts to defend the main features of Usulism, principally the permissibility of rational reasining (ijtihad) and acting according to supposition (dhan). While most of the contents within this book comes across as quite straightforward and standard, especially for anyone familiar with the basics of legal theory (usul al-fiqh), there was one particular treatise that struck me as remarkable given the tone and the type of critique employed. In unprecedented fashion Behbahani boldly attacks the hadith corpus with over a dozen strongly worded critiques. Prior to this treatise, I don’t think any scholar has ever criticized or analyzed the corpus to lay bare its weaknesses and problems in the way Wahid Behbahani had done. For me, it felt like someone was trying to bring the entire house down (whilst somehow trying to save the inhabitants from getting damaged).  To understand this treatise a bit more I need to digress again and go back into what the Akhbaris believed about our hadith.

The Akhbaris had an unshakeable certainty and commitment to our hadith corpus, in particular the 4 main books. For them these traditions were like the holy grail, untouchable and incontestable, and they were all that was needed for a scholar. The Usuli opinion that our traditions could be split into different categories of being weak and authentic infuriated the Akhbari, and the idea that we should rely on other than our traditions, in any science, be it jurisprudence, theology or even history, seriously triggered them.

Why did they think this way? Well, the Akhbaris came to this idea of certainty in our hadith books from a combination of different arguments:

1. Our scholars have sacrificed their blood, sweat and tears to keep our traditions safe from tampering and they were successful in doing so
2. Our earlier scholars considered our traditions to be correct and therefore it is reasonable to rely on their judgement and not question them
3. God would not have left us alone in the period of Occultation without a source to guide us, given we do not have access to the Imam it is only reasonable that a substitute is available, otherwise God would not be fulfilling His part of the bargain of providing a source of guidance which would protect us from deviation, if the traditions were not correct we would be left with nothing, and given it is impossible for God to leave people without any guidance, we can therefore conclude the traditions are correct
4. The scholars who compiled the books testified to the authenticity of these traditions, and their testimony is enough to be relied on
5. There is an established consensus from amongst our scholars that our traditions are the very same traditions that can be found in the earlier hadith works
6. We have widely reported traditions where the Imams advised those who listened to their words to write them down. We can therefore be reasonable to assume the traditions we are in possession of have therefore arrived at us through a meticulous method under the instruction of the Imams
7. We have up to 21 indicators that give us certainty that the traditions have reached us correctly

A combination of the arguments above, formulated differently depending where on the Akhbari spectrum the said scholar would be, created this view that all of our traditions are perfect and there is no reason to rely on anything else. In fact, they would argue, that relying on another source, such as our own rationale, when we have such impeccable resources in the form of our traditions, would be, in the best case scenario, tantamount to belittling the traditions.

In Treatise Six titled “The Permissibility and Impermissibility of acting according to Supposition” Wahid Behbahani attempts to shake the Akhbari scholar out of this certainty with the hadith corpus and makes 14 critiques of our traditions.  Each of these critiques undermines the arguments laid out above, and each of these critiques, if objectively reviewed away from any theological presumptions, would lead to a radical revision on the credibility of our hadith sources and the level of confidence they inspire.

Whilst Wahid Behbahani doesn’t want to damage the hadith corpus, he is stuck in a dilemma that in order to convince the Akhbari that you need sources other than the traditions, he first needs to demonstrate the insufficiency of said source. Once he can demonstrate how inadequate the traditions are, he can then justify the use, and explain the need, of other sources. This is where he argues for a) the use of ijtihad, and b) the permissibility of acting according to supposition and not certainty. For this reason Wahid Behbahani does not hold back any punches and really brings out every argument he can muster.

It is quite remarkable is that these comments come from a scholar as established and mainstream as Behbahani himself. If you were to present snippets of this text to an unsuspecting lay-scholar he would be forgiven for assuming it has come from a reformist. What is interesting about this method of attack by Behbahani is that such arguments can often have far reaching and unintended consequences, and without sounding too cliché, they can open up pandoras box. If this is the state of our main 4 books, what about our secondary sources? If our traditions require lengthy analysis before utilizing them in jurisprudence, what about using them in other sciences, such as theology? If the traditions are not as impeccable as initially thought of, where does that leave us vis a vis our heritage from the Imams? These are just a few questions that we can explore, or try to find the courage to explore, when we begin to hold the corpus under investigation and recognize misconceived rosy assumptions about our corpus does no one any favors.

I have not translated the whole treatise as there is far too much technical jargon to work through. However I have taken the 14 critiques that I could find and laid them out below in the order that he raises them. You can see the whole treatise here. Each of these critiques could have books written about them (and in fact, have been written), but for now, I will suffice with just a quick translation. I hope they are as thought provoking for you as they were for me.

1 – Difference in scholarly understanding

أنّ كثيرا من الآيات و الأخبار صار فهمها معركة للآراء بين العلماء، بل ربّما يفهم واحد منهم ضدّ ما فهمه الآخر مع جودة فهم الكلّ، و استقامة سليقتهم

“Many verses and traditions have become a major point of contention between scholars. It often happens that one scholar understands something completely opposite to what another scholar might understand, despite both of them being well versed and sound of mind.”

2 – Manipulation of the text

و أيضا ربّما سقط من الرّواية شي‌ء، أو وقع تصحيف، أو تحريف، أو زيادة، أو تقديم، أو تأخير، أو غير ذلك بل وقعت في كثير من أخبارنا، كما لا يخفى على المطّلع .

و أيضا أحاديثنا لم تكن‌ [1] في الأصول هكذا، بل تقطّعت تقطّعا كثيرا، و هذا يوجب التغيير.

و قد وجدنا من الشيخ أنّه قطع بعض الأحاديث من الكافي، فتغيّر [2] الحكم من جهته.

“It is also possible that some text is missing from the tradition, or there has been a manuscript error, or there has been some tampering. It is also possible that something might have been added, or a part of the tradition has been brought forward from where it originally was, or it might have been put back, and many other things like this could have happened with that tradition. And these things have already happened to many of our traditions as those who are familiar know.

Also, many of the traditions which we have today did not appear in the original text in the way they are currently. The traditions have been split and re-arranged which has resulted in a change of meaning.

We have seen Shaykh al-Kulayni do this with some traditions in al-Kafi, where he has split the original tradition and as a result of doing so the ruling has also changed. “

3 – Paraphrasing

و أيضا كثيرا ما كان الرّواة ينقلون بالمعنى‌ [3]، فلعلّ في النقل بالمعنى يتحقّق التفاوت، فإنّا نرى الآن أنّ كثيرا من أهل الفهم (لا يعبّرون عن‌ [4] مرادنا) بعبارة تؤدّي عين مطلوبنا من دون أن يتحقّق تفاوت أصلا.

نعم الظاهر أنّهم أفادوا عين مراد المعصوم (عليهم السلام)، من دون تحقّق تفاوت، فيحتاج إلى أصالة عدم التّغيير، أو غيرها من الظنون.

“Many of our traditions have been paraphrased by the narrators and it is entirely plausible that through this paraphrasing a difference in meaning could arise. However we see today that many a learned person can paraphrase what we say without bringing about a difference in what we had intended. So the apparent is that the narrators were able to convey the actual meanings of the Imams without changing anything through their use of paraphrasing, although we would still need to prove this as a maxim.“

4 – You cannot escape conjecture, very little gives you certainty

و بالجملة: الأصول التي يتمسّك بها ظنيّة، مثل أصل العدم، و غيره، و القرآن ظنّيّ الدّلالة بلا شبهة، و الإجماع المنقول بخبر الواحد كذلك ظنّي، و الإجماع القطعيّ لا ينفع بغير ضميمة أمر آخر ظنّيّ، مثلا الإجماع واقع على وجوب الرّكوع، لكن واجباته و شرائطه و مفسداته، و أنّها لا يجب أزيد من المجمع عليه كلّها ظنّيّة، لاستنادها إلى الظنّيّات، و مثل: القرآن، و الإجماع، و الخبر المتواتر مع ندرته

و أمّا الخبر الواحد فظنّي سندا و متنا و دلالة و تعارضا، إذ قلّ ما يتحقّق‌ منه بغير معارضة خبر أو آية أو إجماع ظنّي أو غير ذلك، و قلّ ما ينتهي علاج تعارضه إلى حدّ القطع.

“To summarize, the principles which we use [in jurisprudence] are conjectural, Qur’anic evidence is undoubtedly conjectural, scholarly consensus which is reported via solitary tradition is conjectural, and even scholarly consensus which is certain is of no use without being accompanied by other matters which are conjectural, like the obligation to do ruku’ in prayer – this is wajib however its conditions, rules and requirements are conjectural, as it is all based on principles which are conjectural in nature.

As for the solitary tradition, it is conjectural when it comes to it’s chain, it’s content, it’s evidence and even in contradiction. As very few traditions can be found that are not contradicted by another tradition or verse or ijma’, all of which are conjectural. And very little can be done to resolve these contradictions that provides a person with certainty.”

5 – Many traditions have reached us through non-Shi’as

و أمّا ظنيّة السند فلأنّه وصل إلينا بوساطة جماعة متعدّدة لم يعلم عدالتهم، فضلا عن العصمة.

“As for the chain of the tradition being conjectural, that is due to the traditions reaching us through non-Shia’s.”

6 – Problems with chains of narrators

و أيضا ربّما وقع في السّند سقط أو تبديل، أو غير ذلك كما وجدناه كثيرا، و لا يؤمن في الباقي عن ذلك لطروّ [1] احتمالها، مع أنّ الاحتمال في نفسه موجود، فنحتاج إلى الأصول الظنيّة.

“On top of that, it is possible that a narrator has been dropped from the chain or a narrator has been changed. This is something we have seen happen in many traditions and it’s entirely plausible to have happened in others [which we are not yet sure of]. Because of this possibility we require conjectural principles.”

7 – Our main scholars and compilers made errors, what can we expect of the narrators

على أنّه على تقدير القطع بالعدالة، فليسوا أعلى شأنا من الكليني، و الصدوق، و المفيد، و الشيخ، و أضرابهم، و قد وجدنا منهم الغفلة و الاشتباه كثيرا، كما لا يخفى على المتتبّع.

“Even if we are certain of the narrators being Shia, they are not of a higher status than the life of Kulayni, Saduq, Mufid, Tusi and the likes of them. And we have seen many mistakes and moments of heedlessness in their works, as anyone familiar [with their works] would know.”

8 – Our scholars never trusted the works of others

و أيضا هؤلاء العظام- مع قرب عهد كلّ واحد منهم للآخر، و نهاية معرفته به، بل و ربّما عاشره و صاحبه- لا يعتمد كلّ منهم بحديث الآخر، و لا يفتي إلاّ بما انتخبه نفسه، و لا يجعل كتابه تتمّة لكتاب الآخر، بل يصنّف كتابا برأسه مغايرا لكتاب الآخر، و يقول: هذا هو الحجّة عندي، بل و كثيرا ما يطعن على حديث الآخر، بل و ربّما يصرّح بأنّه موضوع، كما بسطناه في الرسالة.

“Our respected scholars, despite living very close to one other and knowing of each other, and despite accompanying and being companions with one another, they never relied on other scholars hadith works. And our scholars never gave rulings except on traditions which they had approved of themselves. They would never add their books on to the works of others rather they would compile books from the beginning and differentiate their books from what other scholars had compiled. The scholar, when compiling his own hadith book, would say: This book is proof for me. In addition to this they would often weaken the traditions that other scholars had compiled, and they would often accuse them of being fabricated.”

9 – Lack of weakening does not then mean tradition is from the Imam

و أيضا «الشيخ» و «الصّدوق» و غيرهما كثيرا ما قدحوا في رواياتهم‌ [1] بأنّها موضوعة، و أمثال ذلك‌ [2]، و بمجرّد عدم قدحهم كيف يحصل القطع بأنّه من المعصوم (عليه السلام)؟!

“Even when Tusi and Saduq, and others, who have weakened narrators and their traditions for being fabricated – just because we can find a tradition that hasn’t been weakened doesn’t necessarily entail that we can be certain said tradition is from the infallible.”

10 – The original scholars never got certainty in these traditions, how can you now?

من أنّ أحاديثنا مأخوذة من الأصول (القطعيّة)، فتكون قطعيّة، لأنّه إذا كان المشايخ القدماء- الذين هم قريبو العهد، و الماهرون في الأحاديث الخبيرون المطّلعون المضطلعون في الرواية- ما كان يحصل لهم القطع من الجهة الّتي ادّعوها في ذلك الزّمان فكيف يحصل لنا الآن؟! مع أنّهم هم الوسائط، و هم الناقلون، و الأحاديث خرجت منهم، و لو لا نقلهم لنا ما كنّا ندري أنّ الحديث ما ذا؟

“If our early scholars, those who were close to the time in which the traditions were compiled, (and it should be noted that they are the foremost experts and authorities in traditions,) were not able to claim certainty on the traditions being from the Imam how is it possible that we can? Keep in mind that these scholars are the ones who were the intermediaries between us and the narrators, and our corpus emerged from them, and were it not for them we wouldn’t have a clue about what our traditions are.“

11 – We have certainty that traditions were forged in large quantities

و لكن نعلم يقينا أنّه كثيرا ما كانوا يكذبون على الأئمّة (عليهم السلام) و وصل إلينا بالأخبار المتواترة، بل ورد الحديث الصّحيح: أنّ «المغيرة بن سعيد» كان يدسّ في كتب أصحاب الأئمّة [4] (عليهم السلام) أحاديث لم يحدّثوا بها، و كذا «أبو الخطّاب» [1].

“We know with certainty that many of our traditions which have been fabricated and falsely attributed to the Imams have reached us in large numbers. In an authentic narration it has been reported that Mughira b. Sa’id would add fake traditions into the books that belonged to the companions of the Imam. So to would Abu Khattab.”

12 – Scholars would selectively accept traditions based on their own methodology

و أيضا نقطع بأنّ طريقتهم أنّهم كانوا ينقدون الأخبار، و ينتخبون، و كان كلّ ينقد على رأيه

“In addition we have certainty that the methodology of our scholars was to critique traditions, and they would selectively choose traditions [based on their own criteria]. Our scholars would criticize the traditions in accordance with their own conceptual framework.”

13 – Scholars could have been wrong in their judgement

على أنّه على تقدير القطع بأنّهم ادّعوا القطع لا يجب أن يكون قطعهم مطابقا للواقع، فربّما أخطئوا، و هو ظاهر

“Even if we are to accept the claim that the scholars had certainty with the authenticity of a tradition, this alone does not entail that their conviction is in reality correct, as it is possible they may have been wrong.”

14 – The traditions which attempt to solve contradictions are full of contradictions

و أمّا الظنيّة بحسب التّعارض فلأنّ الأخبار الواردة في علاج التّعارض بين الأخبار في غاية التعارض، و لا يمكن الجمع أو التّرجيح بينها إلاّ بالظّنون الاجتهادية. و هو واضح، و سنذكر إن شاء اللّه.

“As for the conjecture involved in contradictions, that is because the traditions which seek to resolve the contradictions are themselves contradictory, leaving us with no choice but to resort to conjectural procedures [to remedy the contradiction in traditions].”