فرهنگ تشيع و نقش آن در تجدد بومي ايران

The Shiʹi Culture and its Role in the Local Modernization of Iran

The religious scholars could make a special awakening in Iranian people by spreading the shiʹi culture and make good use of the elements of "politics" and "government" for spreading this culture. They could spread shiʹi culture among Iranian people first by influencing the courts of Mongol kings and then by cooperating with safavid sultans. Nevertheless, they neither legitimized these sultans nor they were absorbed by their courts; rather, they preserved their spiritual distance from these sultans, and this increased their attractiveness. As the result of the spread of shiʹi culture, the local and ethnic cultures under the main culture, i.e. the religious culture of shiʹism, gained a specific national identity; thus, Iranian people developed the idea of "Juristʹs authority" (wilayat al-faqih) theoretically and practically, which took place in its primary and synoptic form in Constitutionalism, and in its complete and elaborate form in Islamic revolution.