Patronage is unarguably the most prominent facet of the al-Khu'i family's leadership. Never before the time of Abu al-Qasim al-Khu'i had a source of emulation attained such financial power. His rise to the marja'iyya coincided with the 1973 oil boom which brought great wealth to the Shi'a benefiting from the favourable economic situation, particularly those in the Gulf countries. With all believers expected to pay one-fifth of their revenues to their source of emulation, the funds at al-Khu'i's disposal mirrored the prosperity of this period. In redistributing these resources, the marja’ provided patronage in support of learning in the Iraqi and Iranian seminaries. He also catered for the needs of communities facing financial hardship, wars, deportation and natural disasters in various parts of the Shi'i world. His charity touched upon many spheres of the people's lives, entailing activities as diverse as the propagation of the faith and the promotion of education, the distribution of money, food and emergency relief material, the construction of clinics, orphanages, roads and irrigation systems, in addition to other projects. Because of the large geographical scope and the informality of the marja'iyya's system of patronage, it is impossible to provide a complete map of al-Khu'i's charitable legacy. Its most visible projects, both those established by the ayatullah's network of wukala’ and the Al-Khoei Foundation, are presented in this chapter as an image of the financial power of his religious leadership.

The marja'iyya's transnational charity reached into very different and sometimes highly politically loaded environments. Accordingly, attention should be paid to the opportunities and constraints specific to the context of the time and place in which it was distributed. The situation in the Iraqi and Iranian centres of learning is considered first, with a focus on how Khomeini and then the Islamic Republic responded to the development of patronage networks by Abu al-Qasim al-Khu'i from the early 1970s and their maintenance until the present day. The chapter then moves on to assess the significance of the local context for the provision of charity in Lebanon, several Sunni-ruled states and two Muslim-minority countries. This multi-sited approach allows for a comparison of the causal effect of the internal religious make-up of the state on its response(s) to the expansion of Shi'i networks within its borders. Finally, Shi'i patronage in the West will be discussed.