Introduction

Inquiring into the nature of transnational clerical authority in Shi'ism requires close consideration of the forms it adopts. I conceptualise informal and institutionalised structures of leadership in terms of authority networks, in other words the ‘ulama’ and laymen who compose them. The purpose of documenting the internal organisation of an authority network is to identify its individual elements and, more importantly, to map the dyadic relations keeping them together, wherever they might be. These relations not only facilitate exchanges within the network, but are in themselves a source of social capital constitutive of authority. As explained in the Introduction, both familial and scholarly ties have a strong legitimising potential. The more geographically widespread the network, the more interpersonal relations matter to its internal organisation.

Meir Litvak has found that interpersonal ties were preponderant in the social organisation of the community of ‘ulama’ in the Shi'i shrine cities of nineteenth-century Iraq. Considering the formation of transnational authority networks in recent decades, the following chapters confirm that his findings still hold true. The internal working of clerical leadership has largely remained unaltered, not only in the case of the marja'iyya, but also when Shi'i scholars exercise their roles in more formal, institutionalised, structures.

The marja'iyya is the transnational system of religious authority par excellence. Although maraji’ generally do not travel much abroad, their reach across borders is sustained by their wukala’ (sing. wakil) – the clerics and laymen authorised to represent them in their own place of residence, to collect religious taxes and distribute patronage and, for those who are an 'alim, to answer the legal enquiries (istifta'at) of believers. The authority network of a source of emulation is often born out of dyadic relations established locally in the shrine cities before it develops in full strength into the wide geography of Shi'ism. The value of a system of representation largely based on familial and scholarly ties cannot be overstated. Those ties can be a safeguard against its potential corruption or inefficiency. For a marja', having wukala’ he personally knows and whom he can trust compensates for the difficulty of controlling their work at a distance. More importantly, as Linda Walbridge explains, even if ‘the follower never meets or lays eyes on the marja', there is a sense of a personal relationship, maintained by both the intermediaries and by the informality of the institution’.