From al-Afghani to Shariati: A Reading in the Formation of the Iranian Intellectual Field

If Iran drew its political boundaries early-at the Treaty of Qasr-e Shirin in 1639-it did not delineate its intellectual boundaries with the same clarity except across a full century of upheaval, inquiry, and the redefinition of the self. The modern Iranian intellectual field did not emerge solely from the Islamic Revolution, nor did it take shape in a single moment in Qom, Mashhad, or even Tehran. Rather, it was forged through a long trajectory in which successive layers of reform, protest, and revolutionary reinterpretation accumulated.

From Jamal al-Din al-Afghani-whom authoritative scholarship increasingly suggests was of Iranian birth, despite presenting himself as “Afghani”-to Muhammad Abduh, who received and reformulated his influence in Egypt within a rationalist reformist idiom; and then to Ali Shariati, who recharged Shi‘ism with a renewed protest-oriented and revolutionary energy-culminating in a historical moment when the religious question itself became a question of legitimacy, authority, and the state-this reading seeks to contribute to an understanding of how Iran, in its modern consciousness, moved from reforming religion, to politicizing it, and ultimately to attempting to claim history in its name.

Accordingly, the path from al-Afghani to Shariati should not be read merely as an intellectual lineage; rather, it constitutes a broad Iranian arc traversing questions of ambiguous identity, trans-sectarian reform, engagement with the Arab intellectual center in Egypt, and a subsequent return to the Iranian interior in a more tense and overtly revolutionary form. Beneath this arc lie deeper historical strata: from the Safavid legacy, to the jurisprudential expansions of Al-Muhaqqiq al-Karaki regarding the functions of the jurist, to the major transformation later crystallized by Ruhollah Khomeini, who would relocate wilāyah from a limited juridical domain into a comprehensive theory of governance and sovereignty.

Thus, what we encounter is not an isolated history of ideas, but the formation of an entire intellectual field-one that has persistently debated, generation after generation, a single question in multiple formulations: how can religion move beyond the stage of self-defense to become an instrument for reconfiguring society, the state, and history itself?

Al-Afghani: Ambiguous Origins and the Birth of the Reformist Question

This trajectory begins with a figure who, in many ways, embodies the very ambiguity of the modern Mashriq: Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani. The man who entered public memory as “al-Afghani” is now widely believed, according to contemporary scholarly references, to have been Iranian by birth and early upbringing-born in Asadabad within Persia rather than in Afghanistan (indeed, in much of the Iranian literature he is referred to as Sayyid Jamal al-Din Asadabadi). His adoption of an Afghan identity appears, in all likelihood, to have been part of a deliberate self-fashioning within the broader Sunni intellectual sphere, a strategy aimed at mitigating the sensitivities that might have arisen had he presented himself explicitly as a Persian of Shi‘i background.

In this sense, the ambiguity surrounding al-Afghani’s origins was not a marginal biographical detail, but rather an integral component of his intellectual and political function. He was a man intent on addressing the entirety of the Islamic world, not a single sect; one who sought to operate within the expansive horizon of pan-Islamic solidarity, rather than within the narrow confines of local or sectarian affiliation.

Herein lies both the strength and the limitation of al-Afghani. He did not emerge as a doctrinal jurist establishing a closed legal school, nor did he enter history as the architect of a detailed doctrinal system or a fully articulated theological framework. Instead, he appeared as an awakener of foundational questions. His strength resided in provocation rather than codification, in mobilizing will rather than constructing systematic doctrines, and in generating intellectual unrest rather than resolving it.

For this reason, his impact often transcended measurement in terms of texts or institutions. Its impact operated at a different analytical level: the dissemination of a sensibility in which religion was no longer perceived as a final refuge for defeat, but as a language of resurgence and a resource for resistance. Consequently, contemporary scholarship has described him as a significant agent in the “political awakening” of Iranians during the second half of the nineteenth century.

In his relationship with Qajar Iran, this dynamic becomes even more pronounced. Jamal al-Din al-Afghani maintained a tense and ambivalent relationship with Naser al-Din Shah Qajar, opposing the structures of despotism and dependency that underpinned his rule. This trajectory reached its symbolic climax in 1896, when the Shah was assassinated by Mirza Reza Kermani, widely recognized as one of al-Afghani’s followers and those influenced by his thought. The purpose of invoking this episode is not to reduce al-Afghani’s intellectual project to an act of political violence, but rather to highlight that his conception of reform was neither a quiet moral discourse nor a form of apolitical exhortation. Instead, it was a reformism that engaged the very foundations of power, placed despotism itself under indictment, and, at certain moments, approached the threshold where ethical critique transforms into a will for political rupture.

From this perspective, al-Afghani emerges in modern Iranian history as more than a peripatetic thinker. He appears as the architect of a far-reaching project-one that opened a new horizon in the relationship between religion and authority, as well as between idea and action.

Muhammad Abduh and the Legacy of al-Afghani: A Two-Way Trajectory

One of the most striking paradoxes in al-Afghani’s intellectual biography is that his project did not initially find its most coherent articulation within Iran itself, but rather in Egypt. In Cairo, this reformist inquietude encountered one of the most refined and balanced minds of the age: Muhammad Abduh. While Abduh absorbed the influence of his mentor, he did not merely reproduce it; instead, he reformulated, disciplined, and stabilized it within a calmer and more systematic reformist language.

Deeply influenced by al-Afghani during his time in Cairo, Muhammad Abduh would go on to become one of the foremost figures of modern Islamic reform. Here, a crucial juncture in the history of modern thought takes shape: a figure of likely Iranian origin, presenting himself as Afghan, crosses into Egypt and profoundly influences an Egyptian jurist and reformer who would become foundational to the modern Islamic intellectual revival.

This movement alone suffices to demonstrate that the Iranian intellectual field, since the nineteenth century, has refused confinement within national boundaries. Instead, it persistently sought to situate itself within a broader Islamic and Mashriqi process, whose echoes resonated between Tehran, Cairo, Najaf, and Istanbul.

Yet Muhammad Abduh appears here not merely as a disciple of al-Afghani, but as the principal transformer of his intellectual anxiety. Where al-Afghani was more incendiary, mobile, and directly engaged with power, Abduh inclined toward a relative distancing from politics, focusing instead on rational reformist construction: reforming education, revitalizing ijtihād, revisiting methods of interpretation, and defending Islam in a language capable of engaging modernity without capitulating to it. Thus, the idea that may have originated with a thinker of Iranian or Persian background returned from Egypt to the broader Islamic sphere in a more balanced and methodologically refined form.

This point is critical for understanding the later Iranian trajectory. Twentieth-century Iran did not merely inherit its own intellectual legacy; it also absorbed the Arab-Egyptian reformulation that had rearticulated al-Afghani’s question within a distinct reformist framework. Consequently, the history of modern Iranian thought cannot be read as a purely internal development. It becomes, rather, a history of circulation-of movement, interaction, diffusion, and exchange within a space that exceeds national and sectarian boundaries.

Herein lies one of the most revealing paradoxes: Iran, which would later be known as a center of a complex and politically charged Shi‘ism, had, at one of the earliest roots of this trajectory, a thinker of ambiguous origin and identity whose central question traveled to Egypt, acquired its most rational reformist articulation there, and only then returned to Iran in a more intense and confrontational form.

This, in turn, unsettles the reductive binary that juxtaposes a “Sunni reformism” in Egypt against a “revolutionary Shi‘ism” in Iran. For history, in its actual movement, has been far more complex and fluid. Ideas-however divergent or distant they may appear-have often shared, at a deeper level, a common root: the question of nahda (renaissance), the wound of decline, and the persistent desire to break free from stagnation.

Iran Between Reform and Institution

Yet, the reformist question in Iran did not readily crystallize into a coherent and institutionalized school in the manner that occurred-at least partially-in Egypt. This divergence is not accidental. Iran was not an empty arena awaiting a reformer arriving from the margins or from abroad. Rather, it was shaped by heavier and more intricate configurations: a fragile and unstable Qajar state; a supreme religious authority still located beyond its borders in Najaf and Samarra; an internal religious field whose institutional consolidation remained incomplete; dense Imami doctrinal traditions that could not easily be transcended through a simple reformist or exhortative discourse; and, above all, a long Safavid legacy that had rendered the relationship between sect and state an embedded structural feature of Iranian history, rather than a merely intellectual or transient question.

Within this context, the reformist question in Iran remained hesitant and oscillatory-advancing at times, retreating at others; speaking, in one moment, in the idiom of pan-Islamic unity, and in another, in the language of resistance to despotism; only to re-emerge later in a form more tightly bound to Shi‘ism itself and to the question of authority within it.

Naturally, this reading remains analytical and inferential in character, grounded in a synthesis of what can be discerned regarding al-Afghani’s political influence in Iran, and the distinct Safavid–Shi‘i configuration that has shaped the historical development of the modern Iranian state.

Excursus

At this juncture, an indispensable foundational excursus is required to illuminate the deeper juristic roots of this trajectory. In the early Safavid period, as the Safavid state sought to institutionalize Twelver Shi‘ism as the official religion, a number of leading scholars from Jabal ‘Amil in Lebanon were invited to Iran. Among the most prominent of these was Al-Muhaqqiq al-Karaki.

Historical sources indicate that al-Karaki was among the foremost jurists of the Jabal ‘Amil tradition who migrated into the Safavid domain and played a significant role in constructing its sectarian legitimacy. Recent scholarship further suggests that the Safavid debates-and those that followed-provided an early conceptual layer for expanding the functions of the jurist during the Occultation (ghayba).

Yet al-Karaki’s conception of wilāyah in this context remained limited in scope compared to its later developments. It was primarily concerned with ḥisba-related matters, certain judicial responsibilities, and general religious functions. It granted the jurist a representative role in selected domains of social and legal life, without elevating him to the status of an absolute political sovereign over the state and the public sphere. Accordingly, al-Karaki should not be viewed as the originator of absolute guardianship, but rather as one of the key figures who expanded the functional authority of the jurist and connected it, at an early stage, to the institutional framework of Safavid legitimacy.

This excursus is necessary because it reveals that modern Iran did not begin its engagement with the question of the jurist’s authority from a blank slate in the twentieth century. Long before al-Afghani, Shariati, or Khomeini, there already existed a substantial Safavid intellectual archive grappling with a central question: what is the position of the jurist vis-à-vis the state during the Occultation? What are the limits of his representative authority? And which public functions may legitimately fall within his jurisdiction?

At the same time, the distance between al-Karaki and Ruhollah Khomeini should not be reduced under the notion of mere continuity. There is compelling evidence that Khomeini was the figure who transformed wilāyah from a limited juristic function into a comprehensive theory of political sovereignty, ultimately articulating the doctrine of “absolute guardianship” (al-wilāyah al-muṭlaqa). In this formulation, it extends beyond the domains of the judiciary, personal status law, and public religious practices to become the very foundation of the state-structuring it, governing it, and conferring upon it its highest source of legitimacy.

Thus, the trajectory from al-Karaki to Khomeini should not be understood as a simple linear progression, but rather as a long transition from a jurisprudence of limited deputation to a jurisprudence of full political sovereignty.

From this excursus-and in a manner analogous to what literary analysis sometimes terms “authorial time”-one may conclude, succinctly, that the Iran which produced al-Afghani and Shariati was operating upon a much older substratum of debate concerning the authority of the jurist, the limits of representation, and the relationship between sect and state.

This, in turn, clarifies why reform in Iran did not crystallize into a “Muhammad Abduh–style school” in the Egyptian sense. The Iranian intellectual field was more heavily structured by sectarian traditions, more deeply entangled with the legacy of the state, and more firmly rooted in a Safavid–Imami historical experience in which any attempt at religious reform inevitably intersects with questions of authority, Occultation, and marja‘iyya. Consequently, the consolidation of reform into a stable pedagogical or juridical school was delayed; yet when it re-emerged in the twentieth century, it did so with greater intensity-closer to revolution than to gradual, bureaucratic reform.

With Ali Shariati, this trajectory reaches a decisive turning point. He was neither a direct disciple of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani nor a literal extension of Muhammad Abduh. Yet, at a deeper level, he inherited that original inquietude and the aspiration to revive religion-rearticulating them, however, in a language specific to twentieth-century Iran: the language of society, justice, alienation, identity, colonialism, martyrdom, and Karbala.

Shariati: From Reforming Religion to Mobilizing Shi‘ism

Shariati was, indeed, among the most prominent intellectuals who contributed to the ideological groundwork of the Iranian Revolution through his re-reading of Islamic history and the sociology of religion. He cannot be reduced to a cultural critic; rather, he functioned as he constituted a pivotal mobilizational node in the formation of modern Iran’s revolutionary ethos.

The significance of Shariati, however, does not lie solely in his advocacy of revolution, but in his redefinition of Shi‘ism itself. Prior to Shariati, Shi‘ism-within its prevalent social expressions-could be read as a memory of suffering, a system of sectarian loyalty, a framework of juridical emulation, or a set of ritual and commemorative practices. With him, it became-or was intended to become-an ideology of protest: a “red Shi‘ism” set against what he characterized as a passive “black Shi‘ism”; an active, engaged Shi‘ism confronting one defined by habit and repetition; a Shi‘ism that sought to recover the historical and revolutionary meaning of Karbala, rather than merely reproducing it through ritual and mourning.

Herein lies his distinctiveness within this entire trajectory. He did not confine himself to reforming religious thought, as Abduh had done; rather, he recharged the sect itself with social, historical, and revolutionary energy, transforming Shi‘ism into a framework for interpreting-and changing-the world, rather than merely a vessel for eschatological salvation or identity preservation.

This explains the depth of Shariati’s influence on Iranian youth. He offered them a form of religion capable of engaging modern questions: colonialism, alienation, justice, class, commitment, and identity. He was not a product of the traditional seminary establishment; instead, he was, to a considerable extent, a rebellious intellectual who translated the vocabulary of modernity into the language of Shi‘ism-and, conversely, translated Karbala, martyrdom, and the Imamate into the lexicon of liberation and renaissance.

For this reason, his influence did not remain confined to clerical circles or seminaries. It extended into universities, urban spaces, and the emerging middle classes. In effect, he succeeded-at least in part-in drawing Shi‘ism out of certain forms of conservative stagnation, without severing its connection to its symbolic roots. This delicate balance is rarely achieved except by thinkers who possess both a historical sensibility and a mobilizational instinct.

From a deeper analytical perspective, one may argue that Shariati shifted the Iranian question from reforming religion to reforming history through religion. This constitutes a major qualitative transformation. Al-Afghani had asked: how can Muslims be awakened to resist despotism and colonial domination? Abduh had asked: how can the understanding of religion be reconstructed to render it more rational and responsive to modernity? Shariati, by contrast, asked: how can religion itself become a force of revolutionary mobilization? How can Shi‘ism be reoriented toward action rather than passivity? And how can the sect be reinterpreted as a philosophy of resistance rather than merely a structure of tradition?

It is precisely at this juncture that Shariati emerges as the effective bridge between Islamic reform in its broader sense and the Iranian Revolution as a political, social, and cultural rupture.

Did Iranian Reform Culminate in Revolution, or Was It Absorbed by the State?

The Khomeinist moment then emerged, transferring elements of this legacy from the sphere of intellectual debate into that of sovereign legitimacy. With Ruhollah Khomeini, wilāyat al-faqīh in its modern formulation was transformed from a limited juristic function into a comprehensive theory of governance-one directly tied to the state, authority, and the public sphere. Accordingly, the central question that this trajectory leaves behind is not merely how Iran reformed its religious thought, but rather: how did reform itself become a pathway to revolution, and how did revolution, in turn, become a state?

This is the core tension that renders this history more than an archive of ideas; it becomes a history of an ongoing struggle between religion as a promise of liberation and justice, and religion as an apparatus of rule. If one were to distill this entire trajectory into a final formulation, it would be this: Iran, from Jamal al-Din al-Afghani to Ali Shariati, was not merely rethinking religion, but rethinking who holds the authority to represent history in its name. When this question reached its apex, it ceased to be merely a question of reform; it became a question of the state-a question of revolution that remains open to this day.