Yusuf al-Bahrani

Who was Yusuf al-Bahrani?

Yusuf ibn Ahmed al-Bahrani was a Bahraini theologian and a key figure in the intellectual development of Twelver Shia Islam.

Al-Bahrani grew up in Safavid-ruled Bahrain, at a time of intellectual ferment between Akhbari and Usuli Shi'ah Islam. His family were Usuli clerics who also worked as pearl merchants. The 1717 Omani invasion of Bahrain forced him and his family to flee, first to Qatif, then to Mecca and then Shiraz, before he eventually settled in Karbala. In Karbala he became the prestigious dean of the Shi'i scholarship and as such presided over the religious establishment.

Al-Bahrani adopted the Akbhari school, rejecting his early usuli schooling in Bahrain. Al-Bahrani’s thought evolved from a strict Akhbarism to a position that adopted some Usuli elements; he became his generation's chief proponent of the neo-Akhbari creed. Nevertheless, he rejected Usuli principles of legal reasoning, the syllogistic logic Usulis allowed in interpreting the law, and the legitimacy of holy war during the Occultation of the Imam. Historian Juan Cole summarises al-Bahrani's thought as:

It has been proposed by that al-Bahrani may have found the state-centric Usulism less appealing given the political turmoil he had experienced throughout his life: first as a refugee from his homeland and then again when the Safavids were deposed by Afghan invaders.