The Nationalization of Religious Morality and the Organizational Expansion of the Ulama, 1921–1963

Abstract

Iran after the end of World War I gradually became the center of the Shi’i religious teaching and scholarship. From 1920 to 1922, a revolution challenged the British occupation of Iraq but was defeated. Eighty-three high-ranking ulama of Iranian descent were forced from Iraq into exile in Iran. Their arrival, as well as the return from self-exile in 1918 of Sayyed Hassan Modarres, the most prominent politically inclined mojtahed of the time, further connected the destiny of the ulama to the evolving political power in Iran. For the first time since the disintegration of the Safavid Empire in 1722, when Isfahan lost its religious centrality in the Shi’i world, Iran housed religious teaching centers at Qom and its seminaries gradually superseded in scholarship and influence the teaching centers operating in the Atabat in Iraq.¹