In recent years Denis Hermann has greatly improved our understanding of the social and intellectual history of Shaykhism, an important if today marginalized school of speculative theology within Twelver Shii Islam that originated with Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī (d. 1826). The author's latest publication approaches Shaykhī thought from yet another angle. This slim volume of only fifty pages examines a work on independent legal reasoning (ijtihād) and emulation (taqlīd) by the Shaykhī master and head of the school's Kerman branch Abū al-Qāsim Khān (d. 1969). Hermann regards this treatise, originally published in 1943, as “one of the most important intellectual refutations of Usulism written in the post-Safavid era” (p. 49). Adopting a comprehensible style for a wide, non-specialist audience, Abū al-Qāsim Khān proposes a return to a supposed original meaning of ijtihād which he conceptualizes as an “effort” to understand the teachings of the Shii Imāms, something of which both scholars and laymen are capable. The Shaykhī master contrasts this proper definition of ijtihād with its dominant interpretation in modern Shii Islam which has led to religion being monopolized by a clergy “that is for the most part more interested in increasing its own authority and power over the masses” (p. 9). Hermann devotes the greatest part of his book to Abū al-Qāsim's analysis of the crisis of ijtihād but also provides useful background information on the biography of this relatively unknown religious scholar and the origin and thought of the Shaykhī school more broadly. Particularly crucial to understanding Abū al-Qāsim's arguments is Hermann's discussion of a hidden spiritual hierarchy during the time of the Twelfth Imām's Occultation, which is a hallmark theme of Shaykhism. The ʿulamāʾ associated with the Shaykhī school act as the manifest, visible result of this hierarchy. Their task is to initiate ordinary believers into its deeper secrets and to convey reliable, certain religious knowledge (yaqīn). Since the religious scholars are themselves not in immediate, comprehensive communication with the Hidden Imām, however, they regard venturing into politics or calling for jihād, etc., as impermissible during the Occultation (pp. 44–5). Abū al-Qāsim charges the Uṣūlī scholars, who have taken over the concepts of ijtihād and taqlīd from the Sunnis, with relying merely on conjecture (ẓann) in their legal rulings while endowing their personal opinions with absolute and divine force. Consequently, ordinary Shiis are no longer able to distinguish between which commandments come from God and what constitutes mere fallible human reasoning. This situation, according to Abū al-Qāsim, leads to nothing less than the destruction of the sharīʿa.

Denis Hermann's study of this Shaykhī work is a highly accessible and important contribution to a body of literature that has so far mostly taken interest in the school's theology without focusing on law per se. Yet, given the limited scope of Hermann's essay, it strikes the reader as a rather preliminary case study of the subject at hand. To Hermann's credit, he is himself keenly aware of these constraints and repeatedly points out the need to bring Ijtihād wa taqlīd into conversation with earlier Shaykhī legal writings, especially the oeuvre of Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī himself (pp. 10, 21, 49). Without such a comparative grounding, it proves difficult to make claims about the originality and intellectual calibre of the text. Another issue is that Hermann tells us little about the impact of a work so highly critical of the mainstream Shii clerical hierarchy. He only briefly speculates about its afterlife because “it is not unthinkable that the publication of this book pushed some uṣūlī ulemas into assuming more radical stances” (p. 50). Something which the reader only gradually discovers is that Hermann also intends to compare Shaykhism with the literalist Akhbārī school that enjoyed the pinnacle of its influence among Shiis in the eighteenth century. Observations on similarities and differences in approaches towards ḥadīth, ijtihād, or Shii history can be found in scattered places throughout the book but are not presented in a particularly coherent manner. This structural problem is only resolved on the last pages of Hermann's contribution. He argues there very clearly that the real divergence between Akhbārīs and Shaykhīs lies not so much in their particular analyses of the problems Shii law is plagued with at the hands of Uṣūlī scholars but rather in their suggested solutions: for the Akhbārīs, real authority rests with the specialists of ḥadīth, the muḥaddiths, not with the jurists (fuqahāʾ) or the mujtahids. In Shaykhism, on the other hand, the “true” ʿulamāʾ play a central role: their task is not only to transmit and elucidate the traditions of the Imāms for the members of their community, but also to intermediate between the occult hierarchy of the Hidden Imām and the Shiis (p. 47). These critical points raised are not intended to diminish the pioneering work Denis Hermann has embarked on. His forthcoming monograph on Shaykhism during the Qajar period in particular remains eagerly awaited.