Truth and Wisdom: Shaykh Ahmad al-Ahsā'ī's Influence on the Bahā'ī Approach to the Understanding and Practice of Religious Ordinances

Many religious movements have at one time or another had to acknowledge the effect of historical developments and social changes on the applicability of their sacred laws. This has been especially true for Shi’a Islam, whose history was, for long, one of disappointment and defeat. Throughout the centuries, Shi’a jurists gradually developed a rather distinct set of conceptual tools, and a unique religious structure, to deal with these changes. The implication of these developments for one’s understanding of the nature and meaning of religious truth, though, remained largely uninvestigated by these jurists.

In the early part of the 19th century, Shaykh Ahmad al-Ahsa’i (1753–1826) and Siyyid Kazim al-Rashti (1793–1843) embarked on an enterprise to revise popular Shi’a understanding of religious truth. Together, they tried to show that religious truth was neither static nor could it be reduced to the outward meanings of Qur’anic verses and Islamic traditions. Instead, they portrayed truth as that which would have to unfold through an unceasing dialectic between the worlds of creation and revealed text (naql), and within the enlightened hearts of illumined souls who have rid themselves of preconceptions and become imbued with spiritual virtues. Shaykh Ahmad and Siyyid Kazim referred to their proposed method of encounter with and search for religious truth as dalil-i-hikmat (lit. the proof of wisdom).

This paper attempts to portray ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s interpretive style as proof of wisdom par excellence. It begins with a study of the term ‘hikmat’, as commonly used in the Baha’i writings and parlance, to refer to the effect of situational factors on the shaping and application of Baha’i laws and teachings. It proceeds to show how this particular usage is linked to, and informed by, the Shaykhi approach to truth, and to demonstrate how this approach is endorsed in the writings of ‘Abdu’l-Baha and finds expression in his encounter with questions regarding the applicability of Baha’i laws. The paper aims to suggest that the Baha’i community’s collective decision-making needs to become better informed by ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s hermeneutical approach to the understanding of the teachings of the Baha’i Faith.