Author
Abstract
During the Safavid rule, due to the close relationship between the government and the structure of religious institution, the economic life of many religious leaders was based on the bureaucratic salaries and aids granted by the government. However, after the fall of Safavids and transfer of the Shia scientific and juridico-religious centres (i.e. seminaries) from Iran to the holy cities of Iraq, a major economic development occurred to the financial sources of the Shia clergy. The deprivation of ulam? (religious leaders) and mujtahids (jurisprudents) from the government’s financial support put them in a situation that they were compelled to rebuild their social and economic structures on new foundations by revising those structures. In this situation, the relationship between ulam? and bazaar (the market) allowed them utilizing a new financial source. Despite an old relationship existing between bazaar and the Shia clergy, it seems that a new notion of the unity between bazaar and the clergy living in the holy cities of Iraq had been formed since the second half of the 19th century.
This paper intends to study the nature and quality of mutual relationship of the Iranian and Iraqi bazaars with the clergy living in the holy cities of Iraq, as well as the effect of the two countries’ political structures on the intensity of this relationship.
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