Background
Al-Bahrani grew up in Safavid-ruled Bahrain, at a time of intellectual ferment between Akhbari and Usuli Shi'ah Islam.
Al-Bahrani grew up in Safavid-ruled Bahrain, at a time of intellectual ferment between Akhbari and Usuli Shi'ah Islam.
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. 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.
In Karbala, al-Bahrani and his followers continued the intellectual debate with Usulism that has spurred Bahrain's intellectual vitality. Behbahani gradually became more confident, and with a growing number of students as well as wealth from relatives in Iran and India, he began to challenge al-Bahrani, eventually succeeding him as the dominant intellectual in Karbala when al-Bahrani died in 1772.
