Scholarly Circles and the Transmission of Knowledge: Bahāʾ al-Dīn al-ʿĀmilī (d. 1030/1621) and His Mobile Scholarly Circle in Safavid Iran

Abstract

The history of education and transmission of knowledge in Islamicate societies has long recognized the importance of scholarly circles centered around scholars in medieval Muslim societies. As an illustration of the persistence of similar patterns of knowledge transmission in later periods, this paper focuses on the scholarly circle gathered around Bahāʾ al-Dīn Muḥammad al-ʿĀmilī (d. 1030/1621), the prominent Shiite scholar of the Safavid era, exploring the intellectual exchanges and personal interactions between this circle's members through the lens of the manuscripts they copied, read, collated, and studied. Drawing on information gleaned from manuscripts, I argue that Bahāʾ al-Dīn's highly mobile lifestyle, which was an offshoot of his socio-political engagements, rendered the scholarly circle around him into a mobile college, detached from localized madrasas and other educational institutions. This mobile scholarly circle helped propagate Shiite intellectual heritage in places far from the centers.