The role of historicism and promiseism in the mystical thoughts of Sheikh Ahmad Ahsaei and the emergence of the Sheikhiyah Sect

Subject Areas : Islamic Mysticism

Reza Yousefvand ¹ ( استادیار گروه تاریخ، دانشگاه پیام نور تهران، ایران. [e-mail] )

Received: 2023-12-22 Accepted : 2023-12-22 Published : 2023-12-22

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Abstract :

It is necessary to examine the school of Sheikhiya because this sect has played a significant role in the emergence of new religious deviations and social changes in the contemporary period. The special beliefs of Sheikh Ahmed Ahsai and after him Seyyed Kazem Rashti made the school of Shaykhia rise from the heart of Shiism and present a different face compared to its original origin, which is pure Shiism. In the division of the causes and factors based on which the promise and belief in the coming of the end-time savior causes the emergence of religious sects, two categories of factors can be mentioned: First, the category that is individual and related to specific individual claims; Like the Qadianiyya sect, the second category is social factors and refers to the social conditions of the creation of sects; Like the uprising of the Sudanese Mahdi. This group of factors, i.e. social conditions such as: poverty, oppression and corruption, and injustice, played a special role in the emergence of the Sheikhiya sect. The main question of this research is, what was the relationship between the emergence of the Sheikhiya sect and its underlying factors? The hypothesis under discussion is that there is a relationship between the requirements of the time and social conditions and the creation of the Sheikhiya sect. This article explains the hypothesis with a descriptive and analytical method.