Akhbāriyya and Uṣūliyya - Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
[Article]
Gleave, Robert M.
Leiden
Brill
(3,291 words)
Akhbāriyya and Uṣūliyya are two schools of Imāmī (Twelver) Shīʿī thought, sometimes translated as "traditionist" and "rationalist" respectively. The conflict between the two schools was at its most intense between the eleventh/seventeenth century and the early thirteenth/nineteenth century, when Akhbārīs and Uṣūlīs composed virulent polemical tracts against each other. The intellectual ferocity of these debates occasionally led to violence between supporters of the rival schools, as the labels Akhbārī and Uṣūlī became useful tags for other tensions within the Imāmī community. 1. Origins of the intellectual debate Imāmī