Shaykh Ahmad

Shaykh Ahmad ibn Zayn al-Dín ibn Ibráhím al-Ahsá'í (Arabic: شيخ أحمد بن زين الدين بن إبراهيم الأحسائي‎‎) (1753–1826) was the founder of a 19th-century Shi`i school in the Persian and Ottoman empires, whose followers are known as Shaykhís.

He was a native of the Al-Ahsa region (Eastern Arabian Peninsula), educated in Bahrain and the theological centers of Najaf and Karbala in Iraq. Spending the last twenty years of his life in Iran, he received the protection and patronage of princes of the Qajar dynasty.

Little is documented about the early life of Shaykh Ahmad, except that he was born in Ahsa, in the northeast of the Arabian peninsula, to a Shi'i family of Sunni origin in either the year 1166 A.H. (1753 C.E.), or 1157 A.H. (1744 C.E.). Nabíl-i-A`zam, a Baha'i historian, documents his spiritual awakening in his book The Dawn-Breakers as follows:

While it is unclear how much of Nabil's interpretation is consistent with Shaykh Ahmad's true feelings, the underlying motivations for reform, and ultimately for messianic expectation, become somewhat clearer.

Shaykh Ahmad, at about age forty (1784 or 1794 - circa), began to study in earnest in the Shi'i centres of religious scholarship such as Karbala and Najaf. He attained sufficient recognition in such circles to be declared a mujtahid, an interpreter of Islamic Law. He contended with Sufi and Neo-Platonist scholars, and attained a positive reputation among their detractors. Most interestingly, he declared that all knowledge and sciences were contained (in essential form) within the Qur'an, and that to excel in the sciences, all knowledge must be gleaned from the Qur'an. To this end he developed systems of interpretation of the Qur'an and sought to inform himself of all the sciences current in the Muslim world.

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