The Idea of Faqih Guardianship and Constitutional law in Safavid Period

The appearance of Safavid dynasty and its reliance on Islamic law, specially on Shiite political feqh, caused Iranian history of political thought and manner of ruling to take an new form. The founders of the dynasty, seeking for religious legality to rule based on reasonable norms and religious teachings paid attention to Shiite scholars and the scholars also made the most of their opprtunities and in this manner, a new theorization of such a view as guardianship and supervision of Faqih occurred. Some remained works of that period have recorded the situation of public law and constitutional law during 230 years of Safavid period and have formed the source of the paper. When analyzing the documents, the theory of legality and its religious principles and justification of that sovereignty in the form of kingdom and the climate of authoritarianism have been attended to.