A Critique of the Perspective of Nineteenth Century Orientalists on the Social Function of the Clerics in the Period of Qajar

The westerners’ approach to the study of the various aspects of the intellectual, social, cultural and political life of other countries in the nineteenth century is referred to as "the orientalist tradition”. Orientalists who include different groups such as political deputies, travellers and researchers have studied and described the different sections of eastern societies from their own perspective. The Iranian Shiite clerics are among the social stratum which the nineteenth century orientalists have studied. The inconsistency between the thoughts of each of these two groups, i.e. the clerics who seek to preserve the tradition of the Iranian society and orientalists who espouse modernity and propagate it, has led to a confrontation between the two. The research results show that orientalists regard clerics as their ideological rivals and enemies and as an impenetrable barrier to modernity. Holding a generalized and historic view within the framework of orientalist theory, they try to convey a false impression about the attributes and functions of this group. However, one should not ignore the results of the studies of this group to gain a relative knowledge of the clerics’ position, role, weaknesses, and their relations with the public in the Qajari era. The present research seeks to present the image that orientalists have of the clerics. A "descriptive- analytical" method is used in this study and a “library-based" method is used for collecting the data.