A Sociological Analysis of the Transformation of Sheikhi's School into the Sheikhi's Cult

Shaikhi's school emerged in the early years of the Qajar era and is based on two columns of news and Gnosticism. This school was initially introduced by Sheikh Ahmad Ehsaee, as an esoteric and gnostic perception of the official Shi'a religion, along with other jurisprudential, verbal, mystical and philosophical schools of Shi'ism. By the passage of time, this school transformed into a cult becase of Ehsaee's way of expressing his idea. However, it is said that this transformation was based on his interpretationof Shi'a text. In this article, we attempted to study this transformation from the social structuration form point of view. The main research question is, " What social mechanism made Sheikh's ideas and behaviors ?" In other words, how the relationship between an idea ad action can help a socio-religious organization form. The findings showed that Sheikh's followers use three major mechanisms in forming their thoughts: defamiliarization, recombination of old ideas, and differentiation regarding the charismatic and individualistic leadership.