Semantic Characteristics of Universal Guardianship in Contemporary Shiite Thoughts

In spite of some of the Shiite concepts and teachings embodied in universal guardianship such as supernatural wonders, miracles, the science of the unseen and other specific aspects of the imams in the existence, it is an emergent terminology in the discipline of history and Shiite theology. Therefore, in order to find the position of this doctrine in Shi'a theological thought, it is necessary to study the history and evolution of universal guardianship thought. Since the first step in the study of the history of thought is the definition of the subject of study, a comprehensive definition is also required in order to study the history of thought of universal guardianship. In this article, we try to examine the term universal guardianship "al-Wilayah al-Takwiniyya" in contemporary Shiite literature from its earliest uses in the thirteenth century and then trace it until it got coined into a terminology in the minds of the contemporary Shia scholars and, reach a comprehensive understanding of this term and finally, because of the diverse and varied approaches to this idea, draw on the development of universal guardianship in the form of several semantic characteristics.