Jurist’s Governance According to Mirza Qomi’s View (A New Look at Irshad-Nama)

Is it possible to prove the jurist’s government from Mirza Qomi’s viewpoint? In the present article, we pose this main question and study Mirza Qomi’s letter to the Qajar king, Aqa Muhammad Khan, entitled “Irshad-Nama” to obtain an initiative division of government, a division which is the complement to Mirza’s simple division of government. It divides government into two types: istehqaqi (for those who deserve receiving the sovereignty of the society, such as the government of the prophets and Ahl al-Bayt), and imtehani (for those to whom God has granted the sovereignty of the society to test and try them gradually, such as Pharaoh and Namrud). This initiative division leads the researcher to two important points in Mirza’s political thought: first, possibility of establishing the jurist’s government as one of the forms of the istehqaqi type in Mirza’s view; second, proving the legitimacy of a king’s monarchy which would be, in one case, a government attached to the istehqaqi and legitimate government.