News­pa­per Al-Sharq Al-Awsat reported that Muq­tada Al-Sadr wants to fin­ish his stud­ies and pre­pares to obtain Has­san Nas­ral­lah status.

What this means? What to study to become an influ­en­tial cleric and how?

His­tor­i­cally, the Shiite-clerics had no hier­ar­chi­cal struc­ture and there is no for­mal orga­ni­za­tion or hier­ar­chy among them. In Shi­ite com­mu­nity there are two classes of reli­gious status:

Muqal­lid

Those who had to fol­low the rul­ings of a Muj­tahid, reg­u­lar cit­i­zens and low-rank clerics.

Muj­tahid

Those who could fol­low their own inde­pen­dent judg­ments obtained by reli­gious studies.

Ulama (lit. learned per­sons) — Is a highly ranked Muj­tahid — the reli­gious class can be used of a per­son learned in any branch of knowl­edge but the plural is restricted to the reli­giously learned.

Those aim­ing to become top-ranking Ulama will head for the most impor­tant cen­ters of reli­gious learn­ing which are at present, Qum and Najaf, must study three lev­els, and as each level is com­pleted the stu­dent [Talib, plural Tul­lab] goes on to the next level.

1– Muqad­dama (the pre­lim­i­nary level)

At this level the empha­sis is on obtain­ing a good grasp of Ara­bic, which is vital to all fur­ther stud­ies. Usu­ally, groups of stu­dents’ will gather around a teacher who will go through the texts with them in lessons last­ing between one-and-a-half to two hours. Teach­ers at this level are usu­ally senior stu­dents or assis­tants of the prin­ci­pal Mujtahids.

Stud­ies

Nahw (Syn­tax)
Sarf (Gram­mat­i­cal Inflec­tions)
Man­tiq (Logic)
Bal­agha (Rhetoric)

2– As-Sutuh (the externals).

At this level the teach­ers are usu­ally muj­tahids who have only recently obtained their author­ity of ijti­had and are seek­ing to build up their reputations.

A num­ber of these will announce lec­tures based on the main texts and the stu­dents are free to choose which lec­tures to attend. Stu­dents can at the same time develop a spe­cial inter­est by attend­ing lec­tures in one of the optional sub­jects but their progress to the next level is depen­dent on their obtain­ing a thor­ough grasp of the main texts in the two prin­ci­pal sub­jects, Fiqh and Usul al-fiqh.

Stud­ies

Usul al-Fiqh (Prin­ci­ples of Jurispru­dence)
Fiqh (Prin­ci­ples of Jurispru­dence)
Optional Sub­jects include: Fal­safa (Phi­los­o­phy), Hikma (Theos­o­phy), Ta’rikh (His­tory) and Akhlaq (Ethics).

3– Dars al-Kharij (or Bahth al-Kharij, grad­u­a­tion classes).

It will usu­ally have taken stu­dents about ten years to reach this stage and thus most will be in their mid-twenties. At this level the teach­ing is done by the prin­ci­pal Muj­tahids themselves.

Each Muj­tahid will announce a time and place for his teach­ing ses­sion and the stu­dents are free to pick and choose whose lec­tures they will attend. The sub­jects are usu­ally Fiqh and Usul al-fiqh.

If a pop­u­lar or very emi­nent Muj­tahid is giv­ing a ses­sion, sev­eral hun­dred stu­dents (and even other Muj­tahids) may be gath­ered around him. Each Mujtahid’s method of teach­ing is of course dif­fer­ent, but in gen­eral there is a ten­dency to a dialec­ti­cal involve­ment of the audience.

Stud­ies

There are no set books at this level; the stu­dent refers to whichever books he needs either in fol­low­ing up lec­tures and debates or in writ­ing his treatise.