al-Baḥrānī, Yūsuf b. Aḥmad - Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
[Article]
Newman, Andrew J.
Leiden
Brill
(799 words)
Yūsuf b. Aḥmad al-Baḥrānī (1107-86/1695-6-1772) was a key figure in the early twelfth/eighteenth-century Twelver Shīʿī debates between Akhbārīs and Uṣūlīs on the nature of jurisprudence. The former challenged the utilisation by Uṣūlīs of rationalist argumentation and the exercise of individual legal interpetation (ijtihād) in jurisprudence. Al-Baḥrānī ("one from al-Baḥrayn") was born in the village of Māḥūz, on present-day Bahrain Island. His family fled to Qaṭīf, on the mainland (in present-day Saudi Arabia), following an attack on the island by