THE NAJAF HAWZA AND POST-SISTANI SCENARIOS 13 CHAPTER 1: THE NAJAF HAWZA AND POST-SISTANI SCENARIOS Ali Almadan INTRODUCTION In Arabic, the word hawza means“domain,” and it is applied what is encompassed within a particular space. It was first used in a geopolitical context in connection to the ancient Islamic world. The“hawza of Islam” was spoken of, meant to denote the areas inhabited by a Muslim majority and constituting the reach of Muslims’ world, security, and creed. The use of the term then became more abstract, with mention of the“hawza of religion,” i.e., its focus, seat, and home. In contemporary Arabic usage, the word hawza is confined almost exclusively to Shi‘ite religious circles, where it refers to the religious institutes that teach Islamic legal sciences and graduate clerics based on Twelver Shi‘ism. It is not precisely clear when this term was chosen, but we are certain that it was used in the 19th century AD to describe the religious cities where Islamic legal sciences are taught in Iraq(Najaf, Karbala, and Kadhimiya). These cities were considered “the hawza of the religion and sect,” i.e. Shi‘ism, signifying that they were purely Shi‘ite cities with major influence on Shi‘ites in the other cities of the world. In the same period, the word was also used to refer to the lessons led by each teacher, and the place where he delivered those lessons. This would be phrased as“the hawza of so-and-so’s lessons” or“so-and-so’s hawza,” i.e., his own academic colloquium. At the end of the 19th century AD, the word ceased to be applied to the place where teaching happened to the sciences taught in that place: the“scientific hawza.” The new term began to be applied to all colloquia and institutes teaching Shari‘a sciences as a whole, and that is how it is used to this day. Religious or scholarly hawzas are institutions or schools that present the Twelver Shi‘ite form of Islam and graduate religious scholars in Islamic