gious leadership in relation to the state has allowed the lay Shiite believers to look upon their politically and financially independent ayatollahs as a focus of emulation in all areas of their religious, social, and political life. The civil structure of the Shiite community is, in theory, divided into those who lead, the scholars (mujtahid), and those who are led, the lay believers (muqallid).7 This process through which the ac‌knowledgment of a Shiite scholar as a marja al-taqlid ("a supreme legal authority accepted as a living referent for society") takes place is known as taqlid (a declara‌tion of a lay believer to emulate a living jurists rulings [fatwa] in all fields of ap‌ plied law). The requirement of taqlid, as formulated by al-Khui, meant that all the lay believers who were obviously devoid of religious-legal knowledge must follow the rulings of amujtahid, without which the acts performed as part of ones religious observances could be rendered invalid.8
This requirement to refer to the marja al-taqlid, as al-Khui formulated it, had a
practical and pragmatic dimension. The Shiite religious leadership-in view of the last Shiite Imams invisible existence-was conceived in terms of a collective re‌ sponsibility that could be shared by several well-qualified mujtahids. The leadership was understood as a kind of general deputyship on behalf of the hidden Imam, with‌ out any specific designation of a leading "specialist" in matters of religion. This lack of specificity with respect to who leads the community was detrimental to the communitys sense of religious autonomy and unity, especially when the Shiite dynasties that ruled Iran from the sixteenth century came to power. The Shiite rulers manipulated religious leadership through patronization for their political ends. More‌ over, in a political move, these rulers followed the Sunni state policy of reducing the once independent Shiite religious leadership to an officially appointed administra‌ tive position. However, not all mujtahids succumbed to such statecraft. One way to preserve the leaderships independence was to keep the community autonomously loyal to the religious leaders by engaging in a fresh interpretation of the legal doc‌ trines that required the believers to specify their religious leader in order to render their religious acts valid.
In the nineteenth century, reforms were introduced in the procedures for deter‌ mining and centralizing the scholar most qualified to exercise juridical authority under the most qualified jurist, in the absence of the last Imam. If the religious leadership and the community were to steer clear of the menace of the Shiite rulers, some legal mechanism that would require the generality of the Shiite to declare their allegiance to the mujtahid was necessary. Hence the requirement to emulate a leadingmujtahid, through an explicit declaration of taqlid, was formally made part of the believers religious obligation. Without such a declaration, as al-Khui s previously cited opin‌ion reveals, their religious acts were invalid. This process of taqlid allowed a spe‌cific Shiite mujtahid to emerge as the supreme religious leader solely through the acknowledgment of the community, without the Shiite rulers interference.
In modern Shiism, such a strict understanding of the necessity of taqlid undoubt‌edly entails the growing influence of the marja, who also receives voluntary reli‌gious taxes levied on the believers through the contacts maintained between the marja and his lay followers. The marja , in large measure, is responsible for providing cohesion in maintaining the spiritual-moral identity and the related social-political identity of the Shiite community. He manages the communitys religious affairs by