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Ayatollah (, ; ; ) is a title for high-ranking Twelver Shia clergy. It came into widespread usage in the 20th century.
Originally used as a title bestowed by popular/clerical acclaim for a small number of the most distinguished marja' at-taqlid mujtahid, it suffered from "inflation" following the 1979 Iranian Revolution when it came to be used for "any established mujtahid".Momen, An Introduction to Shi'i Islam, 1985, p.205-6 By 2015 it was further expanded to include any student who had passed their Mujtahid final exam, leading to "thousands" of Ayatollahs.
The title is not used by the Sunni Islam community of Iran.
In the Western world – especially after the Iranian Revolution – it was associated with Ruhollah Khomeini, who was so well known as to often be referred to as "The Ayatollah".
Variants used are (), (, dual form) or (, Plural) and ().
Roy Mottahedeh describes how the title of ayatollah was determined in the mid to late 20th century.
According to Michael M. J. Fischer, the Iranian Revolution led to "rapid inflation of religious titles", so that almost every senior cleric began to be called an Ayatollah. raising the number of individuals who call themselves an Ayatollah dramatically.
An unwritten rule of addressing for Shia clerics has been developed after the 1980s as a result of Iranian Revolution, despite the fact no official institutional way of conferring titles is available. At first the title that had been reserved for a Marja', was gradually applied to an established Mujtahid. With the post-revolutionary bureaucratization of Hawza under the Islamic Republic, four levels of studies were introduced and those clerics who end the fourth level, also known as Dars-e-Kharej () and pass the final exam, were called Ayatollahs. Moojan Momen wrote in 2015 that every cleric who finished his training calls himself an Ayatollah and this trend has led to emergence of "thousands of Ayatollahs".
This inflation led to invention of a new title, Ayatollah al-Uzma (). Originally, about half a dozen people were addressed as al-Uzma, but as of 2015, the number of people who claimed that title was reportedly over 50.
Ali Khamenei—who was addressed with mid-level title of Hujjat al-Islam when he was in office as President of Iran—was bestowed the title Ayatollah immediately after he was elected Supreme Leader of Iran in 1989, without meeting regular unwritten criteria (such as authoring a Risalah). Since the 2010s, sources under government control tend to give him more distinguished titles like Grand Ayatollah and Imam.
Certain clerics, such as Mohammad Kazem Shariatmadari and Hussein-Ali Montazeri, who had fallen out of favor with the rulers were downgraded by not being addressed as an Ayatollah.
Hamid Algar maintains that this title entered general usage possibly because it was an "indirect result of the reform and strengthening of the religious institution in Qom". Abdul-Karim Haeri Yazdi (1859–1937) who founded Qom Seminary, may be the first to bear the title according to Algar.
While the title Ayatollah was sporadically used during the 1930s, it became widespread in the 1940s.
| Usually a Marja' and issues fatwa | ||||||||||||||
| Can be a lesser Mujtahid | Can be a greater Mujtahid | Usually a greater Mujtahid | ||||||||||||
| Allowed to receive charity | ||||||||||||||
| Allowed to wear clerical clothing | ||||||||||||||
| Talabah () | Seghatoleslam () | Hujjat al-Islam () | Hujjat al-Islam () | Ayatollah () | Ayatollah al-Uzma () | |||||||||
| Sources: | ||||||||||||||
However, the term is generally used to describe any kind of fundamentalism, not just Islamism. For example, in the choice of title for the 1987 English translation of Raphael Mergui and Philippe Simonnot's book Israel's Ayatollahs: Meir Kahane and the Far Right in Israel, or in the United States, where former jurist and lawyer Roy Moore has been called the "Ayatollah of Alabama" by his critics due to espousing Christian nationalism, opposition to secularism, and far-right politics.
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