ayatollah (Arabic: sign of God)
Ayatollah is a title bestowed on the most highly
esteemed religious scholars in tWelve-imam shi-
ism since the 19th century. It is held by experts
of Islamic law, especially members of the UsUli
school based in iran and iraq. Religious educa-
tion in the Shii madrasa system and expertise in
the practice of legal reasoning (ijtihad) are mini-
mum qualifications for becoming an ayatollah,
but there are no other formal requirements. The
madrasas of Qum (Iran), Mashhad (Iran), and
Najaf (Iraq) are where ayatollahs have received
their training and where many of them have
taught. Ayatollahs gain their status by popular
acclamation, which is demonstrated by their abil-
ity to collect religious taxes. They claim that they
are representatives of the Hidden imam, and the
highest ranking among them are called “sources
of emulation,” meaning that other Shia should fol-
low their rulings. These supreme leaders can also
be called a “grand ayatollahs.” Ayatollahs have
become especially powerful since the iranian
revolUtion oF 1978–79.
See also aUthority; khomeini, rUhollah; muj-
tahid; Ulama.
Further reading: Moojan Momen, An Introduction to
Shii Islam (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press,
1985); Michael M. J. Fischer, Iran, from Religious Dis-
pute to Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 1980).
Ayodhya
A Hindu pilgrimage center in Uttar Pradesh, north
india on the river Sarayu, Ayodhya is now most
famous as the home of a site contested by Hindus
and Muslims as the birthplace of the Hindu god
Rama or the location of an early 16th-century
mosqUe known as the Babri Masjid. Modern day
Ayodhya is closely linked with the mythical city
of the epic Ramayana, the capital of the god-king
Rama, an incarnation of Vishnu from an earlier
epoch of Hindu history. Historical and archaeo-
logical evidence indicates that the two cities are
not the same, but a vast number of the more than
800 million Hindus in India do not make this
distinction. It is clear that Ayodhya has been an
important pilgrimage city for centuries, noted in
particular as a base for several orders of Hindu
ascetic sadhus (holy men) and for its exception-
ally powerful Hanuman temple. The popularity of
Ayodhya as a pilgrimage destination grew under
Mughal patronage in the 16th and 17th centuries,
and until the 19th century the religious conflict
in the town was limited to struggles between rival
orders of Hindus. The Babri Masjid was inau-
gurated in 1528 under the sponsorship of Mir
Baqi, a general in the service of the first Mughal
emperor, Babur (r. 1526–30). In 1859, the British
government erected a fence following several inci-
dents, and it was determined that Hindus would
no longer be allowed to freely enter the mosque
as had been the custom. Then in 1949, idols of
Rama appeared in the mosque, and it was claimed
that a security guard had had a vision of Rama
himself. From that time until 1992, the shrine was
closed for all worship except for an annual Hindu
ceremony to maintain the idols that had been
installed. Dereliction in the courts and on the part
of the government allowed the situation to fester
until in the 1980s the issue was raised by several
Hindu nationalist organizations, in particular the
World Hindu Council (VHP) and the political
party Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). On December
6, 1992, this movement was successful in draw-
ing an enormous crowd of activists who destroyed
the mosque, triggering Hindu-Muslim riots across
India in which more than 3,000 were killed. After
1992, there was little change in the situation as the
courts failed to rule decisively, and the BJP, which
came to power in 1998, allowed the instigators of
the violence to take up cabinet-level positions in
the government. The question of the temple has
continued to be a triggering issue for Hindu-Mus-
lim violence, most recently setting off a series of
riots in the western state of Gujarat in spring 2002
resulting in more than 2,000 deaths and more thanK (^78) ayatollah