A Study of the Currents of the People of Narrations from the Beginning of Asha irah to their Sovereignty

The intellectual current called the ‘people of narrations’ has been one of the most significant intellectual currents in the first centuries and were one of the serious rivals of imamis. This paper investigates the different periods of the People of Narration from their formation to their flourishment and then to their relative annihilation in the era of Al-e Booyeh which was simultaneous with the theological school of Imamis in Baghdad, and it also investigates their historical developments with methods of investigating the history of thoughts. While pointing to their most important beliefs and the influential leaders of each period, the paper concludes that the main current of the People of Narration, in addition to the obedience of the narrations and staying content with apparent meanings and strict opposition to kalam and interpretation (ta’vil), maintained that they have avoided the dilemma of ‘assimilation’, ‘incarnation’, and ‘determinism’ by taking the quality to be unknown and taking the questions about it to be heretical. In spite of this fact, there were two other intellectual attitudes along with the main current of the People of Narration: the attitude of radical apparentists who did not avoid charges of incarnation, assimilation and determinism and were metaphorically knwon as ‘redundants’ (Hashviah); and the attitude of those people of narration who had tendencies towards interpretivism and kalam; both these currents were rejected by the main current of the People of Narration.