The Requirements of Henry Corbin's Insight concerning Wilāya for the Methodology of the Historical Study of Islam (the Examination of the Two Approaches of Sacred History and the Historicity of the Understanding of the Religion)

Henry Corbin is an Orientalist who is particularly concerned with Shiite thoughts, interpreting the doctrine of wilāya by drawing on a meta-historical approach or sacred history. Relying on the doctrines of prophethood and imamate, he takes wilāya to be the interior of Shiism. On the contrary, the rival theory—that of “historicity”—appeals to social facts of the Arab community at the time of the revelation of the Qur’an, and takes wilāya to be a social phenomenon of the period, without having a particular status. In this paper, we seek to show that the historicity approach faces the problem of incompatibility with religious doctrines and ignorance of the philosophical foundations of theology. Thus, we believe that Corbin’s meta-historical approach is more cogent, and his interpretation of wilāya is more rational.