The marja's or grand ayatollahs are the scholars who sit at the pinnacle of the Shi'a religious hierarchy. Normally learned and reclusive men, they nonetheless wield enormous authority through their religious prestige and the funds generated by religious taxes. From their modest homes in the Shi'ite shrines cities of Iraq and Iran, their influence reaches across the Shi'a world carried by networks of sons, sons-in-law, students, and local clerics. This book reveals the process by which a handful of religious scholars become recognized as grand ayatollahs, the way their influence is exercised,...