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The Shia clergy are the religious leaders of Shia Islam. Shia Islam places great importance on the guidance of clergy, and each branch of Shi'ism maintains its own clerical structure. The most well-known Shia clergy belongs to the largest branch of Shia Islam, Twelver Shi'ism.
As in other branches of Islam, Shia scholars are collectively known as the ulema. Individual clerics are referred to as mullah or ākhūnd, but because those terms have developed "a somewhat pejorative connotation" since at least the 1980s, the term rūḥānī has been "promoted" as an alternative, "especially by the clerical class itself".[1]