The Akhbari scholar Muhammad Amin al-Asterabadi criticised this approach, arguing that since the alleged general principles were arrived at by way of generalisation from the existing practical rules, the whole process was circular.
With the defeat of the Safavid state following the Afghan invasion in 1722 and the rise of a new generation of Bahraini Akhbari clerics, state-centric Usulism lost its self-confidence.
Behbahani is blamed, in particular by Akhbaris, for having used physical force to enforce his authority and for having laid the intellectual foundations of Iranian Shi'a theocracy.
The principles of probability were further analysed by Shaykh Murtada al-Ansari in the mid-nineteenth century, and the Usuli school remains the dominant force in Shi'ite Islam.
According to scholar Moojan Momen, Behbahani played a very important role in Shii Islam by bringing in "the threat of takfir" — i.e. declaring the opponent an apostate, apostasy being a capital crime — into the central field of theology and jurisprudence where previously only ikhtilaf (agreement to hold differing opinions) had existed.