The dense narrow lanes of Najaf are clogged with worshipers and about 4,000 seminary students, some studying under brilliant mosaics, others packed into non-descript schools the color of sand.

Najaf is home to the Iraqi Shiite "wise men," who could play a decisive role in determining the way forward after the US-instigated fall of Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated regime.

"This is a bit like the Vatican," explained Sheikh Adnan al-Shehmahni, who came here from Baghdad to move up from a simple "talib," or student, to "mujtahid," one able to interpret the sacred texts.

"This is the institution where one learns and which gives instructions for how people can organize their lives," he said.

On Tuesday, some 20,000 Shiites gathered in the southern city of Nasiriyah just as a US-arranged meeting of Saddam opponents was getting under way.

"Yes to freedom ... Yes to Islam ... No to America, No to Saddam," the crowd chanted.

"We want our voice to be that of the Hawza," read one banner at the demonstration.

In Najaf, Sheikh Shehmahni let off a big grin when he learned about the protest.

"It's the only way for the Iraqi people," he said. "When one follows the path of religion, one follows that of justice."

But he cautioned he was not talking about a Shiite theocracy, "just a government of justice and peace, which would express the ideas of Shiites but also those of Sunnis."

Sheikh Khais al-Khazali came from Baghdad seven years ago to study at the Hawza after finishing courses in geology.

"I wanted to follow the science of the spirit," he said.

Shiites form an estimated 65 percent of Iraq's nearly 25 million people. That makes Iraq the only country with a Shiite majority save for neighboring Iran, which since 1979 has been under clerical rule.

Najaf is of utmost spiritual importance as it is the site of the mausoleum of Ali, the Prophet Mohammad's grandson who is revered by Shiites.

Each of Najaf's 20-some schools is led by a scholar of the top Shiite rank, ayatollah. The devout choose one of the wise men and refer to him on all matters, even personal ones such as marriage.

Some ayatollahs, though, are more important than others.

In Najaf, the name of Ayatollah Ali Sistani seems to be on everyone's lips. "Today, he's surely the most significant, the supreme reference," said French scholar Pierre-Jean Luizard.

Other prominent Shiite guides include Mohammad Said al-Hakim, also based in Najaf, and Lebanon's Mohamad Hussein Fadlallah, considered the spiritual leader of that country's Shiite fundamentalists.

A number of other Iraqi Shiite leaders were either slain or exiled under Saddam's regimes.

Sistani, in his latest fatwa, or edict, ordered calm faced with the chaos in Iraq and forbade looting. It seems to have been widely heeded.

But Sistani, unlike some other ayatollahs, has refused to be directly involved in politics, a possible reason why the demonstrators in Nasiriyah chanted for the Hawza, but not Sistani personally, noted Luizard.

By contrast, nostalgia has grown for Mohammad Sadeq al-Sadr, the cleric assassinated in 1999 under unclear circumstances who was much more politically involved. In Baghdad, the vast disenfranchised Shiite slum known as Saddam City has renamed itself Al-Sadr City.

Najaf's Hawza was founded in the ninth century AD, a century before Al-Azhar University in Cairo which is considered the top authority in Sunni Islam.

"You have to be excellent, to do research and to stretch out your knowledge," said Sheikh Shehmahni, who is still waiting to graduate from this elite school of Shiite learning.

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