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The Canon · No. 047

Shia Islam

Shi'at Ali, the party of Ali; Twelver Shiism

632 CE – present · Abrahamic · Living · Iran, Iraq, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Lebanon, Pakistan, India, Yemen

V. THE MEDIEVAL WORLD — c.500 – 1500 CE

How many

Roughly 200–250 million, about 10–13% of Muslims. Iran, Iraq, Azerbaijan and Bahrain have Shia majorities.

Who began it

The partisans of Ali ibn Abi Talib (c.601–661), the Prophet's cousin and son-in-law, who held that Muhammad had designated him as successor at Ghadir Khumm.

What it is for

To preserve the authority of the Prophet's family, and to make sense of its repeated defeat.

What it worships

Allah alone. Veneration of the Imams is devotional, not worship, though Sunni critics have often disputed the line.

What it holds

Authority passes through divinely designated Imams descended from Ali and Fatima, who are infallible (ma'sum) and possess esoteric knowledge of the Quran's inner meaning. Twelvers recognise twelve, ending with Muhammad al-Mahdi, who entered occultation in 874 and remains alive and hidden, and who will return with Jesus to fill the earth with justice. Taqiyya, permissible concealment of faith under threat, is a doctrine shaped by centuries of persecution. The theology gives a large place to justice ('adl) as a defining divine attribute and to reason in law.

What it does

The Five Pillars, with prayers often combined into three sittings. Ashura on the tenth of Muharram, mourning Husayn's death at Karbala — processions, passion plays (ta'ziyeh), chest-beating and in some communities self-flagellation, which many senior clerics have discouraged in favour of blood donation. Pilgrimage to Najaf, Karbala, Mashhad, Qom and Samarra; the annual Arbaeen walk to Karbala draws well over ten million people and is by some measures the largest gathering on earth. Khums, a fifth of surplus income, paid to the clerical establishment — which is why Shia clergy have an independent financial base that Sunni clergy generally lack. Mut'a, temporary marriage, permitted by Twelvers and rejected by Sunnis.

After death

As for Islam generally, with the addition that the Imams intercede for their followers, and with a powerful martyrdom motif drawn from Karbala: to die unjustly in the cause of truth is the highest end, and Husayn's death is understood as redemptive suffering in a way that has real structural similarity to Christian ideas.

Its texts

Quran; the Four Books of hadith — al-Kafi of Kulayni foremost — transmitted through the Imams; Nahj al-Balagha, sermons and letters attributed to Ali; the works of Mulla Sadra and the Isfahan school.

Its branches

Twelver (~85% of Shia), Ismaili (Sevener; the Nizari branch follows the living Aga Khan), Zaydi (Fiver; Yemen, doctrinally closest to Sunnism), and the Alawi and Alevi traditions, which are related and heterodox.

Of note

The Sunni-Shia split began as a political argument about succession and became a theological one over centuries. It is not, in origin, a dispute about God.

Its timeline

  1. 632 CE Abu Bakr is chosen; Ali's supporters regard this as a usurpation.
  2. 656–661 CE Ali's caliphate, ending in his assassination at Kufa.
  3. <strong>680 CE</strong> Karbala. Husayn and about seventy followers are killed by Umayyad forces. The event fixes Shia identity permanently around martyrdom and injustice.
  4. 765 CE Death of Ja'far al-Sadiq, the sixth Imam and the founder of Shia jurisprudence; the Ismaili branch separates over his succession.
  5. 874 CE The twelfth Imam disappears; the Lesser Occultation begins.
  6. 941 CE The Greater Occultation; the Imam is no longer contactable through deputies, and the community must govern itself in his absence — the theological problem that everything afterwards turns on.
  7. 1501 CE Shah Ismail imposes Twelver Shiism on Persia; Iran's Shia identity dates from this, not from antiquity.
  8. 1970s CE Khomeini develops wilayat al-faqih, guardianship of the jurist — the claim that clerics should govern directly in the Imam's absence, which is an innovation and is rejected by many senior Shia clerics, notably the quietist school at Najaf.
  9. 1979 CE Iranian Revolution.
  10. 1980–88, 2003–present Iran-Iraq war; post-2003 sectarian conflict in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

Sources

Not yet checked against named sources. This entry is the house's reading; until it is checked, treat each claim as unverified. Correct it, with a source.

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