ShīʿiteArticle Free Pass
Shīʿite, Arabic Shīʿī, collective Shīʿah, member of the smaller of the two major branches of Islam, distinguished from the majority Sunnis.
Early in the history of Islam, the Shīʿites were a political faction (Arabic shīʿat ʿAlī, “party of ʿAlī”) that supported the power of ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib (the fourth caliph [khalīfah, successor of Muhammad]) and, later, of his descendants. Starting as a political faction, this group gradually developed into a religious movement, Shīʿism, which not only influenced Sunni Islam but also produced a number of important sects to which the term Shīʿah is applied.
The Prophet Muhammad died in ad 632 without an heir, none of his sons having survived to adulthood, and a broad consensus of those present at Medina nominated his longtime companion Abū Bakr as his successor. Abū Bakr died two years later and was succeeded in the caliphate by his assistant and adviser ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭab. When ʿUmar was assassinated by a disgruntled Persian slave in 644, ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān was selected by a committee to become the third caliph. ʿUthmān was killed by rebels in 656.
From the time of the first caliph, a number of those within the Muslim community felt that ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, who was Muhammad’s first cousin and close confidant as well as his son-in-law and the father of Muhammad’s grandsons Ḥasan and al-Ḥusayn (by Muhammad’s daughter Fāṭimah), was the natural choice to succeed the Prophet. In 656 ʿAlī was raised to the caliphate, partly with the support of those who had murdered the third caliph, ʿUthmān.
ʿAlī never quite received the allegiance of all the Muslims, however, and, in an effort to consolidate power, he was forced to wage a series of campaigns in an insurrection that came to be known as the first fitnah (“trial”). ʿAlī’s main opponent was the Muslim governor of Syria, Muʿāwiyah ibn Abī Sufyān, who was a kinsman of the murdered ʿUthmān (both men were members of the Umayyad clan—founders of the Umayyad dynasty—whose leaders had been fierce adversaries of Muhammad before their conversion to Islam). The antagonism between ʿAlī and Muʿāwiyah culminated in the Battle of Ṣiffīn (657), a conflict that ʿAlī appeared to be winning until he agreed to Muʿāwiyah’s demand for arbitration. ʿAlī’s concession angered a large faction within his forces, and the malcontents soon seceded (and were henceforth known as the Khārijites, “Seceders”), which ultimately weakened ʿAlī’s position. ʿAlī was murdered by a Khārijite in 661.
Muʿāwiyah became the next generally acknowledged caliph, and for some time ʿAlī was officially cursed from the pulpits of Islam. However, many Muslims, especially those of the garrison cities of southern Iraq, hoped for a restoration of the ʿAlids (i.e., lineage of ʿAlī). ʿAlī’s son Ḥasan made a short-lived bid for the caliphate soon after his father’s death, but he met with no success and retired. Later al-Ḥusayn refused to recognize the legitimacy of Muʿāwiyah’s son and successor, Yazīd I, as caliph. The Muslims of Al-Kūfah in Iraq, ʿAlī’s former headquarters, invited al-Ḥusayn to come there and offered to support his bid for the caliphate. The broader Muslim community in Iraq generally failed to support al-Ḥusayn, however, and he and his small band of followers were cut down in 680 by Umayyad troops near the town of Karbalāʾ (the Battle of Karbalāʾ), which is now a pilgrimage destination in central Iraq for Shīʿites. (See also ʿĀshūrāʾ.)
Swearing vengeance against the triumphant Umayyad government, the remorseful residents of Al-Kūfah soon engaged in a series of unsuccessful insurrections against Umayyad rule. These were put down with great brutality, notably by the Umayyad provincial governor al-Ḥajjāj. In one such insurrection, the Shīʿite leader al-Mukhtār ibn Abī ʿUbayd al-Thaqafī put forward Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥanafiyyah, a son of ʿAlī from a wife other than Fāṭimah, as caliph. Such revolts tended to have a strong millenarian element, and, in the turbulent social and political circumstances of the late 7th and early 8th centuries, political differences slowly began to take on theological proportions. Extremist (ghulāt) groups began to proliferate, often attributing miraculous, even divine, status to ʿAlī and his family.
The people of Al-Kūfah ultimately gained support from other groups that opposed the status quo of the Umayyad dynasty. These included aristocratic Muslim families of Medina, pious men protesting what they considered too worldly an interpretation of Islam, and non-Arab Muslims (mawālī, “clients”), especially in Iraq, who demanded an equality denied them by the ruling Arabs.
The subsequent revolt, which ended in 750, finally put an end to Umayyad power; however, rather than an ʿAlid rising to the caliphate, the appointment went to a scion of another branch of the Prophet’s family, one descended from Muhammad’s uncle al-ʿAbbās. Under the ʿAbbāsid dynasty (750–1258), the theological, philosophical, and legal superstructure of what was to become the Sunni community developed and flourished. The insurrections of the Umayyad period died down, but a counterculture developed in the form of several diverse groups promoting Shīʿite candidates to leadership. One such group, the Zaydiyyah (named for Zayd ibn ʿAlī, a grandson of al-Ḥusayn), formulated its principles in the 9th century. The Zaydīs (members of the Zaydiyyah) demanded, sometimes with sword in hand, that the ruler be whichever descendant of Ḥasan or al-Ḥusayn (that is, the sons of ʿAlī by Fāṭimah) was proved qualified, at a given time, by his religious knowledge and his practical ability. Zaydī devotees set up several small states along the Caspian littoral in what is now northern Iran and in Yemen in southern Arabia, where Zaydī imams have since been spiritual leaders and where they ruled politically until 1962.
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