Shi'ism

On the tenth day of the month of Muharram in the year 61 of the Islamic calendar, 10 October 680, on the plain of Karbala by the Euphrates in Iraq, a small company of perhaps seventy men, with their women and children, faced an army of thousands. For days they had been cut off from the river. Their leader was Husayn ibn Ali, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, who had refused to swear allegiance to the Umayyad caliph Yazid and had set out for Kufa at the invitation of its people, who did not come to his aid. By evening Husayn and nearly all the men with him were dead, among them his half-brother Abbas, killed trying to bring water, and his infant son. His head was carried to Damascus; his sister Zaynab and the surviving women and children were led as captives. Every year since, on the first ten days of Muharram, Shi'i Muslims across the world have mourned him: in processions and passion plays, in sermons and laments, in tears. Karbala made Shi'ism, the "party of Ali", into a tradition whose heart is the memory of a just man betrayed and martyred, and the hope of his descendants' vindication.

Origins: who should lead?

When Muhammad died in 632, his community had to decide who would lead it. The majority accepted Abu Bakr, and then Umar, Uthman and finally Ali as caliphs; they became known as Sunnis, the people of the Prophet's custom (sunna) and of the community. A minority held that leadership belonged to Ali ibn Abi Talib, Muhammad's cousin and the husband of his daughter Fatima, and to their descendants. They became the shi'at Ali, the "party of Ali", or simply Shi'a.

The Shi'a point above all to the event at Ghadir Khumm, an oasis on the road from Mecca, in March 632, where Muhammad, returning from his last pilgrimage, took Ali by the hand and said: "For whoever I am his mawla, Ali is his mawla." The statement is reported in both Sunni and Shi'i collections of hadith. The meaning of mawla, a word that can mean master, patron, friend or ally, is the crux: for Shi'a it designated Ali as Muhammad's successor, and Ghadir is a festival; for Sunnis it was an expression of esteem and friendship.

Ali did become the fourth caliph in 656, amid civil war, and was assassinated in 661 at Kufa; his shrine at Najaf in Iraq is one of the holiest places of Shi'ism. His son Hasan made peace with the Umayyad Mu'awiya; his son Husayn died at Karbala. What had begun as a political question became, through suffering and memory, a religious one.

The Imams

For Shi'a, the rightful leaders of the community are the Imams: Ali and a line of his descendants through Fatima. They are not only political leaders but religious guides, inheritors of the Prophet's knowledge, and, in Twelver belief, sinless (ma'sum) and divinely appointed. Disagreements about who was the rightful Imam at each generation produced the main branches of Shi'ism:

• Zaydis follow Zayd ibn Ali, a grandson of Husayn, who rose in revolt in 740. They hold that any learned descendant of Ali and Fatima who rises against injustice can be Imam, and are theologically the closest of the Shi'a to Sunnis. Their Imams ruled in Yemen for over a thousand years, until 1962; the Houthi movement arose from this community.
• Isma'ilis follow Isma'il, son of the sixth Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq, who died before his father. Isma'ilis developed a rich esoteric theology distinguishing the outward (zahir) and inward (batin) meanings of scripture. The Isma'ili Fatimid caliphs ruled North Africa and Egypt, founding Cairo in 969 and the mosque-university of al-Azhar. Later divisions produced the Nizaris, whose Imam today is the Aga Khan (Aga Khan V since 2025, their 50th Imam), and the Musta'lis, including the Dawoodi Bohras. The Druze (ch56) emerged from Fatimid Isma'ilism.
• Twelvers (Ithna 'Ashariyya), today by far the largest group, recognize a line of twelve Imams, ending with Muhammad al-Mahdi.

The occultation

The eleventh Imam, Hasan al-Askari, died at Samarra in 874, and the question of his successor divided his followers. The Twelvers hold that he had a young son, Muhammad, who was hidden from the world to protect him from the Abbasid caliphs. For about seventy years, the Minor Occultation (874–941), four successive deputies (nawwab) are believed to have carried messages between the hidden Imam and his followers. In 941 the fourth deputy announced, before his death, that there would be no more deputies. The Major Occultation began, and continues. The Twelfth Imam is believed to be alive, hidden, and to return at the end of time as the Mahdi, the rightly guided one, with Jesus, to fill the earth with justice as it is now filled with injustice.

The occultation shaped Shi'i religion and politics. In the Imam's absence, who has authority? Over centuries the scholars (ulama) became the Imam's general representatives. From the eighteenth century the Usuli school, which held that qualified jurists (mujtahids) may use reason to derive the law, prevailed over the Akhbaris, who relied only on the reports of the Prophet and Imams. Every believer is to follow the rulings of a living senior jurist, a marja' al-taqlid, "source of emulation", to whom they also pay religious taxes. Great marja's today include Ali al-Sistani in Najaf.

Karbala remembered

The memory of Karbala is the centre of Shi'i devotional life.

• Muharram and Ashura. In the first ten days of Muharram, Shi'a gather for majalis, assemblies where preachers recount the events of Karbala and the audience weeps. Weeping for Husayn is held to bring merit. Processions carry standards (alam), a replica of Husayn's coffin or his horse, and in South Asia tall ta'ziya models of his tomb.
• Ta'zieh. In Iran a tradition of passion plays re-enacting the tragedy, performed in the round, developed from the eighteenth century; it is among the few indigenous traditions of drama in the Islamic world, and is on UNESCO's list of Intangible Cultural Heritage.
• Matam. Mourners beat their chests (latm, sina-zani) in rhythm to laments. A minority practise tatbir, cutting the head with swords or flagellating with blades; many leading authorities, including Ali Khamenei and others, have declared it forbidden, and many Shi'a urge blood donation instead.
• Arba'in. Forty days after Ashura, pilgrims walk, often from Najaf, to Karbala. The Iraqi authorities report more than twenty million participants in recent years, which would make it one of the largest gatherings on earth; the exact numbers are hard to verify.
• Shrines. The tombs of the Imams and their families, at Najaf, Karbala, Kadhimiya, Samarra, Mashhad in Iran and Qom (the shrine of Fatima al-Ma'suma), are centres of pilgrimage (ziyara), and of scholarship.

Shi'ism and power

For most of history Shi'a were a minority under Sunni rulers, and at times persecuted. This produced the practice of taqiyya, prudent concealment of one's belief under threat of death, a practice justified by Qur'an 16:106; hostile writers have sometimes misrepresented it as a general licence to deceive. There were also Shi'i states: the Buyids, who ruled Baghdad in the tenth century; the Fatimids; and, decisively, the Safavids, whose founder Ismail I made Twelver Shi'ism the state religion of Iran in 1501, converting a largely Sunni country over the following two centuries, partly by force, partly by bringing scholars from Lebanon and Bahrain.

In the twentieth century, Ruhollah Khomeini developed the doctrine of velayat-e faqih, the "guardianship of the jurist": that in the Imam's absence a senior jurist should govern the state. After the 1979 Islamic Revolution it became the basis of Iran's constitution. Many Shi'i scholars, including in Najaf, did not accept this political reading.

Today Shi'a are estimated at about 10–15% of the world's Muslims, perhaps 150–200 million people, a majority in Iran, Iraq, Bahrain and Azerbaijan, and large communities in Lebanon, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and beyond. The Alawites of Syria and the Alevis of Turkey are separate traditions with roots in early Shi'ism and devotion to Ali, but with beliefs and practices distinct from Twelver Shi'ism.

The believer's lens

For Shi'a, the Prophet's family, the Ahl al-Bayt, are the purified household of Qur'an 33:33, and the Imams are God's proofs on earth, without whom the world could not exist. Ali is the gate of the city of knowledge; Fatima is the mistress of the women of the worlds; Husayn gave his life so that true Islam would not be corrupted by tyrants, and his sacrifice is a model for every generation: "Every day is Ashura, and every land is Karbala." The hidden Imam watches over his community and will return. Weeping for Husayn, visiting the shrines and following the jurists are ways of remaining faithful to the family of the Prophet in a world of injustice.

The skeptical lens

The historian notes that the sources for Ghadir Khumm, Karbala and the early Imams were written down generations later, in a period of fierce sectarian argument, by both Sunni and Shi'i writers with interests at stake. The core events, Ali's caliphate and assassination, Husayn's death at Karbala in 680, the line of Imams, are well attested; many details, speeches and miracles are shaped by later devotion.

The existence of the twelfth Imam is a matter of faith. Historical sources record that at Hasan al-Askari's death many of his followers were uncertain whether he had a son, and several groups formed; the Twelver doctrine of occultation emerged from that crisis and was systematized in the following century.

Popular claims about the Sunni–Shi'a divide should also be treated with care: the idea of an unchanging "1,400-year-old conflict" is contested by historians, who note long periods of coexistence and intermarriage and emphasize the modern political causes of sectarian violence. Figures for pilgrimage attendance and population are estimates.

Symbology and sacred encoding

• The Five of the Cloak. The panjetan, the five holy persons: Muhammad, Ali, Fatima, Hasan and Husayn, whom, tradition says, the Prophet gathered under his cloak. The number five and the image of the open hand, the khamsa or "hand of Fatima", are read in Shi'ism as symbols of the five. (The hand amulet itself is older and shared across the Mediterranean.)
• Zulfiqar. Ali's two-pointed sword, given to him, tradition says, by the Prophet at the battle of Uhud, is the emblem of Ali's courage and justice, shown on flags, amulets and banners.
• The alam and the water-skin. Processional standards shaped like hands or spearheads, and the pierced water-skin of Abbas, killed trying to fetch water, are central emblems of Muharram; offering water to strangers during Muharram commemorates Karbala's thirst.
• Black and green. Mourners wear black in Muharram; green is the colour of the Prophet's family, worn by sayyids, his descendants, in their turbans.
• Clay of Karbala. Many Shi'a prostrate in prayer on a small tablet of clay (turba, mohr), often made from the earth of Karbala, a practice explained by the rule of prostrating on earth, and a constant contact with the place of martyrdom.
• Twelve and seven. The number of Imams defines the major branches: Twelvers and Isma'ilis ("Seveners" in older usage). Twelve had its own symbolism, compared with the twelve tribes of Israel and the months of the year.
• Isma'ili ta'wil. Isma'ili thought developed an elaborate system of symbolic interpretation in which every outward rule and word of scripture has an inner meaning, with cycles of prophets and cosmic hierarchies expressed in numbers: an esoteric reading of revelation.
• Letters and numbers. Shi'i and especially Isma'ili and later Hurufi and Bektashi writers used the abjad letter-values of Arabic (ch21) to find the names of Ali and the Imams encoded in scripture; such readings are interpretive, not grammatical.

Connections

Shi'ism is one of the two great branches of Islam (ch21), and its early history is part of that chapter's story. Its mystical and esoteric forms connect to Sufism (ch27), with whom it shares reverence for Ali, and to the Druze, Alawites and others in Mandaeans, Yazidis & Druze (ch56). The Isma'ili esoteric tradition parallels the Hermetic and Gnostic readings of ch17. Its martyrdom of a righteous man and the community's mourning can be compared with the Christian passion and the Jewish commemoration of catastrophe (ch16, ch19), and its hidden, returning Imam with the messianic hopes of Sabbateans, Frankists & Hasidim (ch73) and The End of Days (ch50). The Safavids, and the Mughals who dealt with them, belong with Akbar & the Mughal Synthesis (ch82). The Bahá'í faith (ch65) arose from Shi'i expectation of the Mahdi.

Walk this chapter’s room in the Museum (beta) →

From The Divine Archives · https://getconexto.com/chapters/ch80.html · a comparative library of the sacred.