The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought

Shi‘ism

“Shi‘ism” is the English term given to the sectarian movement referred to in early Arabic sources as Shi‘at ‘Ali (the party of ‘Ali), or simply the “Shi‘a.” The Shi‘a identified themselves as supporters of the leadership claims of ‘Ali b. Abi Talib, the son-in-law and cousin of the Prophet Muhammad, whom they saw as the rightful successor to Muhammad as leader of the Muslim community. Whether ‘Ali viewed himself in the same terms is difficult to assess, since he did not embark on an open rebellion against the first caliphs of the Muslim empire following Muhammad’s death in 632. The claim that ‘Ali was the rightful leader (or imam) after Muhammad was based on reports in which the Prophet expresses his high regard and (arguably) his preference for ‘Ali over his other Companions. The reliability and interpretation of these reports has become a topic of extensive sectarian dispute between the Shi‘a and their opponents (primarily the later Sunnis). ‘Ali did eventually become caliph in 656, though he had to face extensive opposition during his reign, and he was eventually murdered in 661. In the century and a half following ‘Ali’s death, there were a series of rebellions in the name of ‘Ali and his descendants. All of these movements, in one way or another, were appealing to the central Shi‘i political idea that the members of the family of the Prophet had somehow been blessed with particular leadership skills—for some groups, these qualities were sufficiently unique to make the imams a breed apart from the ordinary folk. Members of the Prophet’s family have, by some process of divine designation, acquired particular qualities and rights, among which is the right to govern. This, at least, indicates the basics of Shi‘i political theory developed in this early period, and it contrasts with the emerging Sunni (and Khariji) notions of good leadership and political legitimacy. Some subsequent Shi‘i groups proclaimed the imams to be a manifestation of God or to have a divine nature in an incarnational sense. These beliefs were unacceptable to other Shi‘a and also viewed as dangerously heretical by the mainstream Sunnis. In the heresiographical literature, the groups associated with these incarnational beliefs were labeled ghulāt (extremists).

Central to all the Shi‘i political ideas at this time was the notion of an imam as a political leader designated by God (through an inheritance of the Prophet’s designation to ‘Ali) but lacking political power. It seems that for all the Shi‘a the imam must be a relative of the Prophet Muhammad. How far this description might extend was disputed. Was the son of ‘Ali by a slave girl a candidate for legitimate leadership (as was claimed in Mukhtar’s rebellion in support of Muhammad b. al-Hanafiyya in 686)? Was a descendent of ‘Abbas, the Prophet’s uncle, acceptable (as was claimed by the Abbasid movement, which came to power in 750)? The rebellion against the Abbasids by a grandson of Hasan (the eldest son of Imam ‘Ali), Muhammad b. ‘Abdallah al-Nafs al-Zakiyya (d. 762), and the continued opposition to the Abbasids by other Shi‘i groups show that most did not consider this extension of the “Prophet’s descendants” (ahl al-bayt) acceptable. Other debates among the Shi‘a at the time included whether an imam (or his representative) must rebel against the usurping caliphate of the Umayyads (and later the Abbasids). The Shi‘a had examples of imams who had been quietist (such as Hasan) and examples of those who had taken up arms (the most famous being Husayn, ‘Ali’s second son and the third imam, at Karbala in 680). Additional accretions to these fundamental Shi‘i ideas in the early period included the idea of an imam who had disappeared and would return at some time to establish legitimate government and abolish the corrupt system of the Umayyads (and later Abbasids). For example, Muhammad b. al-Hanafiyya is said to have disappeared (and not died), and the appeals of other Shi‘i leaders in this early period were tinged with messianic expectation.

As well as all the rebellious movements challenging the Umayyads and the Abbasids, there was a more quietist Shi‘i position associated with a group given the title “Imamis” in the heresiographical literature. According to these writers, the Imamis traced a line of imams beginning with imams ‘Ali, Hasan, and Husayn and then followed by generational descendents of Husayn. The line continues with Husayn’s son ‘Ali Zayn al-Abidin, ‘Ali’s son Muhammad al-Baqir, and Muhammad’s son Ja‘far al-Sadiq. For the Imamis, while the current political power was illegitimate, the imams did not wish to endanger themselves or the true community of followers by openly rebelling. Proper government would be established at some future point, and rebellious activity was fruitless (and for some even forbidden). After the death of Imam Sadiq, the Imamis followed Musa al-Kazim, Sadiq’s son by a slave woman. The decision was controversial, and some of the Shi‘a considered a separate line of descendents (through Ja‘far’s deceased son Isma‘il) acceptable, giving birth to the Isma‘ili Shi‘a. The Imamis recognized five more imams after Musa in a father-son sequence. The last of these, the Twelfth Imam after the Prophet, was Muhammad b. al-Hasan al-Mahdi, who, according to Imami accounts, disappeared in 874. The Imamis then became known as the Twelvers (ithnā ‘ashariyya), since their 12th and last imam disappeared and, according to Imami theology, will reappear at some point in the future. The Twelvers went on to become the most numerous Shi‘i sect with a distinctive political theory. Twelver legal literature (fiqh) explored the operation of proper Islamic rule through an elucidation of rules supposedly derived from sources (in particular the Qur’an and the sources describing the sunna, or example of the Prophet). In effect, the limitation of these sources left much to the individual jurist’s creativity. In the Imami tradition, the ideal government was one led by the imam himself. However, this rarely happened when the imams were present (only ‘Ali actually held political power, and even then his authority was hardly absolute). When there were no longer imams because they were in hiding (ghayba), the operation of particular elements of the law became problematic in the jurists’ views. For example, a legitimate collection or distribution entity was required for valid taxation: not only for religious taxes such as zakat (the alms tax) and khums (the special Shi‘i “one fifth” tax) but also for other valid taxes such as kharāj (the land tax). In the absence of the imam, no such entity exists. The first jurists, such as Muhammad b. al-Hasan al-Tusi (d. 1067), offered various solutions, including burying the wealth in a secret place to await the return of the imam or distributing the wealth oneself to the deserving recipients. Over time, one solution became dominant in fiqh literature: the individual believer could (and for some jurists, must) give his religious taxes to a suitably qualified jurist (i.e., a mujtahid) to distribute. Imami jurists proposed a theory of niyāba, or delegation, whereby certain sayings of the imams were reinterpreted to demonstrate that the imams themselves had delegated to the jurists the right to collect and distribute taxes, convene Friday prayer, and perform other duties for which a legitimate imam was required. During the Safavid period in Iran, a number of jurists gave the state a sort of limited legitimacy by sanctioning its activities as “legal” (shar‘ī), though they still argued that the ideal state is one led by the imam himself. This was a controversial move, and many Imami Shi‘i jurists continued to argue that the state was de jure illegitimate and that a truly pious believer would avoid all contact with it. The debate continues into the early 21st century, but it has been given an added twist by the introduction of the revolutionary theory of wilāyat al-faqīh (the guardianship of the jurist). Imami jurists had always avoided making an outright claim to political power, even if some of them at times came close to sanctioning actual political rule by a temporal power. In the mid-20th century, Ayatallah Khomeini began to develop a theory whereby the role of the jurists within Shi‘i society might be expanded to include direct political rule. He put forward this theory in the context of the rule of Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi in Iran, who had embarked on a series of policies that were undermining the traditional authority of the scholarly class in the name of modernization. Khomeini took an established jurisprudential concept, such as the notion that the jurist (faqīh) has control of the assets of an orphaned minor, and expanded it to legitimize the seizure of power by the scholarly class. In the same way that the jurist has legitimate power over the orphan’s property (in order to protect it from being seized by the unscrupulous and unworthy), the faqīh also has rights to take political control in order to prevent the assets of the nation from being wasted by the corrupt. This idea of direct clerical rule was quite novel within Imami Shi‘i law and underpinned much of the political structures of postrevolutionary Iran, where wilāyat al-faqīh is the theoretical basis for the political system. The debate over the legitimacy of Khomeini’s theory has dominated modern Shi‘i political thought, with a sizable body of juristic opinion (particularly from those based outside of Iran) arguing that the statement is invalid and unscriptural.

The two other major Shi‘i groups that survived from the early period, the Zaydis and the Isma‘ilis, also devised distinctive political theories, and both of these groups experienced internal fissures. The Zaydis were named after a grandson of Imam Husayn, Zayd b. Ali, who led an ill-fated revolt against the Umayyads in 740. His rebellion may have failed, but his movement gave rise to a number of subsequent groups of scholars and activists. The Zaydis generally did not recognize the Imami doctrine of the designation (naṣṣ) of one imam by the previous one. For some Zaydis, there had never even been a designation of ‘Ali by the Prophet; rather, ‘Ali and his descendents had the right to rule because they were intrinsically the most meritorious (al-afḍal). For others, only ‘Ali and his two sons had been designated. After Husayn, all the descendents of ‘Ali and his wife, Fatima, were eligible for the imamate, and this explains why there was no need for a designation of Zayd himself. The imam was the person who combined the qualities of lineage (from ‘Ali and Fatima), learning, and worthiness, and, most crucially, who had rebelled against the unjust government of the day. Zaydi statelets appeared in northern Iran and in Yemen. In Yemen, the Zaydis established dynastic rule in north Yemen that survived until 1962, when an Arab nationalist revolution overthrew the last Zaydi imam. The militant activism of the Zaydi tradition continued in the 21st century through the movement associated with the Yemeni rebel Husayn Badr al-Din al-Huthi (d. 2004), though it is not clear whether his political ideas included the reestablishment of the Zaydi imamate.

The Isma‘ilis emerged only a century or so after Muhammad b. Isma‘il’s death (or disappearance in the early ninth century), and in its early phase it seems to have been primarily a spiritual rather than political movement. There were inevitable political manifestations, however. First, there was the emergence of the revolutionary Qarmatians, and then later the Fatimids and their successors. The Qarmatians established a rebel state in eastern Arabia, which broke free of the Abbasid Empire and (most infamously) raided Mecca and removed the Black Stone of the Ka‘ba in 930. Their origins certainly lay in a form of Isma‘ilism that had broken away and developed its own messianic and millenarian tendencies. The Fatimids, on the other hand, appeared in North Africa in the early tenth century as a military force under the leadership of ‘Abdallah al-Mahdi, who claimed ‘Alid descent. For the Fatimids, the caliph of their empire (which spread out across North Africa with its capital in Cairo) was the imam—theoretically a sinless, divinely designated leader descended from the Prophet through Fatima. Even before the Ayyubid capture of Egypt in 1169, the Fatimid Isma‘ilis had experienced offshoots that established separate communities claiming the lineage of different descendents of the Fatimids. While some of these communities were subsequently politically active (most famously the Nizari Isma‘ilis in Iran, renowned for assassinating leading political figures), the post-Fatimid Isma‘ili intellectual tradition was less concerned with politics, returning instead to spiritual and philosophical questions. The different Isma‘ili groups have survived into the modern period, the largest being the Nizaris under the spiritual direction after 1957 of their 49th imam, Karim Husayni, who has the honorific title of Agha Khan.

The Shi‘i movement did not have a detailed political theory worked out from its inception. Much of its theory developed out of Shi‘i historical experiences, and the need to justify history, rather than any abstract contemplation by theorists. Its basic premises, however, such as the legitimacy of ‘Ali’s claim to be the Prophet’s successor and the importance of Muslim leadership being drawn from the Prophet’s family and their descendents, provided subsequent thinkers with an ideological base from which to develop a variety of conflicting and competing political theories. Furthermore, the various Shi‘i groups defined their political stance in relation not only to each other but also to the wider Muslim (particularly Sunni) intellectual landscape. This variety has survived into the modern period and demonstrates the continued potency and popularity of the basic tenets of Shi‘ism.