Muslim Identities: An Introduction to Islam

BASED ON the broad historical survey presented in chapter 4, we can now explore some of the major doctrinal developments that emerged from the spread of Islam beyond the Arabian Peninsula. This chapter and chapters 6 and 7 shift from a synthetic narration of political, cultural, and religious history to a more narrow focus on the emergence of theological, legal, and religious difference. They accordingly present the rise and development of the major sectarian movements in Islam: Shiʿism, Sunnism, and Sufism. It is a mistake to assume, as is frequently done, that Sunni Islam emerged as normative from the chaotic period following Muhammad’s death and that the other two movements simply developed out of it. This assumption is based in part on the problem that we have confronted frequently in these early chapters—the taking of later and often highly ideological sources as accurate historical portrayals—and in part on the fact that the overwhelming majority of Muslims throughout the world follows now what emerged as Sunni Islam in the early period. The result of these two claims, the former problematic and the latter a fact, is that Sunni Islam is often mistakenly regarded as synonymous with Islam.

This view is not surprisingly far from accurate. Islam, whether of the Shiʿi variety or the Sunni variety (leaving aside Sufism until chapter 7), represents the end product of several centuries of compromise and contestation between competing ideologies and interpretations of Muhammad’s message. Rather than posit separate tracks of development for these movements, a history of Islam should regard them as intertwined at an early stage, deriving their potency from various historical and sociological forces alluded to in the previous chapter. Each of these sectarian movements—and again it is important not to assume that there simply exists one Shiʿism or one version of Sunni Islam—used the other to define itself more clearly and in the process to articulate better its doctrinal contents and rituals.

Before proceeding, we should reflect more generally on the problems that emerge for any community after the death of a leader. Questions that arise in this situation include: How might the leader have wished the community to carry on in his absence? Who has the authority to rule in his absence? Will he return at some later date? Such questions are by no means unique to the early followers of Muhammad, and perhaps an informative parallel might be drawn to those early followers of Jesus who also struggled to understand his message in the light of his death. The early Jesus movement eventually, after several centuries, gave way to Christianity as the early Catholic Church, which sought to harness Jesus’s charisma, developed numerous theological positions that would become normative in response to a variety of controversies (e.g., Gnosticism, Arianism).

The history of religions, in other words, abounds in creative solutions to these most human of concerns. The solutions put forth to answer these human concerns eventually become crystallized as dogma for later generations, the stuff of faith and presumably of history. This process results once again in the complex intersection of faith and history, objectivity and subjectivity, from which it is very difficult to pry one apart from the other.

In order to distinguish his approach from both the academic and the theological status quo, Madelung returns to the sources—the Quran, hadith reports, later accounts—in order to reassess them. Calling most of the earliest Islamic historiography—the record on which even secular Western scholars have traditionally relied—“tendentious,” Madelung contends that the Shiʿi claims may well be more normative than that of the Sunnis. Without choosing a side in this debate, we can follow his lead and be cautious about simply repeating as true the accounts that we find in the earliest Islamic sources. This chapter provides both insider and outside accounts. Although this brief presentation is not the venue to rewrite the history of Islam from the perspective of Shiʿism, it does break with convention in that it follows Madelung’s hypothesis and presents an account of Shiʿism before going on to examine Sunni Islam in chapter 6.

Before proceeding, we would do well to return to the events at the Portico of the Banu Saʿida, where some of Muhammad’s followers congregated following his death. There, Abu Bakr, who, as later pro-Shiʿi historians note, came from a relatively insignificant clan within the Quraysh tribe, emerged as the first caliph. Ali, who came from Muhammad’s own clan, the Banu Hashim, was—again according to these later sources—largely overlooked in the process. These sources say that Ali was the first male to embrace Muhammad’s message. Ali was part of Muhammad’s clan and as such, especially given the unwritten rules in a heavily tribal culture, had the right to emerge as the true successor.

Thus began the first of what would later be perceived as a series of slights to deprive the most capable and deserving person of the caliphate. Ali, the first male convert to Islam and Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law, was very close to Muhammad and formed an intimate part of his family. Both Shiʿi and Sunni sources agree that after the events at the Portico, a crowd of men marched to Ali’s house and demanded that he swear allegiance to Abu Bakr, the new caliph. The situation would have turned violent if not for the intercession of Fatima, Ali’s wife and Muhammad’s daughter, who later pro-Shiʿi sources say was injured and miscarried in the process. These sources also agree that some of Ali’s immediate kinsmen encouraged him to set himself up as a rival to Abu Bakr. Despite these events, Ali did not advance his claim to the caliphate—perhaps thus becoming a symbol for what would later emerge as Shiʿi helplessness and resignation in mundane political affairs.

Ali’s supporters also point to the following story, which is regarded as sound (sahih) even by the ninth-century Sunni collector al-Tirmidhi. In this story, when Muhammad arrived in Medina, he assigned to each of the muhajirun—that is, those who had made the hijra with him—except Ali a “brother” from Medina to ease the transition and smooth over potential social tensions. “The Apostle of God made brothers between his companions, and Ali came to him with tears in his eyes crying: ‘O Apostle of God! You have made brethren among your companions but you have not made anyone my brother.’ And the Apostle of God said to him, ‘You are my brother in this world and in the next.’”³

Despite the apparent authority of such hadiths, which seem to designate Ali clearly as Muhammad’s self-appointed successor, the fact of the matter is that they were written much later and likely date to the origins of the early Abbasid dynasty. This dynasty, it will be recalled, sought to legitimate itself through its claim of descent from the Hashim clan—the clan of Muhammad and Ali—as opposed to the clan of Abd Shams (the clan of Uthman and Muʿawiya, from which the Umayyad dynasty sprang). Like many of the earliest sources of Islam, hadiths extolling Ali’s claim to the caliphate are not necessarily historical documents, but rather attempts to make the past meaningful in the context of the present and in anticipation of the future.

Moreover, Ali was not the only one with a familial relationship to Muhammad. Both Abu Bakr and Umar, the first and second caliphs, respectively, were Muhammad’s fathers-in-law. And Uthman, the third caliph, was, like Ali, Muhammad’s son-in-law. Based on their level of intimacy to Muhammad, then, it is unclear why Ali should have a larger claim to leadership than these individuals—unless, of course, this claim was based on the level of clan affiliation, which, as we saw in the part I, played a crucial role in ascertaining loyalty and, despite the universality of Muhammad’s message, did not seem to go away in the period immediately following his death. Once again, the events and their later interpretations return us to uncertain historical ground owing to the paucity of eyewitness accounts of the events in question.

It is a mistake to label Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, and the subsequent Umayyad dynasty as “Sunnis.” As noted in chapter 4, this dynasty essentially invented an identity for itself using Muhammad’s still inchoate message and the bureaucratic and legal infrastructures inherited from earlier empires in the region. Just as we cannot call the Umayyads “Sunnis,” it would be equally incorrect to call supporters of Ali and his claim to the caliphate “Shiʿis.” Certainly, we witness the catalyst for both movements at places such as the Portico and in the events immediately following the election of Abu Bakr to the caliphate. Although both groups began to coalesce slowly as political ideologies at this point, one cannot yet say that they represented or crystallized into two distinct theological sets of doctrines and practices, something that will only occur in the eighth century.

With the death of Ali, many of his partisans looked to his two sons (and hence Muhammad’s biological grandsons), Hasan and Husayn, for political leadership. Hasan, perhaps striking some sort of a deal with Muʿawiya, declared that he was not interested in claiming the caliphate. (Later Shiʿi propaganda will assert that Hasan was murdered, presumably by agents of Muʿawiya, just as he was about to make a claim.) Much of the nascent support for Ali was in Kufa, in modern-day Iraq just south of Baghdad. There, following the death of Muʿawiya, the Kufans pledged support to Husayn and encouraged him to come there to start a rebellion against the rise to power of Yazid, Muʿawiya’s son. Despite the Kufans’ enthusiasm, Husayn was warned by several people close to him that the Kufans’ support had been fickle for both his father and brother. Despite reservations, he departed Mecca for Kufa in the company of about fifty armed men and a number of women and children.

Upon taking the throne, Yazid was faced with a number of local rebellions throughout the empire, and one of his first tasks was to put an end to them and reestablish the order maintained in his father’s time. One of the largest of these disturbances came from Kufa, with the result that Yazid instructed one of his most energetic generals to take control of the town and suppress the rebellion. Although Husayn had received word of the state of affairs in Kufa, he pressed on, declining other proposals that might have secured his safety. As he made his way to Kufa, he was set upon on the tenth day of the Muslim month of Muharram in 680 by Yazid’s forces on the plains of Karbala and murdered.⁴

Although this event put an ostensible end to the Kufans’ immediate political aspirations, it proved to be a watershed moment in the later formation and self-identity of what would subsequently emerge as Shiʿism (figure 6). The murder of Husayn functioned as an important catalyst for transforming the Kufans’ political grievance and Ali’s followers into a largely religious movement—although we must also be aware of the categorical problems of neatly separating the “political” from the “religious” in eighth-century Iraq or Arabia. To this day, the commemoration of the suffering and murder of Husayn—a practice referred to as “Ashura”—is the most fervently celebrated ritual in the Shiʿi religious calendar (see chapter 9).⁵

Certain sectarian groups formed around the figure of Husayn in the immediate aftermath of his murder. The Tawwabun, for example, felt guilty that they had not done more to support Husayn and his companions as they made their way to Kufa. So in 684 the Tawwabun marched toward Syria to challenge Umayyad rule.⁶ However, they were no match for the Umayyad troops and were easily slaughtered on the battlefield.

Although Husayn was murdered on the plains of Karbala, the movement did not terminate with his death. Ali’s partisans thereafter located religious and political legitimacy in Husayn’s son and, by extension, Ali’s grandson and Muhammad’s great-grandson. This individual, Abu Muhammad Ali ibn Husayn, also known as Zayn al-Abidin (Ornament of the Worshippers), was the only son of Husayn to survive the massacre at Karbala. The Umayyad forces that captured him sent him to Yazid in Damascus, and he was then allowed to retire to Medina, presumably in return for some sort of agreement that he would remain politically quiescent.

With respect to all these political machinations, it is important not to lose sight of the fact that in the aftermath of Muhammad’s death two distinct leadership paradigms were slowly emerging and developing within the early community. On the one hand, the early community seems to have agreed, at least implicitly, that consensus should determine the right to rule the growing umma—a paradigm that would be presented as the majority opinion in subsequent generations. The partisans of Ali, on the other hand, located the right to rule not in consensus, but in the special qualities inherent to Muhammad, his immediate family (ahl al-bayt; literally, “people of the house” in the sense of family), and their descendants. This biological proximity legitimated their authority and right to rule.

The male descendents of Ali, whom his followers or partisans regard as the legitimate successors of Muhammad, are known as Imams. After the murder of Husayn, many of these Imams tended to maintain a sense of quietism, functioning largely as private scholars within the larger context of the Umayyad and Abbasid empires. The institution of the Imamate underwent various developments as the centuries went on, and it is important to understand that the term “Imam” was understood by someone such as Zayn al-Abidin and his followers much differently than it would have been understood by the followers of the later Imams.

What emerged as mainstream Shiʿi doctrine is contingent on the existence of a set of twelve Imams, all of which claim biological descent to Muhammad through Ali. We have so far encountered the first four: Ali, Hasan, Husayn, and Zayn al-Abidin.

These Imams played a crucial role in the development of Shiʿi religious identity. Although rarely, if ever, having any sort of political power, they derived their right to rule through their lineage to Muhammad and the fact that each Imam personally chose his own successor based on divinely inspired designation, although, perhaps not surprisingly and as the list in “The Twelve Imams” clearly shows, the succession tended to be from father to son. Whether under house arrest or in hiding, these figures functioned as the spiritual leaders of the followers of Ali and eventually as the fully developed theological and legal movement known as Shiʿism.

THE TWELVE IMAMS

1. Ali ibn Abi Talib (d. 661)

2. Hasan, Ali’s son (d. 669)

3. Husayn, Ali’s second son (d. 680)

4. Ali, Zayn al-Abidin, Husayn’s son (d. 712 or 713)

5. Muhammad al-Baqir, Zayn al-Abidin’s son (d. ca. 735)

6. Jaʿfar al-Sadiq, Muhammad al-Baqir’s son (d. 765)

7. Musa al-Kazim, Jaʿfar’s son (d. 799)

8. Ali al-Rida, Musa’s son (d. 818)

9. Muhammad al-Taqi, Ali’s son (d. 835)

10. Ali al-Hadi, Muhammad’s son (d. 868)

11. Hasan al-Askari, Ali al-Hadi’s son (d. 873 or 874)

12. Muhammad al-Mahdi (b. 868)

The speculation that grew up around the Imams and their connection to the family of Muhammad through Ali inevitably led some individuals and groups to ascribe divine characteristics to them. Several groups tended to adopt Ali’s family as the embodiment of their religious speculation. Such groups were labeled ghulat (those who exaggerate) because they attributed divinity to beings other than God and prophecy to persons other than Muhammad. And although the concept of ghuluww (exaggeration) would eventually come to be labeled as immoderate and heterodox, in the first two centuries after the death of Muhammad it was quite commonplace, especially with respect to figures such as Ali and Husayn. We would do well to remember that views later considered heterodox were often in this early period seen as legitimate and that what emerged as orthodox did so in response to such views.

Many of the early followers of the Imams (it is still too early to call them “Shiʿi”) possessed the view that would later be classified as ghuluww. This view was undoubtedly enhanced by the martyrdom of Husayn on the Karbala battlefield, which gave Ali’s family a quasi-cultic significance and thereby took the movement out of the realm of politics and placed it in the realm of religious pathos. It is important not to underestimate the importance of such ghulat groups in the formation of what would eventually emerge as mainstream Shiʿism and to understand that views later deemed “extremist,” including divine incarnation in humans, most likely circulated widely in earlier periods.

The sixth Imam, Jaʿfar al-Sadiq (d. 765), is generally considered to be the one most responsible for the formation of what would emerge as distinctly Shiʿi religious teaching and doctrine. Many later traditions, for example, ascribe to him anti-ghulat views. Prior to him, it is likely that only largely inchoate groups existed that located in certain individuals the right to rule based on their descent through Ali.

According to some accounts, the leaders of the Abbasid revolution asked Jaʿfar al-Sadiq if he wanted to be the new caliph, but he refused on quietist grounds so as to lead a life devoted to religious scholarship. Whether this story is accurate or not is, of course, impossible to determine. However, it seems likely that Jaʿfar al-Sadiq would have wanted to avoid the many competing interests at work in the revolution. His choice led to a view among the partisans of Ali that true leadership cannot be found in those who govern.

Many of these later sources, however, do point to Jaʿfar al-Sadiq as the figure most responsible for working out the theological doctrine of what constituted an Imam, especially the features by which he should be recognized. According to Jaʿfar and as elaborated in later Shiʿi doctrine, the Imam possesses several key features, including ilm, or “knowledge” (of the truths of the universe, including those of the Quran). This feature is illustrated in the following anecdote recorded by the seventeenth-century Shiʿi thinker Muhammad Baqir Majlisi:

I was with Abuʾl-Hasan in Mecca when a man said to him: “You are commenting from the Book of God some matters that you did not hear.”

And he replied: “It was revealed to us before it was revealed to the people and we commented upon it before it was commented upon by others. We know what is permitted and what is forbidden in it, we know which verses abrogate and which verses are abrogated in it, and how many verses were revealed on which night, and concerning what and to whom they were revealed. We are the judges of God on His earth and His witnesses for His creation.”⁷

Another feature of the Imam is isma (infallibility and sinlessness). According to a hadith by Jaʿfar al-Sadiq, “The one who is sinless is the one who is prevented by God from doing anything that God has forbidden. For God has said: ‘He who cleaves to God is guided to the Straight Path.’”⁸

Another feature that defines the Imam is nass, his ability to explicitly designate his successor. This principle might well have developed as a way to protect what was slowly coalescing as a clear line of Imams who the majority of supporters of Ali agreed on were the true Imams distinguished from, sources tell us, other claimants to the office. For example, Jaʿfar al-Sadiq relates the following about Ali:

The importance of Jaʿfar al-Sadiq undoubtedly stems from the fact that he was the Imam at the time of the ascendency of the Abbasid caliphate, from whom he may well have received some sort of official patronage. The Abbasids, it will be recalled from the previous chapter, rose to power using the claims and symbols of Ali’s partisans, but, the sources say, Jaʿfar al-Sadiq eventually was harassed by the caliphs and even held in a Kufan prison. Sources also speak of his academic gifts, and it is said that many renowned scholars and jurists were his disciples, including Abu Hanifa and Malik ibn Anas, two of the founding fathers of Sunni law schools that bear their name. According to Shiʿis, he met the same fate as the majority of the Imams: poisoning under the orders of the reigning caliph, who undoubtedly recognized and feared his power to lead.

The main function of the Imam, again largely according to later sources, is to provide his followers with the proper direction in the law and to guide them toward a spiritual understanding of religious truths. The Imams were and still are regarded as God’s gift to creation; they possess a cosmic significance, and miraculous powers are often attributed to them.

The position of what would eventually crystallize as Sunni Islam contends that with the death of Muhammad, both the prophetic function and specific individuals’ sense of guidance toward God largely ended. In contrast, what would eventually emerge as official Shiʿi doctrine is the notion that although the prophetic function may well have ended, the need to guide humans and to explain the contents of the divine teaching continued through the line of the Imams.

The Imams accordingly take on a quasi-mystical significance for Shiʿis. They are referred to as the “proof of God” (hujjat Allah) to humans and the “sign of God” (ayat Allah, or ayatollah) on earth. The Imam, then, is essentially the living successor to the Prophet, the person who embodies, in theory if not in actual practice, all political authority and sovereignty. According to the sixth Imam, Jaʿfar al-Sadiq, for example, “We are the ones to whom God has made obedience obligatory. The people will not prosper unless they recognize us, and the people will not be excused if they are ignorant of us. He who has recognized us is a believer [mumin] and he who has denied us is an unbeliever [kafir]. He who neither recognizes nor denies us is in error unless he returns to the right guidance which God has made obligatory for him. And if he dies in a state of error, God will do with him what he wishes.”¹⁰

According to later tradition, the Imams possess a body of literature that no one else has, such as a book said to have been revealed by Jibril (the angel Gabriel) to Fatima to console her on the death of her father and a copy of the Quran personally transcribed by Ali that includes his commentary. The special powers and unique literary tradition that are perceived to be part and parcel of the Imamate enable those who hold its office to have a special gnosis, or knowledge, of one of Islam’s great mysteries: the Name of God. In words attributed to Ali, “Our Lord has given to us knowledge of the Greatest Name, through which, were we to want to, we would render asunder the heavens and the earth and paradise and hell; through it we ascend to heaven and descend to earth and we travel to the East and to the West until we reach the Throne [of God] and sit upon it before God and He gives us all things, even the heavens, the earth, the sun, the moon and stars, the mountains, the trees, the paths, the seas, heaven and hell.”¹¹

The Twelfth Imam has a date of birth but not of death and also, not coincidentally, has the same name as the Prophet: Abu al-Qasim Muhammad. According to Shiʿi tradition, the Twelfth Imam is said to have gone into occultation or hiding (ghayba) and will return at the end of time. The lesser ghayba is the time the Imam lived a human life, after which he entered the greater ghayba, which will last until the arrival of the messianic age.

According to later tradition, the Twelfth Imam made only one public appearance, at the death of his predecessor, and none of the notables knew of his birth. When the eleventh Imam’s brother was about to assume the mantle of the Imamate, he entered his brother’s house to lead the funeral prayers, but a young boy suddenly appeared and said, “Uncle, stand back! For it is more fitting for me to lead the prayers for my father than you.”¹² The boy was never seen again, and from this point the occultation is marked.

Much mythical speculation would grow around the identity of the Twelfth Imam. According to various later Shiʿi accounts, he was the son of the eleventh Imam and a Christian slave girl or the daughter of the Byzantine emperor or a descendent of Peter. Such stories undoubtedly tried to connect evolving Shiʿi apocalypticism to the figure of Jesus, who figures highly in Islamic eschatological speculation.¹³ The Twelfth Imam is the Mahdi (Guide) who will reveal himself in the messianic era. According to some texts, when the Mahdi arises, “he will experience as a result of the ignorance of the people worse than what the Apostle of God experienced at the hands of the ignorant people of the Time of Ignorance because the Apostle of God came to a people who worshipped stones and wood but the [Mahdi] will come to a people who will interpret the Book of God against him and will bring forward proofs against him. When the flag of the [Mahdi] is raised, the people of both East and West will curse it.” Or, “When the [Mahdi] arises, he will rule with justice and will remove injustice in his days. The roads will be safe and the earth will show forth its bounties. Everything due will be returned to its rightful owner. And no people of religion will remain who do not show forth submission and acknowledge belief…. And he will judge among the people with the judgment of David and Muhammad…. At that time men will not find anywhere to give their alms or to be generous because riches will encompass all.”¹⁴

Historically speaking, it is most likely that the concept of a hidden Imam became a safer alternative for the partisans of Ali to develop as a group. As long as there was a living Imam, he continually posed a threat to the ruling authorities, who were increasingly identifying themselves with the emerging Sunni legal schools (see chapter 6). The occultation became a convenient way for Shiʿis to remain loyal to the idea of an Imam and thereby define their own identity as distinct from other Muslims and at the same time to partake of the larger Muslim state. In this regard, another common feature of Shiʿism is the notion of taqiyya (pious dissimulation), a concept that sanctions the concealing of one’s true religious identity or convictions in the face of adversity.

Although the Abbasids would quickly renounce their sympathies with the followers of Ali, there would soon arise other dynasties with real commitments to Shiʿi ideology. Indeed, in the eleventh century, many of the dynasties in the splintered Abbasid Empire were, at least in name, Shiʿite. For instance, the rulers of the Fatimid dynasty (909–1171) in Egypt and the Buyid dynasty (tenth and eleventh centuries) in Iran and Iraq were Shiʿite, although it is highly unlikely that the majority of inhabitants in those areas was.

The major “denomination” of Shiʿism that exists today is the Ithna Ashariyya (Twelvers), although they refer to themselves as “Imamis.” This moniker refers to a certain cross-section of the partisans of Ali that eventually coalesced into a cohesive group who acknowledged the Twelve Imams and their authority and who held that the Twelfth Imam was hidden and was the Mahdi. Other partisans of Ali had identified some of the earlier Imams with the Mahdi, and for this reason it is important not to ascribe Twelver doctrine to the period before the last Imam’s occultation.

Twelvers really built a new paradigm of leadership within Islam by concentrating authority on a particular individual. As we have seen, this authority began to develop under Jaʿfar al-Sadiq in the mid-eighth century and was taken to its logical conclusions by Shiʿi jurists and legal theorists after the occultation of the Twelfth Imam in the ninth century. As the Imam became less and less active in Muslim society, more and more Shiʿites had to become involved in leading the community. This process led to an intricate system of agents (wikala) who represented the authority of the Imam within various Shiʿi communities. Many of these agents were scholars and were responsible for collecting taxes and for developing and interpreting the law.¹⁵

Although the Imams had always had around them a set of agents, by the time of the Twelfth Imam there was in place a large system of such agents who probably represented many competing factions. After the occultation, these agents were responsible for the community’s legal, religious, and fiscal sustenance.¹⁶ In many ways, today’s ayatollahs are the modern incarnation of these medieval agents because they are responsible for the maintenance of the tradition during the greater occultation. The title ayatollah (literally, “sign of God”) is an explicitly Shiʿi designation. Contrary to popular belief, there are no ayatollahs in Sunni Islam.

According to some estimates, roughly 15 percent of today’s Muslims are Shiʿites. Of this group, roughly 90 percent are Twelvers. The largest populations may be found in Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon. A general rule of thumb to remember is that Shiʿis in general and Twelvers in particular have for most of their history been largely politically quiescent, awaiting the return of the last Imam.

Not all Shiʿis are Twelvers. There exist other denominations, and their existence is based on tracing their lineage through a different line of authority. Ismaʿil, the eldest son of Jaʿfar al-Sadiq, was appointed by his father to be the next Imam, but he died before his father did, which created a problem: How could Jaʿfar al-Sadiq be wrong in his choice of successor? And why wasn’t one of Ismaʿil’s sons chosen to be Imam instead of Musa al-Kazim? Although the majority of those who would later be designated “Shiʿis” would settle on Musa, a significant group argued that Ismaʿil and his offspring were the legitimate descendents of Jaʿfar al-Sadiq. This gave rise to the Ismaʿilis, sometimes also referred to as “Seveners” because Ismail was seventh in line.

The main doctrines of the Ismaʿilis—sometimes also referred to in later Muslims sources by the pejorative name “Batiniyya” (Esotericists)—is to get humans to move from the exoteric or obvious (zahir) expression of religious truth to the hidden or esoteric (batin) expression. This movement corresponds to a movement from law (sharia) to its eternal core (haqiqa). An elaborate cosmology also arose around this movement.

As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, it is important not to think of Shiʿism as a heterodox movement that departed from a normative and thus orthodox Sunnism. It should by now be clear that Sunnism and Shiʿism represent two distinct ideological positions on key issues such as legitimacy, authority, and succession. But neither ideology, despite practitioners’ claims to the contrary, was there at the death of Muhammad. Although we get a glimpse of both positions at the Portico of the Banu Saʿida, what would emerge as Sunnism and Shiʿism did so at roughly the same time, and, perhaps not surprisingly because the very nature of legitimate authority was at stake, each developed its positions in response to the other.

As we have seen, the most distinctive aspect of Shiʿism is its emphasis on Muhammad’s line of descent and its location of this line in the institution of the Imamate. As it would take shape, especially in the aftermath of the formation of Twelver Shiʿism, the Imam became a cosmic individual, existent from the beginning of time. At work here is the notion that the world, even before the emergence of Shiʿism as a historical movement, needs the Imam for guidance. There has never been, according to Shiʿis, a time without an Imam. Even after the Imam became “hidden in the books,” as it were, he is believed to watch over his community still. This symbology was heavily exploited in the Iranian Revolution in 1979 (see chapter 9).

Despite the sectarian milieu within the early umma, partisans of Ali never really (for the most part) argued that the Quran had been tampered with. Remember that later tradition put the codification of the Quran in the hands of Uthman, who, in later Shiʿi tradition, represents one of the earliest to take the caliphate from its rightful claimants. This tradition further corroborates the point, however, that Sunnism and Shiʿism parted ways—at least on theological grounds—at a time when the text of the Quran was readily established and agreed upon.

Where Shiʿis do differ from other Muslims, however, is in the existence of a distinct body of hadith literature. As we saw in chapter 2, hadiths are written reports that recount some activity or saying of Muhammad. Whether we consider hadiths valid historical sources or not, Shiʿis possess a large body of hadiths that they trace back to or through the various Imams. Again, however, much of this literature does not have a provenance before the ninth century.

As worked out in later Shiʿi legal theory of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, scholars took over all the duties of the occulted Imam. Ayatollahs largely interpret what they perceive to be the will of the Twelfth Imam through legal reasoning as a largely theological or textual construct. As becomes clear in chapter 6, however, much of Shiʿi legal thought parallels that of the various Sunni schools.