Origins and Early Development of Shia Islam

BOOK ID

Title: Origins and early development of Shia Islam

Author(s): Sayyid Husayn Muhammad Jaafari

Publisher(s): Qum: The Group of Muslims

Category: Early Islamic History

Topic Tags: Islam Development history

Appearance: 332 p

Congress Classification: BP239/ج 7 الف 4 1300

Dewey decimal classification: 297/532

National bibliography number: م 79-4656

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سرشناسه : جعفري، حسين محمد، 1938 - م.

Jafri, S. Husain M

عنوان و نام پديدآور : Origins and early development of Shia Islam/ S. Husain M. Jafri.

مشخصات نشر : Qum: The Group of Muslims , [1996 - ] =13 .

مشخصات ظاهري : 332ص.

يادداشت : انگليسي.

آوانويسي عنوان : اٌريجينز...

موضوع : شيعيان -- تاريخ

رده بندي كنگره : BP239/ج 7 الف 4 1300

رده بندي ديويي : 297/532

شماره كتابشناسي ملي : م 79-4656

دسترسي و محل الكترونيكي : http://dl.nlai.ir/UI/230ea8b8-e8e6-4b3c-8ebd-f8c93a15db5e/Catalogue.aspx

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This full length text is a very detailed and comprehensive history of the early stages of Shi'ism. The author has extensively used primary historical sources as well as more recent academic works in order to present one of the most detailed accounts of early Shi'ism that is available in the English language today.

Chapter 1: Conceptual Foundations

The division of the community of Islam into Sunni and Shi'i branches has commonly been explained in terms of purely political differences. Its origins have been attributed to basically political partisanship with regard to the leadership of the Umma, a partisanship which later exploded into conflict in the civil war between 'Ali and Mu'awiya.

This war not only established the Umayyads in power, but also supposedly marked the advent of Shi'ism as a religious movement divergent from the main body of believers. Such an interpretation grossly oversimplifies a very complex situation.

Those who thus emphasize the political nature of Shi'ism are perhaps too eager to project the modern Western notion of the separation of church and state back into seventh. century Arabian society, where such a notion would be not only foreign, but completely unintelligible. Such an approach also implies the spontaneous appearance of Shi'ism rather than its gradual emergence and development within Islamic society.

The recent occidental conception of “a purely spiritual movement” is exceptional. Throughout most of human history religion has been

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