1 Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths (New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1964), p. xi.
2 A few terms should be introduced here for the benefit of the reader with little familiarity with Arabic. "Shi'a" is the (uninflected) noun, "Shi'i" is the (nisba) adjective, and "Shi'ism" is the English term for the whole of this branch of Islam. In places these terms are somewhat interchangeable, and I chose arbitrarily. Also, I have used the phrase "Shi'a studies" though perhaps it is not always the most felicitous. It is meant to signify studies on Shi'ism, not necessarily studies by Shi'is. Where necessary I will be more explicit in distinguishing between the two.
As another note, the variance between the diacritical system used in the footnotes and in the body of the text was unavoidable.
3 Bernard Lewis, History: Remembered Recovered, Invented (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), p. 54.
4 Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. "Consensus." Accessed from the Internet (Linkname: OED Logo Oxford English Dictionary; URL: http://www.epas.utoronto.ca:8080/oed/oed.html).
5 Moojan Momen, An Introduction to Shi'i Islam (Oxford: George Ronald, 1985), pp. 45-54. Cf. also Muhammad b. 'Abd al-Karim Shahrastani, Livre des religions et des sectes, vol. 1, trans. Daniel Gimaret and Guy Monnot (Peeters: Unesco, 1986), pp. 435-566.
6 I will use the terms Shi'ism and Sunnism throughout this paper, but this is simply out of convenience. Speaking objectively, neither the term Shi'ism nor Sunnism can really be applied until at least the third century A.H.; the only proper way to refer to the future Shi'is is with the term 'Alids, "followers of 'Ali." This, of course, is precisely the issue I am examining, for Shi'is claim that their party can be traced back to the time of the Prophet himself.
7 Momen, Shi'i Islam, p. 23.
8 The former he entitles "The Lives of the Imams and Early Divisions among the Shi'is," ibid. pp. 23-60, and the latter is "Early History of Shi'i Islam," ibid. pp. 61-85.
9 "Fiction" is from Latin fictió, from fictus, past participle of fingere, to form, which, though a different word from "facéré," has a similar meaning.
10 Cf. below, p. 5 and pp. 7f.
11 Eric J. Sharpe, Comparative Religion: A History (Open Court, La Salle, Illinois, 1986), p. 37.
12 Cf. Sharpe, Comparative Religion, chapter 7, "Religion, Comparative and Absolute," pp. 144-173.
13 Udo Schaefer, "Muhammad and the West," in The Light Shineth in Darkness: Five Studies in Revelation after Christ (George Ronald, Oxford, 1979), p. 136.
14 Cf. Inferno, Canto 28, vs. 10-12.
15 Schaefer, The Light Shineth, p. 136.
16 Kenneth Cragg, The Call of the Minaret (Oxford University Press, New York, 1964), p. 186.
17 Schaefer, The Light Shineth, p. 135, n. 481.
18 Though I do not quote from it here, I would like to point out to the reader the most complete survey of this topic available. It is Etan Kohlberg's "Western Studies of Shi'a Islam," in Martin Kramer, ed., Shi'ism, Resistance, and Revolution (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1987), pp. 31-46, also found under the same title in Belief and Law in Imami Shi'ism (Hampshire, U.K.: Variorum, 1991), article II.
19 Dwight M. Donaldson, The Shi'ite [sic] Religion: A History of Islam in Persia and Irak [sic] (Luzac and Company, London, 1933), p. vii. Cf. also Joseph Eliash, 'Ali b. Abi Talib in Ithna-'Ashari Shi'i Belief (Doctoral thesis, University of London, 1966), p. 14.
20 Cf. Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, The Divine Guide in Early Shi'ism, trans. David Streight (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), p. 2f.
21 Heinz Halm, Shiism (Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 1991), p. 3.
22 Garcin de Tassy, quoted in Amir-Moezzi, The Divine Guide, p. 80.
23 Amir-Moezzi, The Divine Guide, p. 80. Though it was initially suspected to be a Shi'i sura, this has been disproved. See my "The Shi'i Qur'an: An Examination of Western Scholarship," (Unpublished paper, The University of Toronto, 1995), pp. 15-19.
24 Amir-Moezzi, The Divine Guide, p. 1.
25 Halm, Shiism, p. 3.
26 'Allamah Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Tabataba'i, Shi'ah Dar Islam, trans. Seyyed Hossein Nasr as Shi'ite Islam (State University of New York Press, Albany, 1975), p. 17 and n. 14.
27 Halm considers Momen's An Introduction to Shi'i Islam to have surpassed Donaldson's in usefulness. (Halm, Shiism, p. 3).
28 Alessandro Bausani, in Forward to Momen, Shi'i Islam, p. xi.
29 Seyyed Hossein Nasr, et al, eds. Shi'ism: Doctrines, Thought, and Spirituality (State University of New York Press, New York, 1988), p. 1.
30 Abdulaziz A. Sachedina, The Just Ruler in Shi'ite Islam: The Comprehensive Authority of the Jurist in Imamate Jurisprudence (Oxford University Press, New York, 1988), p. viii.
31 Daftary, Farhad, "Origins and early development of Shi'ism," in The Isma'ilis: Their History and Doctrines (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 32-90.
32 Halm, Shiism, p. 4.
33 Momen, Shi'i Islam, p. xv.
34 Halm, Shiism, p. 2.
35 See my "The Shi'i Qur'an."
36 Some sources name both 'Ali and Abu Bakr as being first; Momen reconciles the discrepancy by pointing out that what is likely meant is that, while 'Ali was first believer, Abu Bakr was the first adult to follow Muhammad. Momen, Shi'i Islam, p. 325, note 2.
37 Donaldson claims that it appears that 'Ali seriously considered pressing his claims even at this early stage, (Donaldson, The Shi'ite Religion, p. 12) but Momen counters that, though 'Ali was urged to do so, he refused. (Momen, Shi'i Islam, p. 18).
38 Hugh Kennedy, The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates (Longman, London, 1986), p. 70.
39 Donaldson, The Shi'ite Religion, p. 21.
40 Momen, Shi'i Islam, p. 22. It must be pointed out that some scholars disagree with this statement. Cf. Halm, Shiism, p. 8: "'Ali's Caliphate was disputed from the very beginning."
41 Halm, Shiism, p. 8.
42 Momen, Shi'i Islam, p. 28.
43 Quoted in Halm, Shiism, p. 15.
44 Ayatollah Lutfollah Saafi Golpayegani, "A Reply to 'Belief of Mahdism in Shia Imamia': A response to Sachedina's Islamic Messianism," trans. Dr. Hasan Najafi and ed. K. Najafi. (Toronto: I.H.A., no impress date), p. 17.
45 Wehr gives, as possible meanings for ghadir, pond, pool, puddle; stream, brook, creek, river. Hans Wehr, Arabic-English Dictionary (Ithaca, NY: Spoken Language Services, 1976), s.v. ghadir.
46 The following account is culled from four Shi'i sources: Tabataba'i, Shi'ite Islam, pp. 68f., notes 6-9; Mohammad Amir Haider Khan, ed. The Right Path, vol. I [A collection of letters between the Shi'a Syed Abd-al-Husain Sharafuddeen and the Sunni Shaikh Saleem al-Bashari.] (Karachi: Peermahomed Ebrahim Trust, 1959), pp. 191-214; Hassan al-Amin, Islamic Shi'ite Encyclopedia, vol. 1 (Beirut: SLIM Press, 1970), pp. 250f.; and Mahmood Shehabi, "Shi'a," in Kenneth W. Morgan, ed., Islam, the Straight Path: Islam interpreted by Muslims (New York: Ronald Press Co., 1958), pp. 180-223.
47 [Arabic]
48 al-Amin, Islamic Shi'ite Encyclopedia, vol. 1, p. 215.
49 Tabataba'i, Shi'ite Islam, p. 40, and p. 68, note 7, respectively.
50 Khan, The Right Path, vol. I, p. 207.
51 Cf. Khan, The Right Path, vol. I, p. 198ff.
52 Though al-Amini writes that the Ghadir Khumm did occur on 18 Dhu'l-Hijja (Eliash, 'Ali b. Abi Talib, p. 144), it is probable that this date was chosen, not because it is certain that the event occurred on this day, but because some Shi'i scholars concluded that it was most probably on this day that 'Ali succeeded 'Uthman to the caliphate. Eliash, ibid., p. 135, note 3.
53 The festival was first institutionalized by Mu'izzu'd-Dawla in Baghdad in 962. Interestingly, the Sunnis promptly retaliated by creating festivals of their own, namely in commemoration of Abu Bakr's stay in the cave and the death of Mus'ab ibn al-Zubayr, the defeater of Mukhtar. Cf. Eliash, 'Ali b. Abi Talib, pp. 137ff., note 7, and Momen, Shi'i Islam, p. 82, note.
54 Quoted in Khan, The Right Path, vol. I, p. 206.
55 Khan, The Right Path, vol. I, p. 194, note 2. Wehr adds that mawla can also mean protector, patron; client; charge; friend; companion, associate. With the definite article, al-mawla, it can also signify Lord or God. Wehr, Arabic-English Dictionary, s.v. maulan. (Cf. note 58.) This term has had a number of different technical meanings specific to different periods of Islamic history, but, since these other meanings apply to events after 632, they are not relevant here.
56 Gimaret, trans. Shahrastani's Livre des religions, p. 479, note 16. I translate "Curiously, the Sunnis don't seem to dispute" this phrase.
57 Quoted in Khan, The Right Path, vol. I, p. 209f.
58 Cf. above, note 55. This point needs to be clarified. Wehr's is the only dictionary that explicitly lists this meaning of mawla. J. G. Hava's Arabic-English Dictionary, s.v. [ARABIC], lists only "lord, master," both lower case; E. W. Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon, s.v. [ARABIC], first lists "synonym of "[ARABIC]," and follows it with the English meanings "a lord or chief," again lower case; and Munir Ba'albaki's Modern English-Arabic Dictionary, s.v. "lord," lists as translations first sayyid and second mawla. Thus, Wehr is alone in explicitly stating that al-mawla means "the Lord, God," in upper case, and hence it must be pointed out that he could be incorrect. However, I think it more likely that he is correct, and that the other three dictionaries merely fail to mention said meaning. I draw this conclusion from the fact that al-sayyid is one of the ninety-nine names of Muhammad, and mawla, as a derivative of the name of God al-waliyyu, also indicates a divine meaning. Hence, I believe "the Lord, God" to be an accurate translation of al-mawla.
59 A common Sufi interpretation is that 'Ali's Lordship is spiritual, not political. While this interpretation is possible and valid, it is a speculation which the meanings of mawla do not necessarily justify.
60 The most extensive collection of Shi'i scholarship done to date is by Mujtahid Ayatu'llah 'Abd al-Husayn al-Amini al-Najafi, entitled [ARABIC], which I translate The (Event of) Ghadir in the Book, Tradition, and Literature. This work comprises a full eleven volumes, totaling several thousand pages.
61 Donaldson, The Shi'ite Religion, p. 4f., and Eliash, 'Ali b. Abi Talib, p. 134-154.
62 Encyclopaedia Islamica, 1913 sqq. ed. and 1960 ed., searching under "'Ali ibn. Abi Talib," "Shi'a," "Muhammad," "pen," "ink," "saqifa," "Banu Sa'ida," and "Sa'ida."
63 Gimaret, trans. Shahrastani's Livre des religions, p. 479, note 16. I translate: "Note, however, that in this occurrence [of the Ghadir Khumm] the Imamiyyas draw their argument from that which the Prophet had declared immediately prior--resorting to a term with the same root of WLY [[ARABIC], the root of both mawla and awla] to be the worthiest of all the believers."
64 Cf. Eliash, 'Ali b. Abi Talib, p. 153 and Donaldson, The Shi'ite Religion, p. 2.
65 Gimaret, trans. Shahrastani's Livre des religions, p. 479, note 16. I translate: "The authenticity of this enigmatic phrase isn't contested. That which is contested, evidently, is the interpretation that the Imamiyyas have given it."
66 Encyclopaedia Islamica, 2nd ed., s.v. Ghadir Khumm, p. 993. Italics added.
67 Eliash, 'Ali b. Abi Talib, p. 141 and p. 142, note 19.
68 Eliash, 'Ali b. Abi Talib, p. 142.
69 See section 3.2, below.
70 John L. Esposito, Islam: The Straight Path (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 84.
71 Literally "agreement," form IV masdar, from form I, "to gather."
72 Cf. Momen, Shi'i Islam, p. 153ff., "The Conferment of the Imamate by Designation or Covenant."
73 Encyclopaedia Islamica, 1913 sqq. ed., s.v. "'Ali b. Abi Talib," p. 284.
74 Muhammad Ben 'Abd al-Karîm Shahrastâni, Les dissidences de l'islam, trans. Jean-Claude Vadet (Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner S.A., 1984), p. 146. I translate "[al-Nazzam] declare[d] that there is no such thing as the imamate without an express and clearly-appointed designation displayed in an open and public fashion." (I am using this statement of Shahrastani's without implying thereby that al-Nazzam was either pro- or anti-Shi'a. Though Shahrastani claims that al-Nazzam had "tendences pro-rafidites," Gimaret demonstrates that "l'attribution a [Nazzam] des positions imamites traditionelles (la designation de l'imam par nass et ta'yin, et que'Ali a fait l'objet d'un nass zahir...) paraît être une pure invention de [Shahrastani]." Gimaret, trans. Shahrastani's Livre des religions, 210, and 211, note 50. I quote Shahrastani's al-Nazzam to cite the objection in the general, not to draw conclusions about al-Nazzam's views. For a full explanation of certain Muslim views of al-Nazzam, written by a Muslim, see Abu-Mansur 'Abd-al-Kahir ibn-Tahir al-Baghdadi, Moslem Schisms and Sects, trans. Kate Chambers Seelye (New York: Ams Press, Inc., 1966), pp. 135ff.
75 The following account is taken from al-Bukhari's "genuine" (sahih) collection of hadiths, accessed from the Internet (Linkname: Hadith Bukhari (English Translation); URL: http://www.isnet.org/cgi-bin/hadith/bukhari), trans. and ed. anonymous, Volume 1, Book 3, Number 114.
76 Quoted in al-Amin, Islamic Shi'ite Encyclopedia, vol. 1, p. 254.
77 Quoted in Khan, The Right Path, vol. II, p. 25.
78 Khan, The Right Path, vol. II, p 33, note.
79 Quoted in Eliash, 'Ali b. Abi Talib, p. 84ff.
80 See Tabataba'i, Shi'ite Islam, page 69, note 11, for more, and full, references.
81 Momen, Shi'i Islam, p. 15.
82 7:157 and 62:2.
83 Donaldson, The Shi'ite Religion, p. 46.
84 E.g. Daftary, The Isma'ilis; Philip K. Hitti, History of the Arabs: From the Earliest Times to the Present (London: The MacMillan Press Ltd., 1970); Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam. vol. 1: The Classical Age of Islam (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1974); and W. Montgomery Watt, The Formative Period in Islamic Thought (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1973).
85 al-Hilli, quoted in Eliash, 'Ali b. Abi Talib, p. 85.
86 Eliash quotes from Rodwell's interpretation, citing it as verse 5:60, and he only mentions that part of the verse cited above. (Eliash, 'Ali b. Abi Talib, p. 21). This is unfortunate. First, he uses a translation with nonstandard numbering. The standard Cairene redaction numbers this as verses 5:55-56. Two, he leaves off the most important segment. The Qur'an continues "... As to those who turn to Allah, His Messenger, and the believers,--it is the party of Allah that must certainly triumph." (5:56, revised Yusuf Ali translation) The key term here for Shi'is is [ARABIC], "party" of God, which they interpret to be a clear prefigurement of the shi'at 'Ali, "party" of 'Ali.
87 Eliash, 'Ali b. Abi Talib, p. 92, and Tabari, quoted in ibid., p. 152, respectively.
88 Comment on Sahih Bukhari, Volume 1, Book 3, Number 114. (See note 75.) The author of this statement says nothing more than this, and so I do not understand clearly what exactly his or her point is.
89 The following account is culled from Momen, Shi'i Islam, pp. 18ff.; Donaldson, The Shi'ite Religion, pp. 10-13; and al-Amin, Islamic Shi'ite Encyclopedia, vol. 3, pp. 42-45.
90 Though I only mention the muhajirun and the ansar, there was actually a number of competing claimant groups. al-Amin describes five of these. Cf. al-Amin, Islamic Shi'ite Encyclopedia, vol. 3, pp. 42-43.
91 S. Husain M. Jafri, Origins and Early Development of Shi'a Islam (Librairie du Liban, London, 1979), pp. 37-57, presents a full review of the facts of the event as well as a discussion of various reportages of it. In sum, he finds that, but for minor details, all accounts of the event agree. Cf. also Momen, Shi'i Islam, p. 18.
92 Momen, Shi'i Islam, p. 20.
93 Sharafuddeen, 63. Cf. also Donaldson, The Shi'ite Religion, p. 13.
94 Quoted in Sharafuddeen, vol. 2, p. 61.
95 al-Amin, Islamic Shi'ite Encyclopedia, vol. 3, p. 44.
96 Shehabi, "Shi'a," p. 189.
97 Quoted in Donaldson, The Shi'ite Religion, p. 12.
98 Donaldson, The Shi'ite Religion, p. 12.
99 Sharafuddeen, vol. 2, 62.
100 Momen, Shi'i Islam, pp. 19f.
101 Daftary, The Isma'ilis, p. 37.
102 Marshall G. S. Hodgson, "How did the Early Shi'a Become Sectarian?" (Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 75, 1955, pp. 1-13), p. 2.
103 Montgomery W. Watt, The Majesty that was Islam (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1974), p. 68. The Encyclopaedia Islamica expresses a clearly-defined opinion on this: "There was... a Shi'at 'Ali... at the very latest immediately after the death of the Prophet." Encyclopaedia Islamica, 2nd. ed., s.v. "Shi'a," p. 350.
104 Shahrastani, in Vadet, trans. Shahrastâni's, Les dissidences de l'islam, p. 146. I translate "Alone, 'Umar had wanted to keep things secret in order to make Abu Bakr's candidacy prevail on the day of the Saqifa." The reader may wonder why I am using three different translations of Shahrastani. I do not have the original available to me, and have to juggle the translations to find the most appropriate quotes to fit my context.
105 Etan Kohlberg, "Some Imami Shi'i views on the Sahaba", in Belief and Law in Imami Shi'ism (Hampshire, U.K.: Variorum, 1991, article IX), p. 146.
106 W. Montgomery Watt, "The Rafidites: A Preliminary Study" (Oriens, vol. 16, 1993, pp. 110-121), p. 112.
107 Kennedy, The Prophet, p. 52.
108 Watt, "The Rafidites," p. 112.
109 See above, note. 55.
110 See above, p. 28.
111 Momen, Shi'i Islam, p. 199.
112 This typology and the following exposition of it is drawn from Lewis, History: Remembered, Recovered, Invented, pp. 11ff.
113 Lewis, History, p. 50.
114 Momen, Shi'i Islam, pp. 61ff.
115 Bernard Lewis, "The Shi'a in Islamic History," in Martin Kramer, ed. Shi'ism, Resistance, and Revolution (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1987), p. 24.
116 Watt, The Majesty that was Islam, p. 66.
117 Montgomery W. Watt, "The Significance of the Early Stages of Imami Shi'ism," in Nikki R. Keddie, ed. Religion and Politics: Shi'ism from Quietism to Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), p. 21.
118 Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Islam in Modern History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), p. 120.
119 Cf. any study of linguistic theory from the death of Ferdinand Saussure (1857-1913) to the present.
120 Mark C. Taylor, Erring: A Postmodern A/theology (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984), p. 54.
121 Taylor, Erring, p. 66. Italics in original.
122 Taylor, Erring, p. 67.
123 See above, p. 9.
124 Cf. G. E. von Grunebaum, "Self-Image and Approach to History," in Bernard Lewis and P. M. Holt, eds., Historians of the Middle East (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), pp. 457-483.
125 Bernard Lewis, "The Shi'a in Islamic History," p. 24.
126 Momen, Shi'i Islam, p. 61.
127 Hodgson, "How did the Early Shi'a Become Sectarian?," p. 5.