Early development
The origins of the split between the Sunnis and the Shiʿah lie in the events which followed the death of the Prophet Muhammad. Muhammad was understood to be the messenger of God who, in the early 7th century ce, commenced to proclaim the Qurʾān, the sacred scripture of Islam, to the Arabs. In the 620s Muhammad and his followers were driven from his hometown of Mecca and settled in Medina. About a decade later, when he appeared at Mecca with a large army, the Meccans surrendered the city to him. In 632 the Prophet became ill and died. Muhammad’s role as God’s messenger was the basis of his political and military authority.
The earliest sources agree that on his deathbed Muhammad did not formally designate a successor or make public a plan for succession. Some members of the ummah (Muslim community) held that God had intended for that spiritual link, and the political and military authority associated with it, to continue via Muhammad’s family. Thus, they held, ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib—the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law—should have been the Prophet’s immediate successor and, thereafter, members of ʿAlī’s family. Others, however, maintained that with Muhammad’s death the link between God and humankind had ended and the community was to make its own way forward.
At the Prophet’s death certain members of the ummah—then composed of those who had left Mecca for Medina with him and those Medinans who later converted to Islam—met and chose Abū Bakr as Muhammad’s successor (khalīfah, or caliph). Abū Bakr in turn designated ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb as his successor. After ʿUmar’s assassination in Medina in 644, ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān was chosen as the third caliph. Amid charges of corruption, ʿUthmān himself was also killed, in 656. Following his death, delegations of the earlier Meccan and later Medinan Muslims, as well as Muslims from key provinces in the by now quite large Muslim empire, asked ʿAlī to become the fourth caliph. He accepted and made Kūfah, in modern-day Iraq, his capital.
Opposition to ʿAlī’s leadership quickly arose from ʿUthmān’s clan, the Umayyads, and from others who were angry at ʿAlī’s failure to pursue ʿUthmān’s murderers. In 656 a group of challengers to ʿAlī, led by Muhammad’s third wife, ʿĀʾishah, were defeated at the Battle of the Camel by ʿAlī and forces from Kūfah. Muʿāwiyah ibn Abī Sufyān, an Umayyad and the governor of Syria, refused to pledge allegiance to ʿAlī.
In 657, at the Battle of Ṣiffīn, ʿAlī agreed to arbitration with Muʿāwiyah, effectively conceding his claim to be the sole leader of the Muslim community. A further meeting in 659 led to a split in the caliphate: some, especially Syrian, elements declared for Muʿāwiyah, while others, especially Iraq-based elements, supported ʿAlī. ʿAlī’s willingness to negotiate his status created resentment among his followers and gave rise to a renegade movement known as the Khārijites for their withdrawal (khurūj) from ʿAlī’s following. In 661 a member of this movement attacked ʿAlī, who died two days later. Muʿāwiyah was then recognized as caliph, even in regions that had been supportive of ʿAlī.
The term shīʿah itself means “party” or “faction,” and the term first appears with reference to those who followed ʿAlī in the wars that he fought as caliph against the Umayyads.
In these years the family of the Prophet (Ahl al-Bayt) continued to be the focus of attention for alternative leadership among those within the ummah who were upset with several aspects of Umayyad rule. One such aspect, for example, was the acceptance of non-Arab converts to Islam (called mawālī) drawn from among Iranians, Turks, Egyptians, Indians, Aramaeans, and other non-Arabs. The mawālī, even after their conversion, were still required to pay the head or “poll” tax (jizyah) required of non-Muslims. They also paid a higher rate of land tax (kharāj). The number of mawālī grew as the empire expanded, and many were settled in Iraq, especially in Kūfah. Tribal elements from southern Arabia—where, prior to Islam, dynasty-based kingly succession had been common—also were sympathetic to the notion that the Prophet’s family should continue to have a special role in the life of the ummah.
Indeed, the Qurʾān itself, collected and collated only during the reign of ʿUthmān, contained references to the special place of the families of prophets previously sent by God. The term Ahl al-Bayt, which refers to Muhammad’s family in particular, appears in Qurʾān 33:33, for example. In various authoritative statements (Hadith) ascribed to the Prophet, Muhammad himself spoke of special roles for ʿAlī in the life of the community. Some Sunni collections of the Prophet’s statements include the report that Muhammad stated that he was leaving behind “two precious things” (thaqalayn) that, if followed, would produce no errors: the first was the Qurʾān itself and the second was Ahl al-Bayt. Shiʿi sources also say that the Prophet designated ʿAlī his successor at Ghadīr Khumm in 632 when he said, “Whoever takes me as his mawlā, ʿAlī shall be his mawlā.” The exact meaning of mawlā in this saying—and whether it refers to a leadership role—remains a matter of dispute.
At ʿAlī’s death some of his supporters therefore transferred their allegiance to ʿAlī’s two sons through Fāṭimah, the Prophet’s daughter. His son Ḥasan abandoned any efforts to promote his own caliphate. In the aftermath of Muʿāwiyah’s death in April/May 680, ʿAlī’s younger son, Ḥusayn, refused to pledge fealty to Muʿāwiyah’s son and successor Yazīd. At the request of supporters in his father’s capital city of Kūfah, Ḥusayn left Arabia for that city. Nevertheless, the Kufans failed to rally to Ḥusayn’s cause as he and his small band of followers approached the city. The Prophet’s grandson and most of his retinue were killed by Umayyad forces at Karbala, now also in Iraq, in October 680.
Following the death of Ḥusayn, Kūfah witnessed a series of anti-Umayyad Shiʿi risings. In 685 al-Mukhtār ibn Abī ʿUbayd al-Thaqafī, a nephew of one of ʿAlī’s governors, rose to proclaim Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥanafiyyah—ʿAlī’s only remaining son by a later wife, Khawlah bint Jaʿfar al-Ḥanafiyyah—as imam (spiritual and political leader) and as the messianic figure called the mahdī. Al-Mukhtār’s identification of Ibn al-Ḥanafiyyah as the mahdī marked the first use of that term in a messianic context. After some initial victories, al-Mukhtār’s rising was crushed in 687. Ibn al-Ḥanafiyyah himself died in 700–01. Some maintained, however, that he had not died and was in occultation (ghaybah)—that is, alive but not visible to the community.
Anti-Umayyad movements: the Zaydi Shiʿah and the ʿAbbāsids
Mawālī and South Arabian tribal elements were among Muḥammad’s supporters, but they also supported a series of later uprisings centred on the Prophet’s family that occurred in the region into the 8th century.
One of these risings was led by Zayd ibn ʿAlī, a half-brother of ʿAlī’s great grandson Muḥammad al-Bāqir by ʿAlī’s son Ḥusayn. In 740, encouraged by Kufan elements, Zayd rose against the Umayyads, on the principle that the imam could lay claim to leadership only if he openly declared himself imam. Zayd fell in battle, but his son Yaḥyā escaped to northeastern Iran. Later captured and released, he was killed in 743 after launching a further anti-Umayyad rising in Herat. The Zaydis survive today, mainly in Yemen, and are the third largest of the three still extant Shiʿi groups, after the Twelver and Ismāʿīliyyah sects.
Another movement, the ʿAbbāsids, launched a propaganda campaign about 718 that took advantage of currents desiring to replace the Umayyads with the Prophet’s family. Its focus was not on ʿAlī’s family, however, but on ʿAbbās ibn ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, an uncle of the Prophet. With much support from the mawālī and from supporters of ʿAlī’s family, the ʿAbbāsids succeeded in unseating the Umayyads in 750. The ʿAbbāsid dynasty went on to empower the mawālī but abandoned loyalists to ʿAlī’s family, whose ideological leanings might challenge the legitimacy of the dynasty. Thus, while the ʿAbbāsid movement initially excited Shiʿi sentiments, it ultimately rejected and suppressed the faction. After a glimmer of hope, some of the Shiʿah reasserted the understanding that the leadership of the ummah could only lay with a particular member of ʿAlī’s family.
