COLLECTION AND TRANSMISSION

The emergence of an independent body of Shī'ī Ḥadīth can be traced back to the first half of the second/eighth century. By that time the rift between Shī'īs, and non-Shī'īs, which had originated in a politico-religious controversy regarding the succession to Muhammad, had resulted in bloody battles and merciless persecutions. Almost all Shī‘īs shared an unbounded admiration for Alī b. Abī Tālib, a conviction that he was the legitimate ruler after the death of the Prophet, and a belief that all legitimate rulers after ‘Alī were to be found among his descendants. These legitimist claims received an additional impetus with the martyrdom at Karbalā' of ‘Alī's son Husayn and his entourage (Muharram 61/October 680). But beyond such unifying factors, Shī‘īsm was beset from the outset by numerous splits and schisms. Some Shī'īs, including the forerunners of the Zaydī sect, believed in an armed struggle against the ruling Umayyads. They united behind the person of Zayd b. ‘Alī, a grandson of Husayn b. ‘Alī b. Alī Talib, who was soon defeated and killed (122/740). Shī‘īs were also recruited by the ‘Abbasids, and contributed significantly to the overthrow of the Umayyads. There were, furthermore, assorted Shī‘ī groups, disparagingly referred to as “Extremists” (ghuldh) by later generations, who tended to deify ‘Alī, and who sometimes entertained notions such as incarnation and metempsychosis. Yet the Shī‘ī branch which eventually constituted the largest and most significant sect within Shī‘īsm was also, during the Umayyad and most of the ‘Abbasid periods, the most quiescent.