40 Fun Facts About Shia Islam

Iran marks the birth anniversary of Fatimah, on 20 Jumada II, as which national observance?

Mother's Day in Iran is tied to Fatimah's birthday because Shia tradition holds the Prophet's daughter up as the model for women, so the holiday drifts through the solar year with the lunar calendar.

Among Shia clerics, who otherwise wear white turbans, what does a black turban signal about its wearer?

Descent from Muhammad: a black turban marks its wearer as a sayyid, while every other Shia cleric wears white, so the colour announces a cleric's lineage and says nothing of his rank or learning.

Pew's 2009 study found Shia Muslims are 10–13% of all Muslims but a majority in Iran, Iraq and which former Soviet republic?

Azerbaijan owes its Shia majority to the Safavid shahs of Iran, who ruled it from the sixteenth century and made Shia Islam the state religion there.

The hereditary Imam of the Nizari Ismailis, a community of some 12–15 million people, is known by which title?

Aga Khan was first granted by Iran's Fath-Ali Shah to the 46th Imam, Hasan Ali Shah, who later revolted against the Iranian crown, was defeated and fled to India.

Which mountain fortress, seized by Hassan-i Sabbah in 1090, was the Nizari Ismaili headquarters until 1256?

Alamut was surrendered in 1256 to Hulegu's Mongols, who had been taking the Nizari castles of Iran one by one, and its fall ended the power of the sect in Iran.

What term names the practice, associated mainly with the Shia tradition, of concealing one's faith to escape danger?

Taqiyya rests on Quran 3:28, and it became tied to the Shia above all because they were so often persecuted, not least by the Sunni majority.

What do Twelver Shia call the small tablet of clay or soil on which many rest the forehead in prayer?

Turbah tablets are often pressed from the soil of Karbala, where Husayn was killed, because Twelver law has worshippers prostrate on earth or what grows from it, never on anything eaten or worn.

Which Ismaili movement based in eastern Arabia sacked Mecca in 930 and carried off the Black Stone?

Qarmatians held the Black Stone for ransom for about twenty years before it went back to the Kaaba.

The largest Shia branch groups the Prophet, his daughter and its Imams together as how many Infallibles?

Fourteen Infallibles: Muhammad, his daughter Fatima and the Twelve Imams. Twelvers hold all of them to be divinely kept from sin and error, which is why they treat their teaching as an authoritative guide.

Which sixth Imam, eponym of the Twelver law school, taught the Sunni jurists Abu Hanifa and Malik ibn Anas?

Ja'far al-Sadiq died in Medina in 765, and his following then fractured: the larger group followed his younger son and became the Twelvers, while partisans of his eldest son Isma'il became the Ismailis.

The title ayatollah, borne by senior Twelver jurists, is usually rendered into English as what?

Sign of God is the usual rendering of ayatollah, a title that only spread widely in the 20th century and that no office hands out: it is conferred on leading jurists by popular usage.

The messianic title Mahdi, central to Shia expectations of the end of time, translates from Arabic as what?

The Guided One is the literal sense of Mahdi. Twelvers identify him with their twelfth Imam, in concealment since the ninth century, which is why his other famous title is the Hidden Imam.

Which shah, crowned at Tabriz in 1501, made Twelver Shia Islam the official religion of his new Iranian state?

Ismail I was still in his early teens at his coronation, and he set about converting Iran's Sunni majority by force. The Ottomans ended his conquests at Chaldiran in 1514.

Which Shia branch, concentrated in northwestern Yemen, is typically considered the closest to Sunni Islam?

Zaydi Shia, unlike Twelvers and Ismailis, do not hold their Imams to be infallible: an Imam gains his knowledge by learning. Their name honours a grandson of Husayn whose revolt against the Umayyads failed.

Which group, founded in the ninth century by Ibn Nusayr and living mainly in Syria, is an offshoot of Shia Islam?

Alawites were long called Nusayris after their founder, a disciple of the tenth and eleventh Twelver Imams, and they form the dominant religious group along the Syrian coast. The older name is now often considered derogatory.

Which ethnic group of central Afghanistan, among the country's largest, is predominantly Shia Muslim?

Hazaras come from the central highlands known as Hazarajat, but decades of poverty and war have scattered many of them across Afghanistan and into neighbouring countries.

Pew's 2009 study found 68–80% of the world's Shia in four countries: Iran, Iraq, India and which other?

Pakistan's Shia are only 10–15% of its Muslims by Pew's estimate, yet at 17–26 million they form one of the largest Shia populations outside Iran, on a par with Iraq's and India's.

What term names a Shia seminary, the collective institution that trains clerics in cities such as Najaf?

Hawza is the collective name for a city's network of seminaries, each college within it a madrasa; Najaf's is often traced to the scholar al-Tusi, who settled there to teach after his Baghdad house was burned in sectarian riots.

Which Arabic term names the fixed-term marriage contract, duration set in advance, that Twelver law permits?

Mut'ah, Arabic for 'pleasure', is agreed by every legal school to have been practised in Muhammad's time. Most Sunni scholars hold that he later abrogated it, while Twelvers hold that he never did.

Which levy, Arabic for 'one-fifth', do Twelver Shia pay on yearly surplus income to a senior jurist?

Khums is paid on top of zakat. With the twelfth Imam out of reach, Twelvers hand it to a jurist of their own choosing, who receives it as the Imam's deputy.

What term, Arabic for 'visit', names a Shia pilgrimage to the shrine of an Imam, as distinct from the hajj?

Ziyarat is made in the hope of the Imam's intercession, and it is no minor rite: the yearly Arbaeen walk to Husayn's shrine at Karbala draws pilgrims by the million.

Which Iranian city holds the tomb of Fatima Masumeh, sister of the eighth Imam, and is a major seminary centre?

Qom became a pilgrim city after Fatima Masumeh fell ill and died there around 816, on her way to join her brother in Khorasan.

The Iranian shrine city of Mashhad takes its name from an Arabic word meaning what?

Place of martyrdom is the meaning of Mashhad, which was a small village on the Silk Road beside Tus before pilgrims settled around the Imam's burial place. It is now Iran's second-most-populous city.

Twelver Shia celebrate the birth of the hidden twelfth Imam on the fifteenth of which Islamic month?

Sha'ban's fifteenth night is kept by Sunni Muslims too, as a night of prayer for forgiveness; Twelvers add the twelfth Imam's birthday, though accounts of his birth date differ.

Which seventh Imam, whose succession Ismailis dispute, died in a Baghdad prison in 799 after years of detention?

Musa al-Kazim attracted the largest following after his father's death, and that following developed into Twelver Shi'ism. His grandson, the ninth Imam, lies beside him in their Baghdad shrine.

Which eighth Imam did the caliph al-Ma'mun name his heir in 817, switching the Abbasid colour from black to green?

Ali al-Rida's appointment backfired: Iraq rose in revolt against the caliph, and the Imam died the next year as the court headed back toward Baghdad.

Which ninth Imam succeeded his father at about seven, a succession many early Shia at first found controversial?

Muhammad al-Jawad was the son of the eighth Imam; he was betrothed as a boy to the caliph al-Ma'mun's daughter Umm al-Fadl and died in Baghdad in 835. Many came to recognise his learning.

The fifth Imam's title al-Baqir, short for baqir al-'ilm, describes him as doing what with knowledge?

Splitting it open, or bringing it to light, is one reading of al-Baqir; the other is 'the one who possesses great knowledge', both nods to his fame as a scholar. His idea of imamate rested on knowledge rather than political power.

Which book of supplications attributed to the fourth Imam is honoured as the 'Psalms of Muhammad's Household'?

Al-Sahifa al-Sajjadiyya ranks in Shia tradition behind only the Quran and Nahj al-Balagha, and its 54 prayers were handed down through so many chains of narrators that Shia scholars treat its attribution to the fourth Imam as secure.

The Fatimid caliphs ruled from Mahdia, a purpose-built capital on which modern country's coast, before conquering Egypt in 969?

Tunisia is where the Fatimid state began: its first caliph, an Ismaili imam living in hiding, was fetched from Sijilmasa in Morocco by the Berber army a missionary had raised for him.

What is the Nizari Ismaili prayer hall called, a Persian-derived name that literally means 'congregational place'?

Jamatkhana is not a Nizari word alone: other Ismaili branches and some Sufi orders of South Asia use it for their own gathering halls.

The Dawoodi Bohras, Tayyibi Ismailis based in Mumbai, take their name from a Gujarati word meaning what?

To trade: the name suits a community that grew up as a merchant class in western India and whose leader has his seat in the trading city of Mumbai.

Ismaili thought contrasts the zahir, the outward sense of scripture, with which term for its hidden, esoteric sense?

Batin gave Ismailism its historical name, Batiniyya, 'esotericism'; the split between outer and inner meaning is shared by many Shia and Sufis but stressed most by Ismailis. Ta'wil is the method of drawing the inner sense out.

Which school of Twelver law, favouring jurists' ijtihad, overtook the rival Akhbaris in the late 18th century?

Usuli dominance came when the scholar Behbahani led the school to rout the Akhbaris at Karbala and Najaf; Akhbaris held that the Quran and the hadith alone could yield law, with no room for a jurist's reasoning.

What term names the Shia doctrine that prophets and the Imams are immune from sin and error?

Ismah rests on an argument from trust: people would not follow a guide who had ever sinned or erred, so prophets and Imams must be free of both. One so protected is called ma'sum.

In Twelver and Ismaili doctrine, what term names the explicit designation of each Imam by the Imam before him?

Nass means a clear text or decree in general; for Shia it is the divine appointment by which each Imam names the next, so no election, council or pledge can make an Imam.

Du'a Kumayl, a supplication attributed to Ali and transmitted by Kumayl ibn Ziyad, is recited on which night weekly?

Thursday night is when Shia gather to recite Du'a Kumayl, named for a Kufan companion of Ali whom the caliph Uthman had exiled to Syria for opposing him.

The Qizilbash, the Turkoman fighters who brought Iran's Safavid dynasty to power, bore a Turkish name meaning what?

Red head was the name Ottoman Turks gave them for the crimson cap, the 'Crown of Haydar', that the seven Turkmen tribes wore as a badge of loyalty to the Safavids.

Iran's Shia rulers after 1501 drew Twelver scholars from Jabal Amil, a historic Shia region in which country's south?

Lebanon's Jabal Amil supplied what the Safavid shahs lacked: its scholars were invited to court to legitimise the new rulers over a largely Sunni Persia and to turn their Shi'ism into a state creed.

What name do Twelvers give the twelfth Imam's concealment, termed 'minor' until 941 and 'major' ever since?

The Occultation turned from minor to major on the death of the last of four agents through whom, Twelvers hold, the Imam had spoken to his followers for nearly seventy years.