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THE CALIPH AND THE IMAM
THE CALIPH AND THE IMAM
THE MAKING OF SUNNISM AND SHIISM
TOBY MATTHIESEN
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Acknowledgements
Any book that covers as big a ground as this one, tracing the development of Sunnism and Shiism across centuries and regions, accrues many debts. First and foremost, I owe a debt of gratitude to the many people who shared their knowledge and experiences with me during fieldwork. Then, I owe a debt to the many scholars who have contributed to the different disciplines and subfields that I draw on for this book, from religious and Islamic studies to Middle East and South Asian Studies, history, anthropology, sociology, and political science. The extensive notes and bibliography at the end of the book acknowledge that large body of scholarship, and the aim of the book is to bring sometimes disconnected literatures into closer conversation with each other.
I furthermore thank the numerous people and institutions that have supported me throughout the research and writing of this book. At the Middle East Centre of St Antony’s College, and the wider University of Oxford, where I held a five-year Senior Research Fellowship and where the idea for this book first emerged, I thank Walter Armbrust, Stephanie Cronin, Faisal Devji, Roger Goodman, Louise Fawcett, Edmund Herzig, Homa Katouzian, Margaret MacMillan, Adam Roberts, Philip Robins, Ahmad al-Shahi, Avi Shlaim, Michael Willis, as well as Eugene Rogan, who encouraged me to write about as big a topic as this. Amongst Oxford’s outstanding community of younger scholars, I had stimulating and fun conversations with Kathrin Bachleitner, Maziyar Ghiabi, Andrew Hammond, Susann Kassem, Raphaël Lefèvre, Ceren Lord, Rory McCarthy, Emanuel Schäublin, Manal Shehabi, and Anne Wolf. For
research support, I thank Caroline Davis and all the staff of the Middle East Centre and St Antony’s College, Mastan Ebtehaj and Maria Luisa Langella of the Middle East Centre Library, Debbie Usher of the Middle East Centre Archive, Lydia Wright of the Oriental Institute Library, and the staff at the Bodleian Library (as well as of the British Library and the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London).
My agent Felicity Bryan envisioned that this book would fill an important gap in the literature. She sadly could no longer see it go to print. It was George Lucas in New York who then pushed it forward and was a reassuring presence throughout the writing process. I am indebted to him and to my editor Tim Bent of Oxford University Press US, who saw the potential of the book and whose many comments improved it considerably. At Oxford University Press UK, I thank Cathryn Steele, who took the lead in the final stages of production, as well as Luciana O’Flaherty, the copyeditor Martin Noble, the publicist Anna Gell, and the whole production and marketing team. I am also grateful to Catherine Clarke, Michele Topham, and everyone at Felicity Bryan Associates. My meticulous research assistant Dominic Gerhartz helped especially with the references and finalising the manuscript for production.
Matteo Legrenzi brought me to Ca’ Foscari University in Venice for a Marie-Curie Global Fellowship. He has been a great supporter and a true gentleman. At Ca’ Foscari, I thank Laura Burighel, Silvia Zabeo, and the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 888063 on Sunni–Shii Relations in the Middle East (SSRIME). At Stanford University, I thank Lisa Blaydes and the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies for hosting me as a Visiting Fellow in 2022, and Larry Diamond, Farah El-Sharif, Haidar Hadi, Matthew Lynch, and Hesham Sallam for their collegiality and support. At the University of Bristol, I thank Martyn Powell, Benedetta Lomi, David Leech, Jon Balserak, Rupert Gethin, Gavin D’Costa, and Rita Langer for welcoming me so warmly.
Over the years, several universities, institutes, and research networks invited me to speak, work through my ideas, and receive useful feedback: Aarhus University, Australian National University, the Middle East Study Group at Birkbeck University (London), Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, European University Institute in Florence, German Institute of Global and Area Studies in Hamburg, George Mason University, IREMAM Aix-en-Provence, Rice University in Houston, University of Bern, American University Beirut, Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, UCLA, Maison des Sciences de l’Homme— École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris, Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS) at George Washington University, and the SEPAD Project at Lancaster University. At the Central European University in Budapest, I profited from comments by Osman Dincer and Harith Hasan al-Qarawee, and at Aligarh Muslim University in India from comments by Professors Irfan Habib and Syed Ali Nadeem Rezavi. I am grateful to Toby Dodge, Ali Ansari, Daniel Neep, and the participants of a workshop for a Festschrift in honour of Charles Tripp at the LSE.
Several colleagues have read parts of the manuscript related to their area of expertise, and some have provided extensive feedback. I thank Usaama al-Azami, Rahaf Aldoughli, Andrew Arsan, Mohammad Ataie, Metin Atmaca, Ayşe Baltacıoğlu-Brammer, Gabriele vom Bruck, Houchang Chehabi, Juan Cole, Stephanie Cronin, Louise Finn, Denis Hermann, Helen Lackner, Charles Melville, Eugene Rogan, Adrian Ruprecht, Christian Sahner, Cyrus Schayegh, Rainer Schwinges, and Charles Tripp. The Fellows of the TOI: Bringing in the Other Islamists—comparing Arab Shia and Sunni Islamism(s) in a sectarianized Middle East project led by Morten Valbjørn and Jeroen Gunning at Aarhus University provided feedback on several draft chapters. I thank Morten, Jeroen, as well as Courtney Freer, Fanar Haddad, Raphaël Lefèvre, Ben Robin D’Cruz, and Younes Saramifar for their valuable comments. I further want to acknowledge conversations with Rainer Brunner, Faisal Devji, Toby Dodge, Richard Drayton, Werner Ende, Mark Farha, Nelida Fuccaro, Simon Fuchs, Gregory Gause, Hamza al-Hasan, Samuel Helfont,
Fouad Ibrahim, Raihan Ismail, Abbas Kadhim, Shruti Kapila, Laurence Louër, Ali Khan Mahmudabad, Ussama Makdisi, Renad Mansour, Mary-Ann Middelkoop, David Motadel, Anees al-Qudayhi, Reinhard Schulze, Guido Steinberg, Sami Zubaida, and Max Weiss. Nassima Neggaz and Naysan Adlparvar kindly shared their publications with me. For support over the years, I thank Ulrike Freitag, Kai Hafez, Laleh Khalili, Marc Lynch, James Piscatori, Madawi al-Rasheed, Morten Valbjørn, and Charles Tripp.
I am especially indebted to the many people that helped me during fieldwork, opened their homes to me, and guided me along the way. In Beirut, I thank Khaled Abdallah as well as Rabih Dandachli, Bassel Salloukh, and Sa‘dun Hammada. In Lucknow, I thank Ali Khan Mahmudabad and his father Suleiman, the Raja of Mahmudabad. They hosted me during Muharram 2019, my last research trip before Covid-19, and were so generous with their time, knowledge, and hospitality. I am grateful to them and everyone in Mahmudabad, Lucknow, Hyderabad, and elsewhere who helped me navigate my way around India, especially Ovais Sultan Khan in Delhi and Syed Ali Nadeem Rezavi and Ruquaia Hussain at Aligarh University. In Iraq, I thank Hayder al-Khoei and S. Salih al-Hakim and the staff of the al-Kalima Centre for Dialogue and S. Jawad alKhoei of the Al-Khoei Institute, as well as Alaa al-Bahadli, and in London Yousif al-Khoei and the Khoei Foundation. Many more people helped me in Najaf and Karbala, especially the staff of the Abu Fadl al-Abbas shrine. In Albania, I thank Hajji Dede Edmond Brahimaj and Arben Sulejmani for introducing me to the history and culture of the Bektashis. And I am indebted to the many people who helped me during earlier language study and research trips, in the Gulf especially to Abd al-Nabi al-Akri, Jasim Hussayn, Habib Al Jumaa, Mahdi Salman, and Jafar al-Shayeb.
On a personal level, I thank Maria for more things than I can possibly list here. Her love gave me the strength to weather the pandemic and finish this book. That its publication coincides with the birth of our first daughter is an indescribable joy. This book is dedicated to them both. I thank Claudia Honegger for her
encouragement, and for kindling my interest in the longue durée. And I thank Edna and José Anibal and everyone at the Sitio for being such gracious hosts during the final stages of writing, and Robi and Joana for welcoming me in the Bay Area.
So, this book would not have been possible without the support of a great number of people. Yet, they are in no way responsible for any mistakes or shortcomings others may find in this book, or for its approach and conclusions.
ListofPlates
ListofMaps
NoteonSpellingandTransliterations
Prologue: From Karbala to Damascus
PART I. THE FORMATION OF SUNNISM AND SHIISM, 632–1500
After the Prophet
Sunni Reassertion and the Crusades
Polemics and Confessional Ambiguity
PART II. THE SHAPING OF MUSLIM EMPIRES, 1500–1800
The Age of Confessionalisation
Muslim Dynasties on the Indian Subcontinent
Reform and Reinvention in the Eighteenth Century
PART III. EMPIRE AND THE STATE, 1800–1979
British India and Orientalism
Ottoman Reorganisation and European Intervention
The Muslim Response
PART IV. REVOLUTION AND RIVALRY, 1979–
The Religion of Martyrdom
Export and Containment of Revolution
Regime Change
The Arab Uprisings
Conclusion: Every Place is Karbala
Endnotes
Bibliography
Index
ListofPlates
Illustration from the Ta’rikh-i Alfi manuscript depicting the historical destruction of the Tomb of Hussain at Karbala on the orders of Caliph alMutawakkil, India, c. 1590–1595.
Source: British Museum.
Scholars in the Library of the ‘House of Wisdom’ in Baghdad, from Maqamat al-Haririby Yahya al-Wasiti, Baghdad, 1237.
Source: French National Library.
Hulagu Khan Destroys the Fort at Alamut, from Chinghiz-nama manuscript by Basawan, 1596.
Source: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
Conquest of Baghdad by the Mongols 1258, from Jami‘al-tawarikhby Rashid Al-Din Hamadani, Tabriz, first quarter of fourteenth century.
Source: Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin.
Conversion of Ghazan to Islam, from Jami‘al-tawarikhby Rashid Al-Din Hamadani, Tabriz, first quarter of fourteenth century.
Source: Le Royaume Armenien de Cilicie by Claude Mutafian.
The declaration of Shiism as the state religion of Iran by Shah Ismail Safavid dynasty, by unknown artist, Safavid Era.
Source: SafavidIran: Rebirthofa Persian Empire by Andrew Newman.
Portrait of Shah Ismail I of Persia (1487–1524), by Cristofano dell’Altissimo, sixteenth century.Source: Uffizi Gallery.
Battle of Chaldiran, by Agha (Mohammed) Sadeq, Isfahan, c. 1801.
Source: Chehel Sotoun palace, photograph by Stefan Auth.
Portrait of Ottoman Sultan Suleiman I the Magnificent, by unknown Venetian artist (possibly, Tiziano Vecellio), Venice, c. 1530s.
Source: Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna.
Part of the panoramic view of Istanbul: Kasimpasa shipyard is visible on the right, by Melchior Lorck, Istanbul, 1559.
Source: The Gennadius Library The American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Suleimaniye Mosque, by Bruno Peroussse, Istanbul.
Source: Alamy.
Jannat al-Baqia before demolition, by unknown photographer, Medina, c. 1910s.
Source: Al-Nabi Museum.
Lucknow Bara Imambara, by unknown photographer, Lucknow, c. 1920.
Source: Mary Evans / Grenville Collins Postcard Collection.
Imambara, Fort of Rampur, by unknown photographer, Uttar Pradesh, c. 1911.
Source: The British Library, Oriental and India Office Collection.
Darul Uloom Deoband, by Jonathan O’Rourke, Uttar Pradesh, 2009.
Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Postcard of entrance to Najaf shrine with clerics and officials, by Eldorado, Baghdad, c. 1920–30.
Source: The British Museum.
View of the mosque of Imam Hussain, from Sketches between Persian Gulf andBlackSea by Robert H. Clive, Karbala, 1852.
Source: The British Museum.
Dawlat Hall, by Kamal-ol-molk, Tehran, 1892.
Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Faisal party at Versailles Conference. Left to right: Rustum Haidar, Nuri asSaid, Prince Faisal (front), Captain Pisani (rear), T. E. Lawrence, Faisal’s slave (name unknown), Captain Hassan Khadri, by an unknown photographer, Versailles, 1919.
Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Graffiti Wall with Ayatollah Khomeini and Ali Shariati, by unknown photographer, 1981, Iran, University of Chicago Middle Eastern Posters Collection.
Every Day is Ashura and Every Soil is Karbala, by an unknown artist, c. 1981.
Source: University of Chicago Middle Eastern Posters Collection.
Stamp issued by the Islamic Republic of Iran commemorating the uprising in Iraq and its crackdown in 1991, ‘The Catastrophe of Iraq Ba‘thi Regime Invasion of the Holy Shrines’, by Islamic Republic of Iran, c. 1991.
Source: Shutterstock.
ListofMaps
Map of wider Islamic world indicating Sunni and Shii populations
Map of Middle East, Central, and South Asia indicating Sunni and Shii populations
Early Muslim conquests and caliphates, -750
Mamluks and Mongols (Ilkhanate), c. 1400 AD
Major Muslim empires (Ottomans, Safavids, Mughals and Shaybanid Uzbeks)
Muslim rule in India, 1500-1800
Expansion of British influence on the Indian subcontinent in the 18th and 19th century
The post-Ottoman Middle East with British and French mandates, 1920s
Note on Spelling andTransliterations
This book largely employs the transliteration guide of the International Journal of Middle East Studies (IJMES) without, however, providing full transliteration. Transliteration has not been employed for personal names, place names, and organisations following accepted English spelling. Since the book discusses different periods and regions in which Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Urdu, and other languages predominate, it was not always possible to adopt the locally most prominent spelling. For the sake of consistency and coherence, and to make the narrative easier for the reader, Arabic spelling has been adopted for terms and names that would otherwise have to be spelled several times in different ways (like Ali al-Rida, or Imam Rida, instead of Reza). The same goes for Ottoman names that have largely been rendered according to Arabic transliteration. Prominent figures are spelled according to their most prominent transliteration, or the system dominant in their country. So: Mohammad Reza Shah, Saddam Hussein, etc.
Given the longue durée approach of the book, another difficulty has been to remain true to geographical denominators as they were used in the different time periods, without, however, confusing the reader by employing several terms for the same geographical area. This has led to a somewhat anachronistic use of terms like Iran, Iraq, Syria, and the like, which should not indicate that these terms had the same meaning in earlier centuries as they would after the establishing of the relative nation states. They often did, however, carry a certain meaning and roughly delineated similar geographical areas, unlike other terms (the term Pakistan, for example, is
therefore not mentioned before the twentieth century). The specialist reader who may see this as a problem is asked to forgive any shortcomings resulting from it to facilitate readability and accessibility for a general audience.
1. Map of wider Islamic world indicating Sunni and Shii populations
2. Map of Middle East, Central, and South Asia indicating Sunni and Shii populations
Prologue
From Karbala to Damascus
The midday sun struck the gilded dome built over the grave of Hussain, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, blinding anyone who dared to look up at it. It was the spring of 2019. I was sitting inside the shrine, located in the holy city of Karbala in Iraq, attending the ‘Spring Martyrdom’ Conference, intended to promote and celebrate Hussain as a universal figure. I was among a few dozen guests and hundreds of visitors, all gathered at a site which, over centuries, has been both a place of fervent worship and heavy fighting. Here took place the massacre of Hussain and his followers in the Battle of Karbala in the year 61 of the Islamic calendar (680 AD) at the hands of an army sent by the Umayyad Caliphate based in Damascus. The shrine was often contested between competing powers espousing Sunnism and Shiism. It was ransacked by Wahhabi zealots in 1802, and bombarded by Saddam Hussein’s tanks during the short-lived Shii uprising of 1991. (Plaques around the shrine commemorate the latter event, indicating the bullet holes still visible in the marble walls.) After the US-led invasion of 2003, it became a symbol of a new-found Shii self-consciousness, and when the so-called Islamic State (IS) declared a Caliphate in Northern Iraq and eastern Syria in 2014, it vowed to turn to rubble the ‘idolators’ and ‘tomb worshippers’ holy sites at Najaf and Karbala. In response, tens of thousands of Iraqi Shia, urged on by Iraq’s senior Shii cleric, took up arms to defeat IS. (As I entered the shrine, some of these Shii paramilitaries were still celebrating their victory in front of it.) Karbala is thus to many the birthplace of the Sunni–Shia split, and epitomises how Sunni and Shia have been at odds ever since.
That morning in 2019, on the podium in front of Hussain’s grave, Sunni and Shii dignitaries praised Hussain as a unifying figure. Given the polarisation and violence of recent years, this was remarkable. Hussain is of course an especially important figure for Shia, who see him as an Imam, the rightful political and spiritual successor to the Prophet Muhammad. Less known, however, is that Sunnis and Sufis likewise hold Hussain in high regard and feel he was wronged. Karbala and many other shrines associated with the Family of the Prophet Muhammad constituted not only Shii sites of memory, but similarly places where adherents of various confessions and faiths could come together without focusing on differences. The symposium offered the hope of celebrating this inclusive heritage of Islam. And it served as a corrective to standard narratives of perpetual Sunni–Shia strife.
The question of the nature of relations between Sunnism and Shiism preoccupied me long before that conference in Karbala, and indeed since I first started engaging with the Middle East and the wider Islamic world in the aftermath of 9/11 and the Iraq War of 2003. Before the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the terms ‘Sunni’ and ‘Shii’ were little used outside of specialist literature.1 Yet within a few months of the invasion, Western media and politicians invoked them to explain the conflict in Iraq, and much of the region’s ills. The US Army was not being attacked by Iraqis but rather by ‘insurgents’ in the ‘Sunni triangle’, or followers of a ‘firebrand Shii cleric’.2 Many argued that the two sides had resented and fought each other for nearly 1,400 years. The description of Iraq as sectarian served both to deflate blame from the American-led administration, and in a circular logic, to legitimise reshaping Iraqi politics along sectarian lines.3
Simplistic narratives of binary opposites, of Islam and the West, of Sunni and Shii, made me wary. I decided to dig deeper and over years of research, fieldwork and countless conversations with people across the Islamic world realised that Sunnis and Shia indeed have had a long and complicated relationship but that standard narratives
fall way short of explaining it. It took centuries for Sunnism and Shiism to develop. Neither the coherence of the two nor the dividing line between them were always clear, nor always conflict-prone.
My first stint learning Arabic abroad was years ago in Cairo, where I visited many of the sites that were the legacy of the tenth/eleventh century, which has been termed the ‘Shii Century’, when the Shii Fatimids reigned from Cairo (and Shii powers reigned in Iraq and the Gulf region). I came to realise that Sunni–Shia relations played out across a much wider geographical area than often assumed. While the Arab world is often associated with Sunnism and Iran with Shiism, Shiism played a much larger role in the history of the Arab world (and of the Eastern Mediterranean, Central Asia, and the Indian subcontinent) than commonly assumed (as did Sunnism in Iran). The next speaker up on the podium, an Egyptian poet, a graduate of al-Azhar University—perhaps the most prominent seat of Sunni religious learning—who recited a verse lamenting the martyrdom of Hussain and extolling how much Egyptians honour Hussain, demonstrated this. Many Egyptians believe that in 1153, the Fatimids had transferred the head of Hussain to Cairo. There they interred it and would hold mourning processions for his martyrdom and celebrations for his birthday. They also founded al-Azhar University as a Shii institute of learning. The Sunni rulers that deposed the Fatimids in 1171 restructured it as a Sunni University, and in modern times it has facilitated Sunni–Shia dialogue. Although their Sunni successors vowed to suppress the Fatimids’ legacy, it lived on in the built environment, and in popular culture. Egyptian Sufis still gather at the Hussain mosque in Cairo to celebrate Hussain’s birthday, singing and dancing ecstatically.4
How intertwined the history of Shiism and Sunnism is was made even more explicit by the next speaker up on the podium, Baba Mundi, the leader of the Bektashi Sufi order with its headquarters in Albania. Although some Sufis are staunchly Sunni, most trace their spiritual lineage to the Prophet through Ali, his son in law, founding figure of the Shia, and father of Hussain. Some Sufis, like the
Bektashis, are therefore considered pro-Shii (although they long allied with Sunni rulers).
Baba Mundi was in Karbala to sing the praises of Hussain, and to celebrate Karbala’s firm place in the minds and hearts of Sufis, and those of Balkan Muslims more generally. A few months after the Karbala conference, I joined him and tens of thousands of Bektashis on a journey up Mount Tomor in Albania to visit a shrine set up for Abbas Ibn Ali, a half-brother of Hussain, who had died fighting alongside Hussain at Karbala and for whom another major shrine exists in Karbala. The days-long festival exemplified that Karbala could mean different things to different people at different times (fire played an important role, for example, and alcohol flowed freely).5 Many more shrines and rituals further afield link themselves to Karbala and the Family of the Prophet in locally specific ways. Other examples include the Ali shrine in Mazar-i-Sharif in Afghanistan, ‘discovered’ several centuries after Ali’s death and where many Central Asian Muslims, Sunnis and Shia, believe Ali is buried (though most Shia outside Afghanistan believe he is buried in Najaf, 80 kilometres from Karbala). Indian Shii dynasties built replicas of the Imams’ shrines, and brought memorabilia associated with them to their cities to serve as a focus of popular piety. The reenactment of the Imams’ suffering, and pilgrimage to these sites, have made the cultural memory relevant in the present, and have linked Shia, and many Sunnis, to Karbala in myriad ways.6 What I grasped from these and other interactions with Sufis was that Sufism was especially important as a counterpoint to simplistic accounts of Sunni–Shia relations because Sufis often disregarded doctrinal or legalistic dividing lines as defined by the clergy.7 And I realised how important and emotionally compelling key sites of memory like Karbala and Damascus were.
After the battle of Karbala, the remains of the Family of the Prophet slain at Karbala and the wives and children that had been spared in the battle were brought before Yazid, the Umayyad ruler, in Damascus. So was the head of Hussain (it was, as noted, later moved to Cairo, while his body was interred in Karbala). The
Umayyads, a family that was part of the old Meccan aristocracy and had initially fought against the Prophet Muhammad but then embraced the message of Islam, saw themselves as the rightful rulers of Syria and the wider Muslim community and the successors to the Prophet—in other words, as Caliphs. They stood in sharp opposition to Ali, whom Shia see as the first successor to the Prophet and their first spiritual and political leader, or Imam. It was from Damascus that they organised the campaigns against Ali in the mid-seventh century that became known as the First Muslim Civil War. Unsurprisingly, Shia detest the Umayyads, though many Sunnis also regret their quarrels with Ali and Hussain (although some Sunni Revivalists of the modern period lionise them).
As an Arabic language student in the 2000s, I spent many a hot afternoon in the quiet and cool courtyard of the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, marvelling at the depictions of a lush paradise garden around the courtyard, and the past glory of the Umayyad Caliphate. Earlier European travellers and Orientalists, Westerners studying the ‘Orient’s’ cultures, religions, and societies, and whose crucial roles in deepening Islam’s divides I will discuss throughout, too, long admired it, and equated it with mainstream Islam. Nevertheless, the longer I spent in Damascus, the more I noticed that Shii pilgrims, from Iran, Lebanon, or the Gulf States, would also visit the Umayyad Mosque and nearby shrines associated with the Family of the Prophet, such as the Sayyida Zaynab shrine—located some six miles to the southeast of Damascus—where Shia believe that Zaynab, a granddaughter of the Prophet Muhammad and daughter of Ali, is buried. Zaynab, and other survivors of the Karbala massacre were brought to Damascus and held captive by Yazid in the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, where Zaynab allegedly gave a speech condemning her brother’s murder and held the first mourning ceremony (Sunnis generally believe she is buried in the Sayyida Zaynab mosque in Cairo). Like Hussain, Zaynab is central to Shiism, yet is a notable descendant of the Prophet, and a powerful female figure for Sunnis, too.8 In Damascus was thus commemorated the greatness of the Umayyads alongside the founding story of Shii
suffering—the tragedy of Karbala and the ways in which the Umayyads, who had taken over the mantle of the Prophet and proclaimed themselves Caliphs, treated the Imams and their kin and followers.
That Sunnism and Shiism, and indeed the pre-Islamic past (the site of the Umayyad Mosque was previously a basilica dedicated to John the Baptist), could be commemorated in the same space, and in others dotted around this ancient city, was testament to a shared heritage and lived reality of Islam and Middle Eastern religiosity more broadly. At other times, however, these sites of memory were appropriated by competing powers. They represented both what one scholar termed an ‘architecture of coexistence’, and the emotionally compelling and competing narratives of Sunnism and Shiism.9
Over the nearly two decades that I spent engaging with the people of the Middle East and the wider Islamic world (including while researching a PhD and earlier books on Sunni–Shia relations) I encountered many examples of coexistence, ambiguity, and polarisation. Shrines in the post-Ottoman world and on the Indian subcontinent, and Muharram processions in India, attended by Shia and Sunnis, are examples of the former.10 Mourning the death of Hussain and his Companions in battle and atonement for not having saved Hussain could assert Shii difference11 and Sunnis sometimes criticised Shia for it.12 But these could likewise become inclusive festivals at which Sunnis invoked Hussain.
Sunni Revivalists I engaged with in North India and Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, strongly refuted Shiism (they called it a ‘deviant sect’, or not part of Islam at all) and warned me against going to Shii areas with wild rumours of Shii practices, and that it was not possible to trust Shia because they might perform dissimulation (taqiyya)—to which over the centuries Shia sometimes have been forced to resort to for self-preservation. This was a common trope in anti-Shii polemics even if it was much less frequently used than these polemics made Sunnis (and many Orientalists) believe.13 Many Shia I met held similar prejudices towards ‘Wahhabis’, a term some applied widely to Sunnis. While they want Sunnis to accept them as
