The Da'wa: A Historical Overview

In mid-eighth-century Baghdad, the Sunni 'Abbasid caliphs had just undertaken the spiritual and secular leadership of the Muslim community when religious-political activists in Iraq and beyond began to challenge their right to rule. The 'Abbasids rose to prominence by exploiting the sentiments of those who upheld the rights of the Prophet Muhammad's descendants to guide the Muslim community, only to ignore these ideals once in power and proceed to curb all dissenting groups. However, one of these groups – the Shi'is – defied the ‘Abbasids’ right to rule, with militant and spiritual action inspired by a conception of a divinely designed authority that led them to recognise Muhammad's descendants – via his cousin and son-in-law 'Ali – as their spiritual and secular leaders or imams. Shi'is credit Ja'far al-Sadiq (d. 148/765), acknowledged as the fifth imam to descend from 'Ali, with having formulated a full-blown doctrine of imamate; a doctrine that was to be at the heart of all Shi'i teachings to come.

The Shi'i linking of the principle of authority to genealogy inevitably caused Shi'i activists to split into groups, each aiming at affirming its own particular vision of spiritual and secular rule by defending the rights of its chosen candidate to the imamate. Among them, a group from Kufa, in southern Iraq, distiguished itself in supporting the imamate of Isma'il, who was Ja'far al- Sadiq's son, thus directly challenging the claims of their Shi'i rivals who backed Isma'il's brother, Musa al-Kazim.