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Islamic sects

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Islamic sects

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Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Karīm Shahrastānī was born in 479/1086-7 in Shahristān in today's Turkmenistan. After his basic education he went to Nishapur, then a major centre of learning. Afterwards, he taught for some years at the Niẓāmiyya academy in Baghdad. Returning to Khurāsān around 514/1120, he became a staff member at the chancellery of the Saljuq ruler, Sanjar (d. 552/1157), entertaining close relations with him. At some point Shahrastānī returned to his hometown, although it is not known why or when, dying there in 548/1153. His influential history of religions and sects, which also includes an account of Greek and Islamic philosophy, is one of his best known works. Until recently only two Persian translations of it were known: one by Afḍal al-Dīn Turka-yi Iṣfahānī dated 843/1449-50, and an improved edition of it by Muṣṭafā b. Khāliqdād, dated 1021/1612. The anonymous translation published here is much older and may even date from Shahrastānī's own lifetime.

Islamic sects.

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The Nusayrīs - also known as ʿAlawīs -have been in power in Syria for the past three decades. Little is known of their origins or their long history, while their religious creeds and thought are somewhat better known. The main reason for our fragmentary knowledge of the Nusayrī religion is that, since its beginnings, it has always been the secret faith of a self-conscious elite that zealously guarded its sectarian literature. The Nusayrī-ʿAlawī faith is a clear example of a syncretistic religion. It combines and fuses elements of cults and creeds of very disparate, and remote, origins. Among these are various pagan beliefs (residues of ancient Mesopotamian and Syrian cults), as well as Persian, Christian, Gnostic, and Muslim - both Sunnī and Shīʿī - religious precepts and practices. All these components have been brought together in a syncretistic religious system that has assumed a heterodox Shīʿī garb. The present volume presents a mosaic of fundamental aspects of Nusayrī theology and liturgy. It demonstrates the complexity of Nusayrī theology and the diversity of religious thought within the Nusayrī fold.

Islamic sects. --- Nosairians. --- Islamic sects --- Nosairians --- History.

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This volume discusses how the multifaceted reality of Turkey's Alevis impinges on society and politics in contemporary Turkey. The book provides readers with a vigorous discussion of the origins and history of the Alevis, examines their ethnic identity and cultural representation, as well as appraising their political life and the effect that this had on Turkey's polity, the Turkish Left and the Kurdish National Movement, and upon the emergence of civil society. It analyses Alevi cultural manifestations and even looks at how Alevi diaspora communities in Europe effect Turkey in various ways. The book therefore provides readers with a convenient handbook of an important group that is largely unknown in the West - Turkey's Alevis.

Nosairians --- Islamic sects