Shiites (also Sheeals; 'sectaries,' from the Arab. shī'ah, 'a party'), the name given by orthodox Muslims or Sunnites to Ali's followers, who call themselves al-adeliyyah, 'the right people.' They were the champions of Ali's right to be Mohammed's successor as being his cousin and son-in-law (see CALIF, ALI); and after Ali's death they took the side of his sons Hassan (Hasan), Hussein (Hosain), and Mohammed ibn al-Hanafiyah. The Persians, believers in the divine right and even in the divine nature of kings, took this side. All Shiites allegorise the Koran; but the ultra-Shiites, founded by Abdallah ibn Sabā, a converted Jew of Yemen, differed from the moderate Shiites or Zaidites in believing in the transmigration of souls, and in calling Ali and his legitimate successors incarnations of God. By Shiite help the Abbāsides in 750 wrested the califate from the Ommiades. Yet, unsound as the Abbasides were, and decided as Persian ascendancy was for 100 years, the Shiites gained little. They were the strength of 'the veiled prophet' (see MOKANNA) in 770-779 and of Bālek 817-837. Their disaffection was one chief reason for the introduction of Turks into the calif's service (830-840). In 765 the death of Jaafar the Veracious, the sixth Shiite Imām, developed the Ismaīli sect of the Shiites. Those followed the eldest son Ismael; the majority, following Moosā the second son, were afterwards named Twelvers, the series of their Imāms ending with the twelfth. In Irāq in 887 arose the Karmathian branch of the Ismailis. In 909 an Ismaīli proclaimed himself in North Africa as the first Fātimide calif. The 6th calif of this line, Hākīm, was declared to be God's tenth and final incarnation by Darazī, who founded the sect of the Druses. In 1090 Hassan Sabbāh, an Ismaīli of Khorassān, as the Sheikh of the Mountains instituted the order of Assassins, who generally recognised the Fātimide califate. Ismailis are still found in Persia and Syria. The moderate Shiism that has been the national religion of Persia since the native royal line of Safides ascended the throne in 1499 is more Koranic than Sunnism. It has Hadīth and Sunna (see SUNNITES), but not those of the orthodox Muslims. It has its own modes of religious washing, and its own postures in prayer. Shiites, habitually ill-used in Arabia, absent themselves much from Mecca, and, unable to bless Abu-bekr and Omar, who are buried in Medina, go still less thither. But they do pilgrimage unhindered to the tombs of Ali and Hussein in the pashalic of Bagdad, and to the tomb of Riza, one of their twelve imāms, in Meshhed, the capital of Khorassan, and to the tombs of Shiite saints. They keep the orthodox feasts and others, among which the Moharram feast, occupying the first ten days of the month Moharram (q.v.), and commemorating the martyrdom of Hussein, is the chief. (For the Shiite cry of Ya Hasan! Ya Hosain, see HOBSON-JOBSON.) They detest Ayesiah and the founders of the four orthodox schools, and hold all califs save Ali to have been usurpers. They own no califate nor imamate; these have been dormant since the death of
Mohammed, their twelfth imām, in 879, but shall be revived in him when he, the Hidden Imām, reappears as the Mahdi. Shīsm, the ancient protest of Persian patriotism against Arabian ascendancy, has spread through Afghanistan into India, but toward the west has made no way. The Shīites, divided and subdivided into sects, number 10 millions, most of whom are Aryans. Toleration and free thought are common in towns and among the more cultivated Persians, especially toward the north. In 1736 Nādir Shah tried but failed to restore the Shīites to orthodoxy.