Summary :
The respect and veneration accorded to the family of the Prophet Muḥammad are unparalleled in Islamic society. Political or religious affiliations notwithstanding, the Prophet’s family – most importantly his descendants through his daughter FÁt.ima and his cousin ÝAlÐ b. AbÐ ÓÁlib, collectively known as the ÝAlids – were held in high esteem even by those who rejected their claims to the leadership of the Muslim community. Within the hierarchy of Islamic society, the ÝAlids were ‘a blood aristocracy without peer’.1 Although they clearly occupied a privileged place among Muslims from the earliest period of Islam, the social prominence of the Prophet’s kin was by no means a foregone conclusion. In political as well as religious terms, those who became the heirs and successors to the Prophet in the majority of Muslim communities were generally not his descendants: Political authority came to be exercised by the caliphs while religious leadership went to the scholars. Yet, despite their virtual exclusion from the leadership of the Muslim communities, both politically and religiously, the ÝAlids nevertheless became the one indisputable nobility of Islam. This book provides the first social history of the ÝAlids in the crucial five centuries from the ÝAbbÁsid Revolution to the SaljÙqs (second/eighth to sixth/twelfth centuries). This period saw the formulation of many aspects still associated with the special position of sayyids and sharÐfs in Muslim societies, from their exemption from some of the rules that governed ordinary Muslims to the development of ‘ÝAlidism’. In contrast to Shiʿism, defined as the political and religious claims made by some members of the Prophet’s family or by others on their behalf, ÝAlidism is characterised by a distinctly cross-sectarian reverence and support for the Prophet’s family. As even a staunch Sunni like Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328) notes: ‘There is no doubt that MuÎammad’s family (Ál MuÎammad ) has a right on the Muslim society (umma) that no other people share and that they are entitled to an added love and affection to which no other branches of Quraysh are entitled.’2

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