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CONSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENT
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does not stand on the roll of the Khalifate as usually reckoned. It shows some Shi'ite
tinge when the historian says, "In the Khalifate of al-Hasan," and, thereafter,
proceeds with, "In the days of Mu'awiya," the Umayyad Khalifa who followed him.
Mu'awiya had received the allegiance of the Syrian Muslims and when he advanced on al-Kufa,
where al-Hasan was, al-Hasan met him and gave over into his hands all his supposed rights.
That was in A.H. 41; in A.H. 49 he was dead by poison. Twelve years later al-Husayn, his
brother, and many of his house fell at Karbala in battle against hopeless odds. It is this
last tragedy that has left the deepest mark of all on the Muslim imagination. Yearly when
the fatal day, the day of Ashura, the tenth of the month Muharram, comes round, the story
is rehearsed again at Karbala and throughout, indeed, all the Shi'ite world in what is a
veritable Passion Play. No Muslim, especially no Persian, can read of the death of al-Husayn,
or see it acted before his eyes, without quivering and invoking the curse of God upon all
those who had aught to do with it or gained aught by it. That curse has clung fast through
all the centuries to the name of Yazid, the Umayyad Khalifa of the time, and only the
stiffest theologians of the traditional school have labored to save his memory through the
merits of the historical Khalifate. But even after this tragedy it was not out with the
blood of Muhammad. Many descendants were left and their party lived on in strange, half
underground fashion, as sects do in the East, occasionally coming to the surface and
bursting out in wild and, for long, useless rebellion.
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SHI'ITE CONSTITUTIONAL THEORIES
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In these revolts the Shi'a was worthy of its name, and split into many separate
divisions, according to the individuals of the house of Ali to whom allegiance was
rendered and who were regarded as leaders, titular or real. These subdivisions differed,
also, in the principle governing the choice of a leader and in the attitude of the people
toward him. Shi'ism, from being a political question, became theological. The position of
the Shi'ite was and is that there must be a law (nass) regulating the choice of the
Imam, or leader of the Muslim community; that that law is one of the most important dogmas
of the faith and cannot have been left by the Prophet to develop itself under the pressure
of circumstances; that there is such an Imam clearly pointed out and that it is the duty
of the Muslim to seek him out and follow him. Thus there was a party who regarded the
leadership as belonging to Ali himself, and then to any of his descendants by any of his
wives. These attached themselves especially to his son Muhammad, known from his mother as
Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiya, who died in 81, and to his descendants and successors. It was in
this sect that the most characteristic Shi'ite views first developed. This Muhammad seems
to have been the first concerning whom it was taught, after his death, that he was being
preserved by God alive in retirement and would come forth at his appointed time to bring
in the rule of righteousness upon the earth. In some of the innumerable sub-sects the
doctrine of the deity, even, of Ali was early held, in others a doctrine of
metempsychosis, generally among men and especially from one Imam to
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