The Institutions of the Shīʿī Imāmate: Towards a Social History of Early Imāmī Shiʿism*

Abstract

Mushegh Asatryan has recently criticised the use of the word “community” as a framework for understanding early Shiʿism. This article makes the case in favour of community as a framework when used precisely as a foundation for a properly sociological approach to early Imāmī Shiʿism. Imāmī Shiʿism has most often been treated as a community of belief. However, if we understand the early Imāmī community through the lens of its social institutions centred upon the unifying presence of a visible imām, we are better able to explain the coherence of the community and how it came to define its boundaries until its collapse and supersession by the Twelvers with their doctrine of Occultation.