The Spirituality of Shi‘i Islam: Beliefs and Practices, by Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Only in recent decades has the study of Shi'i Islam become a significant field of inquiry within academic discourse.So observes Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi in the preface of his book, The Spirituality of Shi'i Islam, which, in contrast to the abundance of scholarly literature on Sunni Islam available in European languages, is one of only a handful of detailed expositions of Shi'i doctrine and practice available in English.As the author notes, Shi'i thought was viewed throughout Islamic history as suspicious at best, and as heresy or "extremism" (ghuluww) at worst, contributing to the censorship and loss of many works considered Shi'i in nature (xii).These circumstances combined with the highly esoteric and "secretive" quality of much of Shi'i belief serve to explain the historical shortage of critical engagements with the Shi'i tradition and highlights the timely nature of Moezzi's study.The first section of the work opens with an exploration of the origins of Shi'i Islam.Examining the concept of dīn 'Alī (lit."religion of 'Alī") in early historiographical works, Moezzi argues that 'Alī ibn Abi Talib was the only early Muslim figure, aside from Muhammad himself, to be so frequently associated with the term dīn (8).Used by his enemies to differentiate his cause from their conception of Islam, 'Ali's supporters equated this term with dīn Muḥammad or Islam proper.Highlighting the Qur'anic depiction of the hereditary transference of worldly and spiritual authority amongst the Israelite prophets, Moezzi notes the use of this concept by the family of 'Alī as evidence of their rightful custodianship of Islam after Muhammad.Following this is a discussion of pre-Islamic Arab notions of lineage and kinship as well as how existing concepts such as ahl al-bayt (lit."people of the house") were reinterpreted within Shi'i thought to denote the exalted station of 'Alī and his descendents within the Muslim community.Finally, Moezzi analyzes the influence of pre-Islamic Iranian religions on Shi'i belief through the figure of the Sasanian princess Shahrbānū, traditionally held to be the mother of the fourth Imam, 'Ali Zayn al-'Abidin.The combination of the royal lineage of ancient Persia and Muhammad's spiritual authority within the figure of the fourth Imam was an
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".