Part 1 - The Origins.

Shiism emerged in the years immediately after the death of the Prophet Mohammed on June 8, 632 AD, leaving behind no male child. During Mohammed's two-week long illness just prior to his death, intense rivalry broke out between his closest aides as to who would succeed him. It is important to note that the seed for the emergence of Shiism was sown as a result of the fact that there was disagreement about succession. The problem of an orderly succession has plagued the Islamic World ever since.

The central figure in the Shiite narrative is Imam Ali, cousin of the Prophet, husband of his daughter Fatima, and father of Imams Hassan and Hussein. Ali is regarded as the second person ever to embrace Islam. The term Shiite (or Shiite) derives from a shortening of Shiitet Ali (partisans of Ali). The original split resulted from conflict between the idealism of Ali and his followers and the pragmatism of the other companions of the Prophet.

Shiites feel that Ali should have been the first caliph and that the caliphate should have passed down only to the direct descendants of Prophet Mohammed via Ali and Fatima. They often refer to themselves as "ahl al bayt", or "people of the house" (of the Prophet). Sunnis, however, regard Ali as the fourth and last of the "rightly guided caliphs" (successors to Mohammed, as leader of the Muslims) following on from Abu Bakr Al Siddiq (632-634), Umar Abul Khattab (634-644) and Uthman Ibn Affan (644-656).

The choice of the first caliph was settled through some subterfuge. While Ali and other followers of the prophet were mourning his death and burying him, the Medina-origin followers of Mohammed (known as ansars, meaning helpers) held a meeting at Saada Banu Saqifa. Hearing this Abu Bakr and Abul Khattab, father of the prophet's wife Hafsa, rushed to the assembly to prevent the choice of someone from Medina to succeed Mohammed; their argument was that since the prophet was a Meccan from the Quraish tribe would be acceptable as a leader of the nomadic tribes. This argument won the day and Abu Bakr, a merchant by profession, was chosen as the first prophet. But Abu Bakr died within two years, after nominating Abul Khattab as caliph.

Having lost the option of being the first caliph after Mohammed, Ali had hoped to become the second caliph. But Abul Khattab also secured approval from the local community leaders. Ali was disappointed and withdrew from pubic life, albeit not entirely. Abul Khattab, following his predecessors, also acted as the chief judge. Ali occasionally pointed out the faults in Abul Khattab's verdict.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Abul Khattab on his deathbed nominated an electoral college of six to choose his successor. Yet it is important to note that Ali was offered the caliphate but conditionally. First, he was to rule according to the Koran and the Sunna (the Prophet's practice) and second he was to accept the precedents set by the previous caliphs. Ali rejected the second condition.

The caliphate was then offered to Uthman Ibn Affan, under the same conditions. Uthman accepted without hesitation, but he proved to be an unpopular ruler especially among the soldiers. He was disliked because of his open support for the Ummayads, as well as poor living conditions. In June 656, a group of rebel soldiers attacked Uthman's house and killed him while he was at prayer. Ali, meanwhile, had become the focus of a sort of opposition. He had behind him a number of armed followers.

Ali succeeded Uthman to the caliphate, which was offered to him unconditionally only 24 years after the death of the Prophet. He was, however, opposed by Aisha, the wife of the Prophet and daughter of Abu Bakr, who accused him of being lax in bringing Uthman's killers to justice. After Ali's army defeated Aisha's forces at the Battle of the Camel in 656, she apologized to Ali and was allowed to return to her home in Madinah where she withdrew from public life.

Ali had another challenger, Mu'awiya of the Ummayads, Uthman's cousin and governor of Damascus. Mu'awiya refused to recognise Ali until Uthman's killers had been caught.

At the Battle of Suffin, on the banks of the Euphrates, Mu'awiya's soldiers stuck verses of the Koran onto the ends of their spears with the result that Ali's supporters - all extremely pious men - refused to fight them. Consequently, Ali was forced to seek a compromise with Mu'awiya, but this shocked some of his die-hard supporters to the extent that he was stabbed to death by one of his own men in 661, as he was praying in his mosque in Kufa.

Initially, Mu'awiya then declared himself caliph in Jerusalem and Ali's elder son Hassan functioned as caliph in Kufa. But this could not last long and eventually Hassan accepted a pension from Mu'awiya in return for not pursuing his claim to the caliphate, but he died within a year, allegedly poisoned. Ali's younger son Hussein agreed to put his claim to the caliphate on hold until Mu'awiya's death. But when Mu'awiya finally died in 680, his son Yazid usurped the caliphate.

Hussein, then living in Medina, staked his claim to the caliphate on the grounds that it belonged to the House of the Prophet, of which he was the most senior male member. He immediately got strong support from Kufa and he rounded up followers and warriors to oust the Yazid regime. When news of this reached Yazid, he sent a trusted aid to Kufa to negotiate and politically neutralise those opposed to him. This was successful, but Hussein was already on the warpath.

In May 681, Hussein's group was intercepted near Karbala by Yazid's soldiers. For the next eight days the commander tried to obtain Hussein's unconditional surrender through negotiations. Considered extremely pious and a man of integrity, Hussein refused to budge as he completely believed he should have been the caliph.

Rather than surrender, Hussein resorted to battle. He led his small band of warriors to confront 4,000 soldiers of Yazid. But in what is now a seminal event in Shiite history, Hussein and his men were slaughtered at the Battle of Karbala and his head was delivered to Yazid. Hussein's infant son, Ali, survived so the line continued.

(A narrative of the dramatic events of those days leading up to the Karbala massacre is repeated annually during the Muharram celebrations wherever Shiites live. The ritual revives the memory of Imam Hussein and serves as a reminder to Shiites of the origins of their faith).

By then the division between the Shiism and what is known as the Sunni was thus set firmly. But an opportunity to reverse the division arose in the 750 AD. Except for a few who managed to flee to Spain, almost the entire Ummayad aristocracy was wiped out in 750 following the Battle of Zab in Egypt in a revolt led by Abu Al Abbass Al Saffah and aided by considerable Shiite support.

It was envisaged that the Shiite spiritual leader Jaafar As Siddiq, great-grandson of Hussein, would be installed as caliph. But when Abbass died in 754, this arrangement had not yet been finalised and Abbas' son Al Mansur murdered Jaafar, seized the caliphate for himself and founded the Baghdad-based Abbassid dynasty which prevailed until the sack of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258.

The line of descendants of Prophet Mohammed through Ali and Hussein became extinct in 873 AD when the last Shiite Imam, Al Askari, who had no brothers, disappeared within days of inheriting the title at the age of four. The Shiites refused to accept that he had died, choosing instead to believe that he was merely "hidden" and would return. When after several centuries this failed to happen, spiritual power passed to the ulema, a council of twelve scholars who elected a supreme Imam.

In the ensuing centuries, the split crystallised with the day-to-day differences emphasising the overall sectarian division. On a practical daily level, Shiites have a different call to prayer, they perform their religious rituals differently including placing the forehead onto a piece of hardened clay from Karbala, not directly onto the prayer mat when prostrating. They also tend to combine prayers, sometimes worshipping three times per day instead of five.

The Shiites also have some different ahadith and prefer those narrated by Ali and Fatima to those related by other companions of the Prophet. In view of her opposition to Ali, those ahadiths narrated by Aisha count among the least favoured. Shiite Islam also permits muttah - fixed-term temporary marriage - which is now banned by the Sunnis. Muttah was originally permitted at the time of the Prophet and is currently being promoted in Iran by an unlikely alliance of traditionalist theologians and feminists.