Fatima.Mernessi_The-Forgotten-Queens-of-Islam-EN

The Shi'ite Dynasty of Yemen 125
This is what today gives it its incredible skill in the use of the media
and the orchestration of strategies in such a way as to make the
moguls of European and American advertising look like sheer beginners.
However, can one say that the Shi'ite phenomenon is an Iranian
phenomenon? This is an idea that is obviously very dear to the
hearts of many people, above all, to Arabs who insist that subversive
ideas are non-Arab, foreign ideas and who simplify even further by
insisting that Shi'ism is an Iranian phenomenon. There are also
some Western journalists who are ignorant of history and only
discovered Shi'ism with the Iranian revolution. They have led millions
of Westerners to confuse Shi'ism with Iran. However, shi'a
is above all an intrinsically Arab phenomenon, even though the
contribution of non-Arabs - Iranians and others - is very important,
especially from the intellectual point of view. In the fourth century
of the Hejira (tenth century AD), Khawarizmi drew attention to
the fact that the watan of shi'a, its birthplace, was Iraq. 19 Only the
parts of Persia neighbouring Iraq, which were in contact with Arabs
who adopted this doctrine, were Shi'ite. 20 The first officially Shi'ite
state opposed to the Sunni caliphate of Baghdad appeared in North
Africa, and then in Egypt with the creation of the Fatimid caliphate
in the tenth century. They were known as Isma'ilis, referring to
Isma'il, one of the descendants of Caliph 'AH, on whom they based
their claim. 21
Isma'ilism, a major branch of Shi'ism that has survived to this
day, is the official religion of several groups of Muslims around the
world, notably the Druze of Lebanon and various communities in
Asia in places like Bombay, Baroda, and Hyderabad in India. One
of these communities became famous when their leaders, the Aga
Khans, made headlines in the 1940s by their involvement with stars
of Western fashion and movies. The marriage of Prince Ali Khan,
the son of an Isma'ili imam, to Rita Hay worth in 1949 became a
legend that is still material for the media today: 'In the name of 70
million followers of the Aga Khan, the father of Ali, India and
Africa offer Rita 16 kilograms of diamonds and precious stones.' 22
At the end of the tenth century the Isma'ilis dealt a fatal blow to
the Sunni Abbasid caliphate of Baghdad by creating a Shi'ite counter-caliphate
in Cairo. Its name, the Fatimid caliphate, refers to
Fatima, the Prophet's daughter. Paradoxically in a kinship system
that in theory is exclusively male, the lineage passed through his
daughter because the Prophet left no male descendants, all his sons
having died young. In addition, Fatima was married to his paternal