Shi'a Islam

The term Shi'a means "partisan" and is shorthand for Shi'at 'Ali, or "partisans of Ali."

There is a great deal of variation in the appellations used for this community. Nakash uses Shi'ism as the term for the religious group, Shi'is as the term for adherents to the group, and Shi'i as an adjective, as in "Shi'i financial and intellectual institutions." Juan Cole uses Shi'ism as the term for the religious group, Shi'ites as the term for the adherents and Shi'ite as an adjective as in "Shi'ite courts." Other authors use all of these variations, as well as Shi'a as an adjective as in "Shi'a Muslims" or "the Shi'a." The usages of Nakash and Fuller and Franke are closer to the original Arabic grammatical construction, but I have adopted Cole's slightly Anglicized usage in this paper adopting Shi'ite both as a noun and an adjective for simplicity's sake. Note that Nakash also modifies his usage in his 2003 article