ABSTRACT
Some four fifths of the world's Muslims are Sunnis, and most of the remainder are Shiites. It is tempting, therefore, to think of Sunni Islam as the norm from which others have deviated. This would, however, be wrong on at least three counts. First, we should note that the situation has not always been as it is now. From about 950 to 1050, when the Buyid dynasty ruled most of Persia and Iraq, and the Fatimids held sway over North Africa, Cairo and Syria, it must have seemed to many that the whole of the Muslim world was on the verge of being won over to Shiism. Second, neither Sunni Islam nor Twelver Shiism existed in its full-blown form before the ninth century, for it was not until then that the principal Sunni Hadith collections were compiled and that the line of Shiite Imams came to an end. Third, the seeds from which Sunnism and Shiism grew were both present in the period of the rightly-guided Caliphs.
