ABSTRACT
This chapter challenges the commonly held assumption that the death of the Prophet marked a clear and definitive split between Sunni and Shii which produced different perspectives on early Islam. It documents the development of Shii identity through the first three centuries of Islam. Shii communities emerged in a gradual process that involved a complicated interplay between ritual, sacred space, and theological appropriation. There was no definitive moment where the Muslim community split into two irreconcilable factions; such a perspective was anachronistically posited by later Sunni and Shii scholars. The chapter offers an alternative method for considering communal memory. Specifically, it focuses on the identity of the Imam as an example of the influence of later theological developments on Shii historical writing. The resulting analysis provides insight into how the past is recast by later generations to make sense of contemporaneous circumstances. It is, in fact, this very process that inscribes sectarianism into early Islamic history.
