The Conversion of Iran to Twelver Shi’ism: A Preliminary Historical Overview

Source: http://ballandalus.wordpress.com/

One of the most significant transformations that occurred in Islamic history, the legacy of which is apparent even in our own day, was undoubtedly the conversion of Iran from Sunnism to Shi‘ism during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Although there have been other instances throughout Islamic history to bring about religious uniformity for political reasons—the Almohads in Iberia and North Africa being prime examples—the case of the Safavids in Iran is perhaps the only example where such a conversion of territory was both successful, in terms of both the scale of the project and its permanence. The end result was that an entire region of the Islamic world was placed under the exclusive dominion of a single sect, Twelver Shi‘ism, at the expense of others (Sunnism and Zaydi Shi‘ism).