An Analysis of the Shiite Biography Production up to the Fifth Century

Abstract

Biography production, is a highly old branch of the Islamic historiography, and Medina is the first centre in which the biography of the holy prophet was written. The first Shiite work on biography, Tasmia Man Shahada Ma’a Amir al-Mumenin Ali, al-Jamala va Seffin va an-Nahrevan min as-Sihaba which was produced in the second half of the first Hijri century. As it can be interpreted from the mentioned work, the Shiite biography production, during the two eras of the holy prophet’s mission and the caliphate, began mainly focused on protecting the Imams’ ideology so that, based on (the biographical works done during) the holy prophet’s mission prove that Imam Ali is the (Heavenly appointed) successor of prophet. Thereby, taking another step, the Shiite started to write the prophetic biography so as to look for their theological ideology in the biography of the holy prophet of Islam. Utilising the descriptive-analytical method, the present paper attempts to analyse the Shiite biography production through studying the written biographical works and based on such works temporal development from the beginning of the fifth Hijri century. Exploring the issues such as foundation, promotion, continuation of the biography production, different kinds of ideology and how the Shiite biography producers used to cooperate. It concludes that in the Shiite scientific circles, the biography writing started with some non-organised works, however they became organised through the time, some organised movements were formed and deep and accurate works started to be written. Through two internal sub-movements and relying on the ideas of Imams (PBuT), and in order to pass the political-ideological challenges, the Shiite extended the geographical domain of biography production from Medina to Iraq, they also developed its cultural dimension up to the Shiite groups, broke the monopoly of a specific circle in this regard and opened some new paths in the biography production

Keywords

• shiite imams (pbut)
• shia
• the shiites’ scientific part
• biography production
• historiography