Subject: History (HIST)

CRN: 22390

Lecture

St Paul: Murray-Herrick Campus Center 206

  Shaz Ahmadi

This course will begin by delving into the origins of the Sunni/ Shi’i split in the seventh century. Although the two sects made efforts to distinguish their faiths in the medieval period, the rise of spiritual Islam brought the two sects closer together by the fifteenth century. European colonialism, however, which overtook the Islamic world in the nineteenth century, caused many Muslims to become more conscious of their sectarian identities. Nevertheless, although Shi’ism and Sunnism formed different jurisprudential traditions, they experienced many of the same historical pressures and therefore developed similar solutions to colonialism, westernization, and secularism. Thus, this course asks, to what extent is there a Shi’i-Sunni split and in what ways have modern politics obscured the similarities between the two sects?

4 Credits