The School of Hillah and the Formation of Twelver Shii Islamic Tradition [Hardcover]

Against the background of long-standing narratives in which Twelver Shi'ism is viewed as fundamentally authoritarian,The School of Hillah and the Formation of Twelver Shi'i Islamic Traditionbuilds upon recent scholarship in the fields of Religious Studies, Anthropology, and History to argue that Twelver Shi'ism is better understood as a discursive tradition. At a conceptual level, this solves the basic problem of how to integrate the extraordinary diversity of Twelver Shi'ism across time and space into a single historical category without engaging in a normative assessment of its underlying essence. Furthermore, in light of this conception of tradition, the School of Hillah stands out as a seminal period in the archive of Twelver Shi'ism, though it has seldom been recognized as such in European-language scholarship. Insofar as it gave birth to a conversation that would prove capable of encompassing the dynamism of Twelver Shi'ism, the School of Hillah should be considered the formative period of Twelver Shi'i tradition. Moreover, when the tradition is conceptualized in this manner, it is a bulwark against the very authoritarianism by which Twelver Shi'ism has been characterized for so long.The first study in a European language to examine the School of Hillah and its role in the formation of Imami Shi'i traditionAun Hasan Aliis Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies, University of Colorado Boulder, USA. He is the author of articles in peer-review journals such as Islamic Studies, Turkish Journal of Shiite Studies and has contributed toThe Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Lawand edited collections.

Ali's study offers a deep and nuanced account of Hillah's intellectual culture, combining innovative methodology with rigorous historical analysis. His reconstruction of scholarly networks and emphasis on Twelver Shi'ism as a dynamic discursive tradition make the book a major and insightful contribution to Shi'i studies. Wiener Zeitschrift f?rlÓ%