The Sassanid (descendants) understood and resisted the arab influence in the way that they understood that caliph Ali's sons were of the persian concubine instead of Mo's daughter, Fatima. Therefore their form of islam has always been differentiated by a certain people (tribal) affinity. This dates back to the tribal arguments of the Medinans vs. Meccans and sheds light on the murder of the first caliphs all within a few year period.

Thanks for the heads up.

I've downloaded to iTunes for my next synch. (I didn't notice the download podcast option at first - it's over on the right hand side, a few screen inches below the top.)

The Sassanid (descendants) understood and resisted the arab influence in the way that they understood that caliph Ali's sons were of the persian concubine instead of Mo's daughter, Fatima. Therefore their form of islam has always been differentiated by a certain people (tribal) affinity. This dates back to the tribal arguments of the Medinans vs. Meccans and sheds light on the murder of the first caliphs all within a few year period.

1) the scions of the sassanid dynasty waged a rearguard action in central asia for several decades. the sassanids were even a fixture at the court of the tang dynasty into the 8th century (the ones we know of ended up in the employ of the chinese emperor).

2) be careful about anachronizing the shia-sunni conflict to the first centuries of islam, there was an alid and non-alid camp, but it was much more fluid (don't trust modern narratives by the two camps either).

3) there is some data that the the followers of ali were powerful in the lands of what are today iran or iraq, but, in iran they were concentrated around the arab colonies. the persians remained mostly zoroastrian for the first century, and the islamicized ones were initially clients of arab tribes.

4) iran was turned into a shia state in the 16th century by the safavid dynasty, who were of mostly turkic provenance*. before that period the persians were mostly sunni, as the persian (dari) speakers of central asia and afghanistan still tend to be. so the identification of the strength of shiism with the legacy of the sassanids is probably incorrect.

* the dynasty itself is of mixed heritage, shah ismail apparently had recent greek and persian ancestry, but the order he led seems to emerged in a turkic milieu.

The partisans of Ali first surfaced in Yemen just after the Prophet's death, by a converted Jew [according to R.A. Nicholson's A Literary History of the Arabs.] But much of the hierarchical nature of Shi'ism came in the later Safavid era almost a thousand years later and the histories of the two main branches of Islam are rife with dis- and misinformation.

I don't know how much relevance it has to the eventual conversion of Iran to Shi'ism, but the Buyid family whose confederation dominated Iran and Iraq in the tenth and early eleventh centuries were Shi'as, Persian revivalists, and centuries earlier had been supporters of the Sassanid dynasty.

Daveinboca,

You know that Robert Eisenman thinks Shia Islam is an offshoot of the Ebionite Jewish Christians? In fact somewhere or other he even refers to "Shia Judaism." But he's a bit of a lone wolf.

No, I am unfamiliar with Eisenman, but the fact that Yemen & Najran had a Jewish king in the sixth c. & that the Zaidis & Kharajites settled in the Yemen/Oman area, where St. Thomas the Apostle had proselytized and where in the 16th c., primitive "Christians" were found on the island of Socotra who poured butter over statues of Jesus and Mary all lead me to believe that S. Arabia was a hotbed of syncretism---even Osama bL comes out of that tradition.

Tabari's history quotes heavily from Sayf b. Umar, to the effect that Shi'ism was founded by a Jew named Abdullah b Saba. Tabari's history is popular nowadays, mostly because you can get it pretty easily in English translation (if you don't mind spending a lot of money and taking up a lot of bookshelf space). daveinboca may be referring to this.

... but even in Tabari's time Sayf was roundly condemned as a liar. Baladhuri's history makes next to no use of Sayf. It's also rather implausible that the party of 'Ali would be based in Yemen, given that 'Ali made his base of operations at Kufa in Iraq.