Shia Islam in Iraq
Shia Islam in Iraq has a history going back to the times of Ali ibn Abi Talib who moved the capital of the Rashidun Caliphate from Medina to Kufa, two decades after the death of Muhammad. Iraqi Shias constitute the chief component of Iraqi society and the term is used as a socio-political and religious identifier. Their historical stronghold has been Lower Mesopotamia, historically known as Babylonia.
Those identifying as Shia vary between religious, moderately religious and secular. Since Iraq is a predominantly tribal society, one's sectarian affiliation is often dependent on one's tribe regardless of personal religious convictions or lack thereof. Since 2005, due to Muhasasah, an informally adopted political system of sect-based power sharing, sectarian stratification has occurred for political reasons. The vast majority of Iraqi Shias are ethnically Arab.
Shia Muslims are generally considered to constitute the majority of the Iraqi population with varying estimates over their percentages, such as a lower estimate reporting it to be between 55% and 60%, and a higher estimate ranging between 64% and 69% of the population of Iraq. Iraq is the location of the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, in addition to Kadhimiya and Samarra, pilgrimage sites for millions of Shia Muslims. Modern Iraqi Shias follow the Twelver sect. Historically, there were followers of Isma'ilism among Musha'sha' Arabs, Zaydism among Kurds, and Ibrahimiyya among Turkmen, which all declined. Since 2010, the number of people identifying as atheists has increased, especially among the youth.
Najaf is the site of Ali's tomb, and Karbala is the site of the tomb of Muhammad's grandson, third Shia Imam Husayn ibn Ali. Najaf is also a center of Shia learning and seminaries. Two other holy sites for Twelver Shia in Iraq are the Al-Kadhimiya Mosque in Baghdad, which contains the tombs of the seventh and ninth Shia Imams and the Al-Askari Mosque in Samarra, which contains the tombs of the tenth and eleventh Shia Imams.
Iraq is known as the center of Shia Islam, with Najaf being the hub of Shia scholarship. After the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, widespread sectarian violence erupted between Shias and Sunnis in Iraq, which led to war in 2006–2008 and 2013–2017, with the latter one involving the Islamic State.
History
7th to 10th centuries
After being named caliph in 657, Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib established his capital at Kufa in present-day Iraq. The Battle of Karbala took place in 680, where Husayn ibn Ali was martyred by Umayyad forces of Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad and Umar ibn Sa'd at the orders of Yazid ibn Mu'awiya. Many called for vengeance. Sulayman ibn Surad led the Tawwabin uprising in January 685, but was defeated and killed in Battle of Ayn al-Warda. After the failed uprising, Mukhtar al-Thaqafi once again called for the establishment of an Alid caliphate and for retaliation for Husayn's killing, and took over Kufa in October 685. Aided by Ibrahim ibn al-Ashtar, they successfully drove the Umayyads out of Kufa and defeated them in several battles, including the Battle of Khazir in 686, but were defeated shortly afterwards in 687, when Kufa was besieged by the governor of Basra Mus'ab ibn al-Zubayr.In the early Islamic period, Kufa effectively became the "second capital" of Shiism after Medina, the residence of the Twelve Imams, and acted as a source of many Shiite scholars and disciples of the Twelve Imams, including: Hisham ibn al-Hakam, Zurarah ibn A'yun, Burayd ibn Mu'awiya, Mu'min al-Taq, Aban ibn Taghlib, Abu Basir al-Asadi and Muhammad bin Muslim, all disciples of Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq. It was in Kufa where Zayd ibn Ali, the principal figure of Zaydism, led an uprising against the Umayyad rule of Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik which ended with Zayd's execution and burning, while Basra witnessed the Alid revolt of 762–763 by Muhammad al-Nafs al-Zakiyya's brother Ibrahim, who was said to have amassed a force as large as 100,000.
The 7th Twelver Imam Musa al-Kazim was repeatedly imprisoned in Baghdad and Basra at the orders of Abbasid caliphs al-Mansur, al-Hadi, al-Mahdi and Harun al-Rashid. During Al-Ma'mun's reign, in a sudden departure of anti-Shia policy, Imam Ali al-Rida was designated heir apparent of al-Ma'mun, but was later poisoned by al-Ma'mun himself. Some Shia officials managed to gain influence in the Abbasid court, such as Ali ibn Yaqteen, a Kufan who became a minister of the Abbasid caliph with the approval of Imam Musa al-Kadhim to assist the Shia.
The Twelver sect historically had been the most common among Shias in Iraq. However, Zaydism had a presence among Shia Kurds, and Isma'ilism had a presence among Shia Arabs in Musha'sha'. Zaydism and Isma'ilism later declined. Qizilbashism also had a presence among the Iraqi Turkmen, who continued their practices until the 1920s, when orthodox Twelver missionaries from Southern Iraq began to convert them. A known sect among them was Ibrahimiyya. The Turkmen with Qizilbash practices were very secretive about their religious practices to outsiders.
Aside from mainstream Shia Islam, Iraq was also the home of many Shia sects which no longer exist. Kufan followers of Mukhtar al-Thaqafi later formed the Kaysanite sect, who traced the line of Imamate to Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyya. The Kaysanites had a significant role in the Abbasid Revolution after they managed to rally Shia support in Iraq for the uprising against the Umayyads. However, after the revolution, most Kaysanites soon joined Ja'far al-Sadiq or Muhammad al-Nafs al-Zakiyya, and eventually Ja'far al-Sadiq after the demise of Muhammad.
Another extinct sect are the Qarmatians, a sect of Isma'ili Shias founded by the Iraqi-born Hamdan Qarmat. Hamdan assumed the leadership of Isma'ili missionary activity in the rural environs of Kufa and southern Iraq, and Qarmatian creed soon flourished in southern Iraq. Among the Iraqi s trained and sent to missions by Hamdan and Abu Muhammad were Ibn Hawshab, and Abu Abdallah al-Shi'i, a Kufan-born dā'ī who later helped convert the Kutama in Ifriqiya and opened the way to the establishment of the Fatimid Caliphate.
10th to 15th centuries
The Hamdanid dynasty of Banu Taghlib was among the first Twelver Shia dynasties formed in northern Iraq. The Hamdanids first emerged as governors of Mardin in 890 and Mosul in 905, and by 950 had expanded into most of Syria and western Iraq, informally forming a parallel authority to the one in Baghdad. During the 930s and 940s, the Hamdanids and the Buyids were in contest with another Shia, Abu Abdallah al-Baridi, an Iraqi tax-official who used the enormous wealth gained from tax farming to vie for control of the rump Abbasid Caliphate, temporarily holding Baghdad with brother twice.The Hamdanids were succeeded in Mosul by another Shia dynasty, the Uqaylids who ruled roughly the same territory as the Hamdanids from 990 to 1096. In northern Syria, they incorporated the Shia Mirdasids into their service, who later rebelled against the Fatimids under Salih ibn Mirdas and established themselves as the emirs of most of present-day Syria, western Iraq and Lebanon, ruling from Aleppo.
In central Iraq, the Mazyadids ruled an autonomous emirate in the area around Kūfa and Hīt between 961 and 1160 from their capital city of Hillah.
They were originally in the service of the Buyid dynasty, another Twelver Shia dynasty which expanded into most of western Iran and Iraq, seizing Baghdad and making it as their capital. Later on, Hillah later became one of the central cities of Shia learning, where prominent Shia scholars and poets such as al-Allama al-Hilli, Muhaqqiq al-Hilli, Shahid Awwal and Safi al-Din al-Hilli lived and taught during the 12th–15th centuries.
15th to 19th centuries
When the Safavid dynasty declared Shia Islam the official religion of Iran in 1501, Shia scholars from southern Iraq contributed to the conversion movement. The Safavids also invited many Shi'i Arab tribes to Khuzestan to act as a bulwark against the Ottoman Empire, earning Khuzestan the name of Arabestan.Between the 15th and 19th centuries, many of the tribes living on the banks of the Euphrates and Tigris, which were originally Sunni, converted to Shia Islam. During the 19th century, the Ottoman Empire instituted a policy of settling the semi-nomadic Sunni Arab tribes to create greater centralization in Iraq. The tribes adopted a sedentary agricultural life in the hinterlands of Najaf and Karbala, and frequently traded and interacted with the residents of the two cities. Some Sunni Arab tribes converted to protest their treatment by the Sunni Ottomans.
Shia missionaries from Najaf and Karbala operated with relative freedom from the Ottoman Empire, and could proselytize with little official hindrance. The Bani Sallama, Tayy and al-Soudan in the Mesopotamian Marshes were converted by the Musha'sha'iyyah dynasty, a heretical Isma'ili Shia tribal confederation founded by Muhammad ibn Falah which ruled the town of Hoveyzeh in Khuzestan from 1435 to 1924. Another tribe, Banu Khaz'al, as well as the Banu Kaab converted during the mid-18th century. After the fall of the Emirate of Muhammara, an autonomous emirate of the Shia Banu Kaab between 1812 and 1925 in modern-day Khuzestan province, many Iranian Arabs fled to southern Iraq, further inflating the Shia population in the south.
The conversions continued into the 20th century, as the British noted in 1917. Many Iraqi Shia are relatively-recent converts. The following tribes were converted during this period: some of the Zubaid, Banu Lam, Albu-Muhammad, many of the Rabiah, Banu Tamim, the Shammar Toga, some of the Dulaim, the Zafir, the Dawwar, the Sawakin, the al-Muntafiq confederation, the Bani Hasan, the Bani Hukayyim, the Shibil of the Khazal, the al Fatla, the tribes along the Al-Hindiya canal, and the five tribes of Al Diwaniyah which relied on the Daghara canal for water.