Ismāʿīlism and the Shiʿi Branches

Beyond the Twelver majority, Shiʿism produced several branches — most importantly the Ismāʿīlīs — and, at its edges, movements whose relation to Islam is itself debated.

At a glance

Shiʿism is not a single body. Its largest branch, the Twelvers, recognises twelve imams; the Ismāʿīlīs, who part from the Twelvers over the succession to the sixth imam, developed a strongly esoteric theology in which scripture and cosmos unfold in cycles of revelation, and rose to power as the Fāṭimid caliphate. The Zaydīs, closer to Sunni practice, form a third branch, long associated with Yemen.

From this wider Shiʿi milieu emerged movements that later Muslims have variously regarded. The Druze arose in the 11th century out of a movement that venerated the Fāṭimid caliph al-Ḥākim, and the Nuṣayrīs (ʿAlawites) around a similar esoteric current; both are sometimes counted within Islam and sometimes treated as distinct traditions, and both hold beliefs that set them apart from the Shiʿi mainstream. Chronicle records such groups descriptively, noting how they are variously classified, without ruling on questions of orthodoxy that belong to qualified scholars.

Related in Chronicle

Curated reference on Islamic belief and thought. On matters where traditions differ, positions are attributed rather than adjudicated; verify points of doctrine with qualified scholars.