IN THE NAME OF ALL THE FULL MERCIFUL- AND FULL KINDEST- THE TWELVER SHIA IN MODERN TIMES-RELIGIOUS CULTRE AND POLITICAL HISTORY—EDITED BY- RAINER BRUNNER AND WERNER ENDE –SOURCE-GOOGLE SCHOLRA Western scholarship on Islam, neither the Shia in general nor Twelver Shiism in particular. With regard to the latter, we should be aware that:
The Shia which the Western world first came to know from direct experience was that of the Fatimids and, somewhat later, the Assassins. It was the Fatimids, not the Twelver Shiis, whom the Crusaders con- fronted as immediate enemies; and though they may well have come across Twelver Shiis in Syria and Palestine, these were neither organ- ized in an independent state like the Fatimids, nor possessed the mys- tical aura of the Assassins. They were therefore much less attractive to Crusader writers.
To some extent, this lack of scholarly interest in Twelver Shiism began to change in the sixteenth century with the establishment in Iran of a dynasty following that creed, the Safawids. However, early generations of Western academic scholars interested in Twelver Shiism found it almost impossible to get hold of original sources. Many of them probably had no idea of the existence and richness of that material. From the early nineteenth century, Western knowledge of Shia Islam increased somewhat, mainly as a result of efforts made by Orientalists in the service of the British in India. The editions and translations published by those scholars consisted mainly of Twelver Shiite works on Islamic law. In due course, Western knowledge of these and other Shiite works was greatly enhanced by the publica- tion in India, Iran and elsewhere of lithographic editions which soon found their way into European libraries. But it was only in the last decades of the nineteenth century that a number of Western scholars, particularly Ignaz Goldziher and Edward G. Browne, started to develop an increased interest in Twelver Shiism. Neither of them, however, became what we would call a specialist in this field. In the case of Goldziher, the lack of adequate Shiite sources and the one- sided reliance on Sunnite works had an evident negative effect on
Kohlberg: "Western Studies", p. 31.
-
