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This chapter presents an overview of Murtaḍā’s context and a detailed account of his life. It thus studies his career as student, teacher, politician and religious authority. As the head of the ʿAlids, he coordinated between Buyid power and Abbasid reign in the humanistic atmosphere of the renaissance of Islam. There follows a survey of his most important writings, intended to acquaint readers with each work’s general objectives and specific contribution. The last section of this chapter is dedicated to an exhaustive bibliography of Murtaḍā, addressing questions related to the authenticity of certain works. The chapter is divided into three sub-headings: The Man and His Time; Magna Opera; Bibliography

This chapter examines how genealogy may be used for writing about the past by focusing on the family of the Prophet Muhammad and the evidence that genealogies provide regarding marriage alliances and strategies. In particular, it considers the question of endogamy, or marriage within the ‘family’. It shows that genealogical data are useful for writing the history of one branch of the Prophet's family, the al-Sadr, in today's Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran. The chapter begins with an overview of the al-Sadr family before turning to a discussion of the 'Alids' marriage strategy. Based on works of prosopography and extensive fieldwork, the chapter analyses sensitive data involving women of the Prophet's family to illustrate how this branch has followed a strategy of endogamy involving both the family and non-'Alid members of ‘the Shi'i religious establishment’. It also shows that the families with whom members of the al-Sadr family have established marriage bonds are very important for defining the social status of the al-Sadr.

This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, which is to provide a social history of the ʻAlids in the crucial five centuries from the ʻAbbāsid Revolution to the Saljūqs (second/eighth to sixth/twelfth centuries). Due to the richness of the source material, this study focuses especially on the eastern part of the Islamic world. The chapter then provides definitions of terms used throughout the book; a historical overview of the ʻAlid family; and reviews studies the role of the Prophet's family in Muslim societies. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

This chapter discusses Ṭālibid genealogies as the historiographic footprint of the emergence of the Prophet's descendants as the First Family of Islam. Written mostly by and for the family of the Prophet, these works reflect not only a ‘changing notion of nobility’ but also an increasing concern with defining the boundaries of an elite group. In terms of content, the genealogies are certainly selective regarding whom they include, yet in contrast to many other sources that focus on one or another group of ʻAlids — the historical chronicles focusing mainly on the rebels and some government supporters, the rijāl works on the scholars, and the local histories on the ʻAlids (who are often also scholars) in a particular region — they are inclusive, giving the names, at least, of the Prophet's alleged kin regardless of background. The Ṭālibid genealogies are most comprehensive on the ʻAlids in the eastern part of the Islamic world, because this is where the authors themselves were mostly based.

This chapter discusses the ʻAlids' financial privileges, false claimants to ʻAlid status, and the ʻAlids' marriage patterns. It shows that as they rose to the top of the hierarchy of Muslim society, the ʻAlids increasingly married within the family; even though there is little in Shiʻite or Sunni law to restrict explicitly marriage choices, ʻAlid women came overwhelmingly to marry ʻAlid men. Maternal lineage also mattered, much more than is usually accounted for. Cognate relations formed the basis of social and political alliances and could determine and explain the behaviour of a clan. Marriage patterns reveal the internal workings of the ʻAlids more clearly than any other accounts.

This chapter discusses the emergence of the ʻAlids as the First Family of Islam through an examination of the niqāba, ‘the headship’ of the ʻAlid family. It focuses on the still little-understood origins and functions of the office, as well as the extent of a naqīb's power, his autonomy from the authorities, and his duties towards the ʻAlids.

This chapter draws together the themes of the previous chapters and gives a case study of two prominent families in the Islamic East, the Āl Zubāra and the Āl BuṭṭĀnĪ. Both families combined their sacred descent with other sources of elite status, such as wealth and learning, to ensure their place as the primi inter pares of the Eastern Islamic elites.

This chapter presents some final thoughts. This book examined how the ʻAlids attained and extended their special status from the ʻAbbāsid Revolution of 132/750 to the end of the fifth/eleventh century, the crucial period in the formation of ʻAlidism. With the rise of their ʻAbbāsid cousins to the caliphate, the ʻAlids began to delineate ever more clearly what it meant to be part of the kinsfolk of the Prophet Muʻammad. There is no other family in the history of Islam, perhaps in the history of any civilisation that has left more traces for historians to uncover.

This chapter focuses on Fawwaz’s portraits of early Muslim women, especially those of ahl al-bayt, the Prophet Muhammad’s family and lineage. It highlights her presentations of Alid and early Shi’i women given Fawwaz’s origins in the Shi‘i region of Jabal ‘Amil, Lebanon. Discussing women’s roles in the rift which led later to the development of sects in Islam, it finds that the biographical dictionary features an unusually high proportion of pro-‘Ali (Alid) and then Shi ‘i women, and that in their orientation these biographies signal a quiet but discernible Shi‘i perspective or allegiance. It then discusses Fawwaz’s emphases in her biographies of Muslim contemporaries: scholarship, literature, and reform, and how her life histories of Arab or Muslim contemporaries parallel those of Europeans.