The Caliph and the Imam

Reviewed by: Christopher Anzalone – George Mason University, USA

Published by: New York: Oxford University Press, 2023, 944pp. ISBN: 978-0198806554.

Interest in the historical and contemporary interactions between Sunnī and Shīʿī Islam and sectarianism in Islam exploded during and after the 2003 Iraq War and U.S. and British-led coalition occupation of Iraq. Much ink was spilled on these subjects, much of it based on poor historical knowledge and focused primarily on international security issues. Scholarship on Shīʿī Islam has continued to progress in the decades since the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the rise to political power of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his supporters, with increasing attention being paid by scholars to both theological and esoteric subtopics regarding Shiʿism as well as to minority Shīʿī sects like the Ismāʿīlīs and the Zaydīs. In a massive new historical survey, political scientist Toby Matthiesen, an expert on sectarian politics and relations in the Arab Gulf countries and author of two books on the subject, tackles the formidable task of analysing how inter-sectarian relations has shaped Islamic history and the Muslim-majority world since the seventh century.