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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Peshawar Nights Translators' Preface Recently the non-Muslim world has forcibly learned that Islam is divided into two sects, Shi’as and Sunni, but there is so little material in languages other than Arabic and Persian on the Shi’as side of the issue that real understanding is all but impossible.

This is the consequence of the historical accident that Western contact with Islam was almost entirely with Sunni communities, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Ottoman Turkey, most of Muslim India, etc. The present work corrects this imbalance in a most extraordinary way, for the case for Shi'ite Islam is argued and supported virtually entirely from orthodox Sunni sources.

The political, juridical, and spiritual legitimacy of the Shi'ite position has been argued, and documented in the English language, and from sources that the West has largely overlooked. In fact, it is shown here that the most authoritative source for interpreting of the message of the was his cousin and son-in-law, ‘Ali Ibn Abi Talib, and the eleven other designated successors after him, who constitute the Imams of the Ithna Asheri (Twelve Imam) Shi’as.

At various times in history this fact has been more, or, less recognized by the Muslim world. As recently as 1959, for example, Sheikh Mahmud Shaltut, late Rector of Al-Azhar University in Cairo, and the Grand Mufti of the Sunni Sect, decreed that in addition to the four Sunni schools of Muslim canon law, Hanafite, Hanbalite, Malakite, and Shafi'ite, the Ja'farite or Shi’as school of law was equally acceptable to Muslims.

A brief account of how this came about at the instigation of Imam Mohamad Chirri, Director of the Islamic Center of North American in Detroit, Michigan, may be found in Chirri's book "The Shiites Under Attack," published by the Center.

* * * The present work is based on the transcript of a dialogue between several Sunni divines and a 31 year-old Shi'ite scholar, al-`Abd al-Fani Muhammad al-Musawi Sultanu'l-Wa’adhim, of Shiraz, Iran, held over a period of ten nights in Peshawar, India, beginning on 27 January 1927. The dialogues were a model of mutual respect, and in spite of the seriousness of the subject and the presence of an audience of some 200, there was no breach of decorum.