But there were those who refused to recognize any Imām after...

But there were those who refused to recognize any Imām after al-Kāẓim and came to constitute the brotherhood of the Wāqifiyyah.[^12] From the Eighth to the Twelfth Imām, considered by the Shī‘ite majority as the Awaited Mahdī, no important division [ inshi‘āb ] took place within Shī‘ism.

However it occurred, what is important to retain here is that, since its origins, Shī‘ite Islām represents, more than a spiritual and political rebellion against illegitimate authority, a movement of “awakening,” like that of Ṣūfīsm in the Sunnī world. It was not a reformist movement in the Christian sense, like the one that took place in Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Shī‘ite Islām represents an integral restoration of Muḥammadan theosophy and…