It seems as if the Shi'as had no scholars and literature of their own.

It seems as if the Shi'as had no scholars and literature of their own. To borrow an expression from Marx: ‘’ They cannot represent themselves, they must be represented, and that also by their adversaries!’’ The reason for this state of affairs lies in the paths through which the western scholars entered the fields of Islamic studies.

Hodgson, in his excellent review of western scholarship, writes: ‘’First, there were those who studied the Ottoman Empire, which played so major a role in modern Europe. They came to it usually in the first instance from the viewpoint of Europe and diplomatic history. Such scholars tended to see the whole of Islamdom from the political perspective of Istanbul, the Ottoman capital.

Second, there were those, normally British, who entered Islamic studies in India so as to master Persian as good civil servants, or at least they were inspired by Indian interests. For them, the imperial transition of Delhi tended to be the culmination of Islamicate history. Third, there were the Semitists, often interested primarily in Hebrew studies, who were lured into Arabic.

For them, headquarters tended to be Cairo, the most vital of Arabic using cities in the nineteenth century, though some turned to Syria or the Maghrib. They were commonly philogians rather than historians, and they learned to see Islamicate culture through the eyes of the late Egyptian and Syrian Sunni writers most in vogue in Cairo.

Other paths - that of the Spaniards and some Frenchmen who focused on the Muslims in Medieval Spain and that of the Russians who focused on the northern Muslims - were generally less important.'[^4] It is quite obvious that none of these paths would have led western scholars to the centres of Shi'i learning or literature. The majority of what they studied about Shi'ism was channelled through non-Shi'i sources.

Hodgson says: ‘’ All paths were at one in paying relatively little attention to the central areas of the Fertile Crescent and Iran, with their tendency towards Shi'ism; areas that tended to be most remote from western penetration.’’ ^5 And after the First World War, 'the Cairene path to Islamic studies became the Islamicist's path par excellence, while other paths to Islamic studies came to be looked on as of more local relevance.' ^6 Therefore, whenever an orientalist studied Shi'ism through Uthmaniyyah, Cairene or Indian paths, it was quite natural for him to be biased against Shi'i Islam.