Walaya in the Formative Period of Shi'ism and Sufism

Focused on Shi’ism and Sufism in the formative period of Islam, this book examines the development of the concept of walāya, a complex term that has, over time, acquired a wide range of relationships with other theological ideas, chiefly in relation to the notion of authority.

The book offers a textual and comparative analysis of walāya based on primary sources in the ninth and tenth centuries, fro...