Mediaeval Latin Christians knew Shi’ism only as a hated schism

Evidence

Essentially, Shi‘ism seems to have been thought of as a schism simply, even though one of implacable hatred; ‘Ali was its antiprophet, as Oliver of Paderborn’s simplification of William of Tyre’s statements brings out.® Shi‘ah forms of religious expression were quite unknown. So was the moderate Ja‘fari Shi‘ah Islam, either as a temperate form of religious belief and practice, or as the religion of the oppressed that it has often become in the course of its history. This may just be hinted at by Ricoldo, who knew ‘Iraq and passed through Samarra’, where, of course, he was told that guidam filius Ahali, that is, the Mahdi (the twelfth Imam) would return, and where he heard of the wonderful mule, held ready harnessed on Fridays in expectation of the Mahdi’s coming. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1802

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to themes of how sects are flattened and demonized when known only from a distance — echoes the reader’s interest in how communities misrepresent each other. — connects to: Travellers introduced Shi’ism to Europe only after it became Persia’s state religion