The Shia are a scattered global minority concentrated around Iran.

Evidence

The Shi a have remained a minority in the Islamic world as a whole, as well as in most Muslim countries. In the African continent, among Arab and black Muslims alike, Shi ism is little known. It is represented only by Indian and Pakistani immigrants in East Africa. Shi ites are equally scarce in Southeast Asia. As one might expect, the largest Shi ite populations are in the countries around or near Iran—in the Indian subcontinent, in Afghanistan and central Asia, in Iraq and the Gulf. The Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan, which until its annexation by the Russian empire was an Iranian province, is overwhelmingly Shi ite. In Syria there are no Twelver Shi a, but three of the other branches of the Shi a are represented—the Druze, the Isma ilis, and the Alawis, also known as the Nusayris, to which President Asad and many of his closest associates belong. There are also Isma ili and other non-Twelver Shi a in Yemen. The Shi a of Lebanon, for long known as the Matawila, are the only important group of Twelver Shi a west of Iraq and the gulf province of Saudi Arabia. For a long time, the Lebanese Shi a, consisting mostly of impoverished peasants, have been the forgotten men, both within the Lebanese political system and within the larger Shi ite community. They are changing all that now. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1451

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader Islamic-history chapters of this book and to current Middle East geopolitics — the Alawi/Nusayri origin of the Syrian ruling family is directly relevant to the Syrian civil war.