SHIITES (" sectaries," from the Arab. eltiah, shiat, a party, a faction), the name given to a Mohammedan sect by the " Sunnites" (q.v.), or orthodox Moslems. The Shiites call themselves "followers of Ali," and have special observances, ceremonies, and rites, as well as particular dogmas of their own. The principal difference between the two consists in the belief of the Shiites that the imamat, or supreme rule, both spiritual and secular, over all Mohammedans, was originally' vested in All Ibn Abi Taleb, and has been inherited by his descendants, to whom it legitimately now belongs. The Persians are Shiites; the Turks, on the other hand, are Sunnites; and this division between the two nations dates chiefly from the caliphate of Mothi Lilla, the Abasside, in 363 u., when political dissensions, which ended in the destruction of Bagdad and the loss of the caliphate of the Moslems, assumed the character of a religious war. The Shiites themselves never assume that (derogatory) name, but call themselves Al-Adeliat, "Sect of the Just Ones." They are subdivided again into five sects, to one of which, that of Haidar, the Persians belong;rthe present dynasty of Persia deriving its descent from Haidar, a descendant of Ali. Ali himself is by some of them endowed with mire
than human attributes. The Shiites believe in metempsychosis and the descent of God upon his creatures, inasmuch as he, omnipresent, sometimes appears in some individual person, such as their imams. Their five subdivisions they liken unto five trees, with seventy branches; for their minor divisions of opinions, on matters of comparatively unimportant points of dogma, are endless. Yet in this they all agree, that they consider the caliphs Abu Bekr, Omar, and Othman, who are regarded with the highest reverence by the orthodox Sunnites, as unrighteous pretenders and usurpers of the sovereign power, which properly ought to have gone to All direct from the prophet. For the same reason they abominate the memory of the Ommayad caliphs, who executed Husain, a son of Ali, and they still mourn his death at its anniversary. They likewise reject the Abasside caliphs, notwithstanding their descent from Mohammed, because they did not belong to Ali's line.