gained the status they still have today, when more than
four out of five Muslims are non-Arab.
Separate Sunni and Shia collections of hadith were
compiled, and the diʃerences between them represented
competing historical memories. They told diʃerent
versions of the same stories, disagreeing not on what
had taken place in the seventh century but on what it
meant. Where Sunnis would see Muhammad’s choice of
Abu Bakr as his companion on the hijra—the emigration
to Medina—as proof that he intended Abu Bakr to be his
successor, for instance, the Shia would see his
declaration at Ghadir Khumm as proof of his
designation of Ali. The Sunnis, in eʃect, would honor
history as it had taken shape; the Shia would honor it as
they believe it should have taken shape, and as they
maintain it indeed did in a realm other than the worldly
one.
By the tenth century, the Sunni Abbasid Caliphs had
been reduced to little more than ɹgureheads. Political
power was in the hands of the Buyids, a strongly pro-
Shia group from northeastern Persia that instituted the
Ashura rituals as we know them today. But Baghdad’s
hold on the empire continued to weaken, and by 1258
the city was helpless to resist the Mongol invasion under
Hulagu, a grandson of Genghis Khan. The once-great
empire split into a welter of localized dynasties, both
Sunni and Shia. It would be another two centuries until
relative stability was achieved, with the Middle East