Hazrati, Hasan, Makhaz’shinasi-i tawsifi-i tarikh-i tashayyu’-i imamiyah dar Iran. Imam Khumeni and Islamic Revolution Research Institute, Tehran 2004.Library of University of Chicago, UCG. LCCN: 2007-379840
The present bibliography offers 81 annotated Persian sources and 14 non-Persian, about the history of ‘ the Twelver Shia (Imami Shiism), since the early days of its formation.
The author believes that there is a significant lack of qualitative and quantitative scholarly documents and resources on Shia history world wide; particularly considering the fact that Iran is the center of the Twelver Shia in the world of Islam. He also claims that Shia has always been misrepresented in the history.
In the process of compiling this bibliography the following points have been considered:
- Sources are limited to Iran’s geographical proximity, in other words sources that are not relevant to Iran’s geographical boundaries are not included
- The Twelver Shia is the subject material of this bibliography and other Shia denomination such as: Ismailia, Zaydi, ….. is not included
- The development of the Twelver Shia in Iran throughout the history is the key subject in this bibliography, Shia dynasties such as Safavid and also Shia leading characters have been excluded,except for the 1979 Islamic Revolution
- This bibliography is not limited to Persian language material, English, Russian, Arabic, French and German are also included
Falatoory in a research article “Shia Sciences and Ideology” (1973), says “by reviewing Abstracta Islamica magazine and other western sources on Islam and Islamic countries, I was able to put together some statistics as follows; out of every one hundred written material about Islam, only two belong to Shia, and even within that small number only one out of seven sources are about the Twelver Shia, in other words one in every 350 books and articles is on the mentioned topic. Also, through further evaluations of 1143 doctorate dissertations on Islamic topics, (1860-1996), only 11 are written about Shia.
- Sources with which this bibliography was created from are all available in Iranian libraries and institutions including: University of Tehran main and literature library, the great Islamic encyclopedia, TU Iran/Islam history library, Qom Baqer-al-olum higher education institute.
- Books are chronologically organized; also those that are not dated are listed at the end
This bibliography ends with an alphabetically sorted index.
