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The word Imam carries two quite different meanings, and this atlas records four bodies holding a variant, differently accounted, stance toward the second, larger one: Ismailism, the Jafari School, Shia (Twelver) and Zaidiyyah. In ordinary Sunni usage an imam is simply whoever leads the prayer, a job rather than an office. Inside Shia Islam the same word names something no mosque committee can hire for or dismiss from, and the four branches recorded here do not agree on what that something actually is.

Twelve, Withdrawn, and Expected Back

For Twelver Shia the Imam is the divinely appointed and sinless successor of the Prophet. There were twelve; the last withdrew into occultation in the year 874 and is expected to return. The Jafari School, the school of law Twelvers follow, keeps the same count at the centre of its own identity: in its usage Imam names the twelve designated successors before it ever names the leader of a congregation, the reverse of the Sunni order where the word means the prayer leader first and an honorific for a jurist second.

Living and Hereditary, or Neither Sinless Nor Hidden

The Ismaili Imam is living, present and hereditary. The line never went into occultation at all, and the Aga Khan holds the office today, which is the exact point on which the Ismailis parted from the Twelvers in the eighth century. The Zaidi Imam is a different answer again: any qualified descendant of Ali who rises and claims the office by the sword. He is neither sinless nor hidden, and there is no fixed number of them at all, a doctrine closer to Sunni political theory than to either of the other two. Twelve and withdrawn, one and living, or open to whoever can claim and hold it: three branches of the same family of Islam, sharing one word, holding three structurally incompatible answers to what it names.

Where To Read More

• ImamIslam RolesThe role itself, its own record naming two meanings before any body's variant is read
• Shia (Twelver)IslamTwelve Imams, the last in occultation since 874, expected to return
• Jafari SchoolNames the twelve successors before naming a prayer leader
• IsmailismIslamA living, hereditary line, no occultation, the Aga Khan holds the office today
• ZaidiyyahIslamAny qualified descendant of Ali who rises and claims the office by the sword