This study examines how religious authority was distributed in early
Islam. It argues the case that, as in Shi'ism, it was concentrated in
the head of state, rather than dispersed among learned laymen as in
Sunnism. Originally the caliph was both head of state and ultimate
source of religious law; the Sunni pattern represents the outcome of a
conflict between the caliph and early scholars who, as spokesmen of the
community, assumed religious leadership for themselves. Many Islamicists
have assumed the Shi'ite concept of the imamate to be a deviant
development. In contrast, this book argues that it is an archaism
preserving the concept of religious authority with which all Muslims
began.