This is a sub-article of Shi'a Islam

Shi'a Islam

Shia Islam is the second largest denomination of Islam. The followers of Shia Islam are called Shi'ites or Shias. "Shia" is the short form of the historic phrase Shīʻatu ʻAlī , meaning "followers of Ali", "faction of Ali", or "party of Ali".Like other schools of thought in Islam, Shia Islam is...

.

Shi'a ("followers" or "partisans") as an Islamic term traces its etymology to the very first century of Islam.

Transliteration

The singular/adjective form of Shi‘ah is Shi‘i . The apostrophe

Apostrophe

The apostrophe is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritic mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet or certain other alphabets...

 frequently used (e.g. Shi'a) is technically incorrect, since the Arabic letter is the ayin

Ayin

' or ' is the sixteenth letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic . It is the twenty-first letter in the new Persian alphabet...

 (), standardly represented with a grave accent

Grave accent

The grave accent is a diacritical mark used in written Breton, Catalan, Corsican, Dutch, French, Greek , Italian, Mohawk, Norwegian, Occitan, Portuguese, Scottish Gaelic, Vietnamese, Welsh, Romansh, and other languages.-Greek:The grave accent was first used in the polytonic orthography of Ancient...

 (`), left half-circle (), or turned comma (‘). The apostrophe represents the hamza, which has a noted difference in pronunciation. The final Arabic letter is the ta' marbuta

Ta' marbuta

The is a variant of the letter used at the end of words. It mostly exists in grammatically feminine words. In Modern Standard Arabic, it denotes the final sound and, when in construct state, . The regular letter ta, to distinguish it from , is referred to as .In the word is denoted as ,...

, which also causes difficulty in transliteration. It is often pronounced as a soft /h/ (e.g. Shi‘ah), but in a construct state

Status constructus

The construct state or status constructus is a noun form occurring in Afro-Asiatic languages. It is particularly common in Semitic languages , Berber languages, and in the extinct Egyptian language...

, and in more classical Arabic, it is pronounced as a /t/ (e.g. Shi‘at ‘Ali). The ta' marbuta is frequently dropped in transliteration (e.g. Shia).

Due to the complexities of Arabic, there are approximately 30 possible transliterations of . For technical accuracy Shi‘ah is the preferred form. Using the Arabic chat alphabet

Arabic Chat Alphabet

The Arabic chat alphabet, Arabizi, Arabish or Araby, , is an alphabet used to communicate in the Arabic language over the Internet or for sending messages via cellular phones when the actual Arabic alphabet is unavailable for technical reasons...

, the transliteration is Shi3a.

Imam Jafar

From Imam Jafar, The Sixth Ahlul Bayt Imam and fifth grandson of Muhammad:
Also:
Also:

Imam Rida

• Imam Rida
  Ali al-Rida
  ‘Alī ibn Mūsā al-Rizā was the seventh descendant of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and the eighth of the Twelve Imams, according to Shia sect of Islam...
  
  , The eight Ahlul Bayt Imam and seventh grandson of Muhammad: