Ismaili.NET - Heritage F.I.E.L.D.

Except for a handful of recent sources, there has been a lack of ample introductory level texts suitable for teaching Shi'ism to undergraduate students. Andrew Newman’s Twelver Shiism: Unity and Diversity in the Life of Islam, 632 to 1722 (Edinburgh U.P., 2013), Farhad Daftary’s A History of Shi6i Islam (I.B.Tauris, 2013) and Najam Haider’s Shi6i Islam: An Introduction (Cambridge U.P., 2014) have begun to fill in this gap. Daftary, and Amyn Sajoo and Shainool Jiwa,have added to this brief list the essays collected in The Shi6' World: Pathways in Tradition and Modernity.

A little more than a year ago, the Sixth Seminar organised by the Aga Khan Award for Architecture met in China -- first in Peking, where experts from throughout the world talked about rural architecture and such important questions as the role of the experts, financial and otherwise, in the creation of rural living environments suitable for the men and women there who produce the raw materials that are essential to our community life -- and then in Urumqi, Turfan, Kashgar, cities bearing witness to the thrust of Islam eastwards.