Shiite Islam originated as a political movement supporting Ali (cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam) as the rightful leader of the Islamic State. The legitimacy of this claim, as initially seen by Ali's supporters, was based on Muhammad's alleged selection of Ali as his successor, Ali's honor, and tribal customs, given his close relation to the Prophet. Ali's right passed with his death in 661 to his son Hasan, who chose not to claim it, and after Hasan's death, to Husayn, Ali's younger son. The evolution into a religious conception is believed to have been initiated with the martyrdom of Husayn in 680 at Karbala (today in Iraq), a traumatic event still observed with fervor in today's Shiite world on the 10th of the month of Muharram of the Muslim lunar year. The Shiite focus on the person of the Imam made the community exposed to division on the issue of succession. The early Shiites, a recognized, if often persecuted, opposition to the central government, soon divided into several factions. Among the Shiites the concept of the Mahdi takes a different form. In the history of Islam, many men have arisen who claimed to be the Mahdi. They usually appeared as reformers antagonistic to established authority. The differences in the view of the Mahdi between the different sects are the central barrier between a united Shiite division of Islam versus the scattered sects, two of which are the Druze and the Ismailis.
The Druze religious community of followers is located in Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan, with important overseas branches in the Americas and Australia. The religious leadership prefers the name Muwahhidun (Unitarians). While preserving many Islamic symbols, the Druze religion also incorporates Gnostic and neo-Platonic creeds. In the 10th century, Cairo Hamza ibn Ali, a Persian preacher and Muhammad al-Darazi, a Turkish preacher who gave his name to the sect, pronounced the sixth Fatimid caliph al-Hakim, as Divine.
