Sunni-Shi'i relations have undergone significant transformations in recent decades. In order to understand these developments, the contributors to the present volume demonstrate the complexity of Sunni-Shi'i relations by analyzing political, ideological, and social encounters between the two communities from early Islamic history to the present.

PART I: SUNNA AND SHI'A IN THE AGE OF MUSLIM EMPIRES  Responses to Unwanted Authority in Early Islam: Models for Current Shi'i and Sunni Activists; J.Lassner  Early Hanbalism and the Shi'a; N.Hurvitz  The Confrontation Between Sunni and Shi`i Empires: Ottoman-Safavid Relations Between the Fourteenth and the Seventeenth Century; M.Scherberger  Encounters between Shi'i and Sunni 'ulama' in Ottoman Iraq; M.Litvak  The Ottoman Dilemma in Handling the Shi'i Challenge in Nineteenth-Century Iraq; I.S.Üstün   PART II: SUNNIS AND SHI'IS AND THE MODERN STATES  Religious Extremism and Ecumenical Tendencies in Modern Iraqi Shi'ism; A.Baram   Quietists Turned Activists: the Shi'i Revolution in Iraq; O.Bengio   The Sunni-Shi'i Struggle over Lebanon: a New Chapter in the History of Lebanon; E.Zisser   The Wahhabiya and Shi'ism, from 1744/45 to 2008; G.Steinberg   Unity or Hegemony? Iranian Attitudes to the Sunni-Shi'i Divide; Z.Maghen  Debating the 'awakening shi'a': Sunni Perceptions of the Iranian Revolution; M.Hatina   Interesting Times: Egypt and Shi'ism at the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century; R.Brunner   Epilogue: The Sunni-Shi'i Paradox