Table of Contents
Resources 
was part of the Ottoman Caliphate with its capital in Constantinople (modern day Istanbul, Turkey).
The fundamentals of the religion (usul ad-din)
Twelver Shí’a hold that the five fundamentals of Islam are:
– Divine Unity;
– Prophethood;
– the Resurrection;
– the Imámate; and
– Divine Justice.
Laws & Religious Rituals
The main ritual practices are very similar between Shí’a and Sunní. The key ones include:
– Obligatory prayer (namáz; 5 times a day);
– Fasting (the month of Ramadan);
– Obligatory alms (zakat);
– Pilgrimage (hajj);
– Religious war (jihád).
The Shí’a specific important religious practices include:
– Visitation (zíyárat)–visiting the shrines of the Imáms and the family of the Imáms;
– The one-fifth tax (khums);
– Religious dissimulation (taqíyya)–dissimulation of one’s religious beliefs while maintaining mental reservation in times of danger to life or property;
– Recitals of the sufferings of the Imáms and in particular the martyrdom of Husayn (rawdih-khání).
Shí’a law and the ‘ulamá
The principal intellectual focus in Islam is not theology but rather the application of the Holy Law. The religious professionals in the Islamic world – the Islamic clergy are called the `ulamá (meaning “the religiously learned”; with mullá being a person who has got theological education and is one of the ‘ulamá).