Denomination

Zaidiyyah

Islam

Origin 740 to 897 CE

The oldest branch of Shia Islam, named for Zayd ibn Ali, and often considered the closest of the Shia schools to Sunni Islam in law and theology. Zaidis hold that the imamate belongs to a qualified descendant of Ali and Fatima who rises to claim it, rather than passing through a fixed hereditary line. Historically dominant in the highlands of Yemen, they are also known as Fivers.

Facts

Trajectory

Membership Over Time

The CIA World Factbook's 2020 estimate puts Yemen's population at 65 percent Sunni and 35 percent Shia Muslim, noting that the vast majority of Yemen's Shia are Zaydi, with a small Ismaili Shia minority alongside them; Yemen fields no religion census of its own, so this is a demographic estimate rather than a count. 4

Membership Over Time

The World Religion Database's most recent (2025) compilation estimates Zaydis specifically at 45 percent of Yemen's population against Shafi'i Sunnis at 55 percent, a notably higher Zaydi share than the CIA Factbook's 2020 estimate, the two figures disagreeing by roughly ten percentage points on a country neither has ever been able to count directly. 5

Membership Figure As Of

2020-01-01 4

Membership Figure As Of

2025-01-01 5

Basis of the Membership Figure

Scholarly or Demographic Estimate 5

Organisation

Governance

Authority in trained scholars, with no central office 1

Authority in the trained ulama since the Zaydi imamate of Yemen was abolished in 1962; before that, an imam who rose and was acknowledged.

Ordination

No ordination; authority rests on learning or on the whole body 1

Relation to the State

Disestablished 3

Zaidi imams ruled Yemen as both spiritual and temporal heads of state for roughly a thousand years, most recently as the Mutawakkilite Kingdom; the republican revolution of 1962 overthrew the imamate and ended Zaidi Islam's status as the basis of Yemeni state authority, and no successor imam or Zaidi state structure has been restored since.

Practice

Liturgical Language

Classical Arabic 1

Status

Status Today

Living tradition, practised today 1

Origins

Origin Period

740 to 897 CE 1

Place of Origin

Iraq, and established in the Yemeni highlands 1

Founder

Zayd ibn Ali (695-740). 1

History

Separation or Divergence

The rest of the Shia, after the rising of Zayd ibn Ali in 740: the Zaydis hold the imamate open to any qualified descendant of Ali who rises and claims it, rather than passing down a designated line. 1

Date of Separation

740 1

Belief

Defining Doctrinal Position

The imamate open to any qualified descendant of Ali who rises and claims it 1Islam

Does not hold the imams protected from error and refuses precautionary concealment in principle, since an imam is recognised by rising openly.

Defining Doctrinal Position

The Qur'an is God's created speech 2

Learn More

The Imam Who Rises

Zaidism is the oldest surviving branch of Shia Islam, and the one that has kept the least of what the word Shia now suggests to most people.

It takes its name from Zayd ibn Ali, a grandson of Husayn, who revolted against Umayyad rule at Kufa in 740 and was killed. What the revolt established was a doctrine of the imamate quite unlike the one that developed among the Twelvers. The imam is not designated in an unbroken line and does not simply inherit the office. He is any qualified descendant of Hasan or Husayn who is learned, pious, and rises openly to claim the office and fight for it. Quietism disqualifies: a man with the lineage and the learning who does not rise is not the imam.

The consequences run through the whole system. There is no infallible imam and no doctrine of concealment: no awaited figure, no occultation, no clerical deputyship exercised in his absence. Zaidi theology was shaped by the rationalist Mutazila, and its jurisprudence is close enough to Sunni practice, and to the Hanafi school in particular, that Zaidism is routinely described as the Shia school nearest to Sunnism. Zaidis do not curse the first caliphs, and Zaidis and Sunnis in Yemen have prayed in the same mosques for centuries.

It is sometimes called the Fiver school, on the reasoning that it stops at the fifth imam where the Twelvers continue to the twelfth. The label is an outsider's convenience rather than the tradition's own, and it misdescribes a school whose distinctive claim concerns how an imam is recognised rather than how many there have been.

A Thousand Years of Imamate, and Its End

Zaidism's political history is the longest of any Shia tradition. Imamates were established in northern Iran from the ninth century, and the Idrisid dynasty of Morocco, from 788, is often counted among them. The enduring one was in Yemen.

Al-Hadi ila'l-Haqq Yahya was invited to arbitrate among the tribes of the northern highlands and established an imamate at Sa'dah at the end of the ninth century. With interruptions, conquests and rival claimants, that institution lasted until 1962, a religious polity of a thousand years, longer than any other Shia state has managed. Its learning was carried in protected scholarly settlements, and in the sada, families claiming descent from the Prophet, whose social position the imamate underwrote.

It ended abruptly. A revolution in 1962 abolished the imamate and proclaimed the Yemen Arab Republic, and the civil war that followed ran to 1970. With the imamate went the institutional structure of Zaidism. There is no Zaidi religious authority today: no imam, no hierarchy, no equivalent of the seminaries of Najaf or Qom. Authority survives informally, among scholarly families around Sa'dah.

The republic that replaced the imamate was not neutral toward the tradition. Saudi-funded Salafi institutions were established in the Zaidi heartland from the 1980s, teaching that Zaidi practice was heterodox, and the sense of a tradition losing ground in its own territory is the direct background to what followed. A thousand-year institution had been abolished, and nothing had been put in its place.

The Houthis, and Whether They Are Zaidism

The question that has to be addressed is whether Ansar Allah, the movement generally called the Houthis, represents Zaidism. The short answer is that it is Zaidi in derivation and is not the Zaidi religious establishment.

It grew from Believing Youth, founded in 1992 at Sa'dah as a Zaidi revivalist education movement, running summer camps that drew fifteen to twenty thousand young people by the middle of the decade, in direct response to Salafi expansion into the region. Hussein al-Houthi militarised and politicised it after 2003 around opposition to the United States and to Israel. He was killed by government forces in 2004, and his brother Abdul-Malik has led the movement since. It took Sanaa in September 2014, seized the presidential palace in January 2015, and assumed power through a revolutionary committee in February.

Bernard Haykel has characterised its reading of Zaidism as highly politicised, revolutionary and intentionally simplistic, departing sharply from the classical scholarly tradition. Many established Zaidi scholars dispute its religious legitimacy, and critics allege a drift toward Iranian Twelver practice, which the movement denies. In the areas it controls it has in places displaced the traditional Zaidi religious establishment rather than represented it.

Population figures should be given with care. Zaidis are usually estimated at around a third of Yemen's population, on sources that are dated and not census-derived; Yemen has had no reliable religious census, and war since 2015 makes any current figure guesswork. Global totals in the tens of millions circulate and are poorly supported. There are also Zaidi communities in the Najran region of Saudi Arabia.

Zaidiyyah

1 entry

Scholarly Standing

Doctrinal Category

Status Within the Tradition

Imamate

Zaidiyyah

Schools of Religious Law of Zaidiyyah

Zaidi School

Schools of Religious Law

4 links

Connections

Zaydi doctrine does not hold the imams protected from sin or error, which separates it from Twelver and Ismaili Shiism while leaving the imamate in the line of Ali.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

Taqiyya (Precautionary Concealment)

Zaydi doctrine refuses precautionary concealment in principle, since an imam is recognised by rising openly and a hidden claim is no claim at all.

Source God's Rule: Government and Islam. Six Centuries of Medieval Islamic Political ThoughtPatricia Crone

The Occultation of the Imam

Zaydi doctrine has no occultation and no closed line: the imamate is open to any qualified descendant of Hasan or Husayn who claims it and rises.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

Governed By Polity

Scholarly Consensus Polity

Entity-backed identity for the polity value this entry already carries, resolved to the live entity it names, phase 3 bucket conversion (docs\design_entity_backed_browse_buckets_20260928.md, w-bucketconv-divmore-0929). The original fact with its own citation stays on the entry unchanged.

Held Differently

Adhan

The Zaydi call keeps the summons to the best of deeds, which the Sunni schools dropped, and Yemeni Zaydis have been pressed on that one line at times when the state wanted uniformity.

Caliphate

The Zaidi imamate is held by a qualified descendant of Hasan or Husayn who claims it openly and takes up arms for it, which is neither the Sunni election nor the Twelver designation.

Imam

The Zaidi Imam is any qualified descendant of Ali who rises and claims the office by the sword. He is neither sinless nor hidden, and there is no fixed number of them.

Source An Introduction to Shi'i Islam: The History and Doctrines of Twelver Shi'ismMoojan Momen

Holds Element

Mujtahid

Zaidi jurisprudence has continued to practise independent legal reasoning rather than settling into the following of a single school.

Source An Introduction to Shi'i Islam: The History and Doctrines of Twelver Shi'ismMoojan Momen

Nahj al-Balagha

Zaydi teaching honours Ali's word and the collection stands within the literature the school reads, without carrying the authority a scriptural text would.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

The Amman Message Conference

The Zaidi school is named among those the message recognises, and Zaidi scholars are among its endorsers.

Source The Amman MessageRoyal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought

The Shrines of Husayn and al-Abbas, Karbala

Zaidi teaching descends from Husayn's grandson and holds the martyrdom at Karbala among the founding events of its own tradition, while not keeping the mourning observances in the Twelver form.

The Three Points of the Amman Message

The Zaydi school is named among the eight the message recognises.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

Objects and Practices of This Tradition

Afterlife

An afterlife of resurrection and judgement is affirmed doctrine in Zaydi Shia Islam.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

Alcohol and intoxicants are forbidden

Source The Qur'an

Belief May Not Be Concealed, Whatever the Danger

Fasting from dawn to dusk in Ramadan

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Finality of Prophethood

Muhammad is affirmed as the last of God's prophets in Zaydi Shia Islam.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

Good and Evil Are Knowable by Reason

Hadith

Hadith are affirmed as a source of doctrine in Zaydi Shia Islam, transmitted through its own distinct chains and compilations, which the atlas does not yet catalogue as separate scripture text entries.

Source Hadith as Scripture: Discussions on the Authority of Prophetic Traditions in IslamAisha Y. Musa

Human Beings Author Their Own Acts and God Judges Them Justly

Imamate

Zaydi Shia Islam holds an activist imamate, open to any sufficiently learned descendant of Ali and Fatima who publicly claims the office and can enforce it, rather than one fixed hereditary line.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

Iman

Iman is foundational to Zaydi Shia Islam.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

Kitab al-Ahkam (The Book of Rulings)

The unfinished founding legal treatise of al-Hadi ila'l-Haqq Yahya, who established the Zaydi imamate in Yemen in 897; the basis, together with his follower's companion volume, of the Hadawi school that carries his own name, distinct from the earlier corpus already attributed to Zayd ibn Ali.

Source A Short History of Zaydi Fiqh (Leiden Arabic Humanities Blog)Eirik Hovden and Ebrahim Mansoor

Meat must be slaughtered halal

Source The Qur'an

Musnad al-Imam Zayd

Source Encyclopaedia of Islam (Brill), 2nd and 3rd editionsP. Bearman et al. (eds.)

Pilgrimage to Mecca once in a lifetime

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Pork is forbidden (haram)

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Prophecy

Nubuwwah, prophethood culminating in Muhammad, is affirmed doctrine in Zaydi Shia Islam.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

Sharia

Sharia, elaborated through its own distinct legal tradition, is affirmed as binding in Zaydi Shia Islam.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

Tawhid

Tawhid, the absolute oneness of God, is affirmed foundational doctrine in Zaydi Shia Islam.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

The Createdness of the Quran

Classical Zaydi theology took over the Mutazila's positions, including the createdness of the Quran and the priority of divine justice, which sets it apart from Twelver kalam.

Source Islamic Creeds: A SelectionW. Montgomery Watt

The Five Pillars

Zaidis keep the five acts in a form close to Sunni law, from which their jurisprudence differs less than the other Shia schools, while holding the imamate open to any qualified descendant of Ali and Fatima who rises to claim it.

Source Sahih al-BukhariMuhammad al-Bukhari

The Imam must rise and rule as a qualified descendant of Ali

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

The Imamate (divinely appointed succession through Ali)

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

The Quran

The Quran, held to be the literal and uncreated word of God revealed to Muhammad, is canonical scripture across every branch of Islam, including this tradition.

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

The Quran is created

The Sunna Recorded in Hadith Is a Binding Source of Law

Usury (riba) is forbidden

Source The Qur'an

Originated In

Iraq

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

Originates in Language

Classical Arabic

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

Position On

Adl

Zaydi theology holds that God is just by necessity of His own nature and can neither command nor do wrong, the Mutazili position, which places Zaydism with Twelver Shiism and against Ashari Sunnism on this question.

Source Islamic Creeds: A SelectionW. Montgomery Watt

Barzakh

Barzakh is affirmed in Zaydi doctrine.

Source The Islamic Understanding of Death and ResurrectionJane Idleman Smith and Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad

Bidah

The category of bidah is affirmed in Zaydi doctrine.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

Fitra

Fitra is affirmed in Zaydi doctrine.

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

Haram

The forbidden category is affirmed in Zaydi law as the strongest of the five rulings.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

Haya

Haya is affirmed in Zaydi doctrine.

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

Ijma (Scholarly Consensus)

Consensus is accepted in Zaydi legal theory.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

Ijtihad and taqlid

Zaydi jurisprudence holds a working ijtihad, and the imam is required to be a mujtahid, which ties the legal question directly to the constitutional one.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

Jihad

Jihad is affirmed in Zaydi doctrine, and khuruj, rising against an unjust ruler, is not an option within it but a duty constitutive of the imamate: the imam is recognised by rising.

Source God's Rule: Government and Islam. Six Centuries of Medieval Islamic Political ThoughtPatricia Crone

Kaba'ir and Sagha'ir

The division into grave and lesser sins is affirmed in Zaydi doctrine.

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

Kaffara

Kaffara is affirmed in Zaydi law as a defined expiation.

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

Mizan

The weighing of deeds at the judgement is affirmed in Zaydi doctrine.

Source The Islamic Understanding of Death and ResurrectionJane Idleman Smith and Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad

Predestination and free will

Zaydi theology is Mutazili in method and holds that a human being is the real author of his own acts, since God cannot justly punish an act He alone created.

Source Islamic Creeds: A SelectionW. Montgomery Watt

Qiyamah

The resurrection and judgement are affirmed in Zaydi doctrine.

Source The Islamic Understanding of Death and ResurrectionJane Idleman Smith and Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad

Sabr

Sabr is affirmed in Zaydi doctrine.

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

Shirk

Shirk is affirmed in Zaydi doctrine.

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

Shukr

Shukr is affirmed in Zaydi doctrine.

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

Taqwa

Taqwa is affirmed in Zaydi doctrine as the Quran's measure of human worth.

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

Tawakkul

Tawakkul is affirmed in Zaydi doctrine.

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

Tawbah

Tawbah is affirmed in Zaydi doctrine as a turning back to God.

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

The five rulings

The five rulings are the classification of acts in Zaydi jurisprudence.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

Usul al-fiqh

Zaydi legal theory takes the Quran, the Sunna, consensus and reasoning, and stands closer to the Sunni schools in method than Twelver theory does.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

Uses Liturgical Language

Classical Arabic

Entity-backed identity for the language enum value this record already carries, resolved to the live divinity language entity that value names, per the phase 3 entity-backed browse bucket conversion (docs\design_entity_backed_browse_buckets_20260928.md, owner decisions 2026-09-28, w-bucketconv-divlang2-0929, mapping corrected). The language fact itself, with its own citation, stays on the record unchanged; this relationship only adds the durable entity identity the value already names.

Sources

1. The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition

P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.), Brill, 2005

s.v. Zaydiyya
Originated In: Iraq, Stored origin-place property on this entity, cited to this source: Iraq, and established in the Yemeni highlands

View the Source

2. Islamic Creeds: A Selection

W. Montgomery Watt, Edinburgh University Press, 1994View the Source

3. Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)

Encyclopaedia Britannica editors, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 2024View the Source

4. The World Factbook (Central Intelligence Agency)

Central Intelligence Agency, Central Intelligence AgencyView the Source

5. Yemen: National Profile (World Religion Database)

Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA), Baylor University, 2025View the Source

God's Rule: Government and Islam. Six Centuries of Medieval Islamic Political Thought

Patricia Crone, Columbia University Press, 2004

The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary

Seyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief), HarperOne, 2015View the Source

An Introduction to Shi'i Islam: The History and Doctrines of Twelver Shi'ism

Moojan Momen, Yale University Press, 1985View the Source

The Amman Message

Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought, Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought, 2008View the Source

The Islamic Understanding of Death and Resurrection

Jane Idleman Smith and Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, Oxford University Press, 2002View the Source

Nahj al-Balagha

Compiled by al-Sharif al-Radi; attributed to Ali ibn Abi TalibThe sermons attributed to Ali

Quote, The sermons attributed to Ali

Zaidism holds Ali's authority without the doctrine of an infallible imam or of an occultation.

Encyclopedia of Religion

Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005Entry on the Zaydis

Quote, Entry on the Zaydis

The Yemeni imamate ran from the end of the ninth century until 1962, and no Zaidi religious authority has replaced it.

View the Source

Essays About This Entity (3 essays)

One Word, Two Offices, and Four Shia Branches Disagree About the Second One

Any qualified descendant of Ali who rises and claims the office by the sword

Read the Essay

Two Calls to Prayer, and a Third Voice That Turns Out to Be the Same One Twice

Zaidiyyah, the genuinely distinct voice on the adhan, for a non-Twelver reason

Read the Essay

One Set of Stances Maps the Splits in Islam

Holds a different account: a claiming descendant of the Prophet's grandsons

Read the Essay

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Zaidiyyah

Imamate

Zaidi School

Belongs to Tradition

Branch Of

Critiqued

Governed By Polity

Held Differently

Holds Element

Objects and Practices of This Tradition

Originated In

Originates in Language

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Uses Liturgical Language

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