The purpose of those posts will be to shed the light on The Shiite community’s history and the reasons behind the uprise of groups such as Amal and mainly Hezbollah as well as their need to stay armed and the strong links to Iran & Syria.

I will not go through the Sunnite-Shiite conflicts throughout history, but i will resume it briefly to explain the major differences between those two groups and the wars that opposed them.

Shiites started showing as a political bloc that opposed The Sunnites’ hegemony in appointing Khalifas over all Muslims, considering that Ali ( The prophet’s cousin) is the most eligible to take over, noting that Ali had two children ( Hassan & Hussein).

What started as a political opposition turned into an armed resistance and fierce clashes between the two parties. The first armed revolution led by Shiites was in 655 where they took over and won and appointed Ali as the new Khalifa.

However, the first Sunnite-Shiite war occured right after this ‘putch’, and several wars followed led by Mouawiya from Syria who wanted to avenge the death of his cousin ( by Shiites ) and reclaim the Khalifa until Ali was killed in 661 stabbed in the back on his way to pray in Koufa.

After Mouawiya’s death, Ali’s son Hussein to claim the khalifa, however he was trapped in Karbalaa when 4000 men of AbeedAllah Ben Zayed’s army attacked him and his 200 men and forced him to surrender.
He refused and it ended up as a slaughter where Hussein was decapitated and his head sent to Damascus ( Sunnites), and till this day Karbalaa day is a mourning day for the Shiites.

Shiites were severly defeated and unable of reclaiming vengeance till 747, when they allied with Abbasides who were waging a war against the Ummayads to claim the khalifa and take over Damascus, the capital of the Islamic world back then. However, they were backstabbed by Abbasides to simply exploited them to get to power but then turned on them.

By the end of 16th century, Shiites were dispersed all over the Arab world and reached Lebanon ( Mountains and the Bekaa), when they were running away from the Mamluks who were slaughtering them claiming they were a threat to them.

Shiites were already present in Lebanon around the 13th century, and even before that in Jabal Amel and their struggle was no

( to be continued …)