Abstract:

The study consists of Shahristani’s methods on the classification of Islamic sects and analyses his ideas. It also gives information about historical and sociological background in order to evaluate the opinions on history of Islamic sects and the approaches properly. Therefore, the primary source of the study is al-Milal wa al-Nihal written by Shahristani dealing with History of Islamic Sects. The importance of the book in the genre and its content has been given in the place where the methods on classification of Islamic sects are studied. In this regard, his general classification of Islamic sects, namely Ahl Suna, Murjia, Mutazila, Shite and Hawarij and his manner of evaluation of sub-denomination, their numbers have been all investigated. However, the study has been restrictedly written for the reason of limited purpose, instead of working on all denominations. It has been also mentioned that the classification given by Shahristani indicates his method. By doing so, we easily found out the reason of why he presents specifically the certain sects, the conclusions, critiques, and the evaluations. In the conclusion the suggestions are summarized.

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