Instructions For Filing An Emergency Guardianship: Fill & Download for Free

In my own personal experience one can be committed to a psychiatric hospital when their psychiatrist and narcissistic parents (regardless of age…I am 47) construe enough information that is not in any way confirmed through direct proof and file a petition to have a 72-hour hold on you. I was court-ordered, picked up by police, hand- cuffed and taken to a facility against my wishes. The best part of it was that if you order the hold on a Friday, the 72-hour hold (3 days) turns into a 120-hour hold (5 days) because the courts and facility do not process you on the weekend days and do not ‘count’ them. At the same time, my parents filed for temporary emergency guardianship and were granted it. So they took the money I had and deposited it in their own bank account immediately. After the 72-hour hold, I was supposed to be able to have the option of signing myself back in for further treatment or leaving the facility. I was never give this option but was instead taken to court after a completely different (one that had never seen me the previous 120-hours before) psychiatrist evaluated me for 10 minutes and decided I was psychotic and a danger to myself and others. For some reason, my parents were allowed to be at this court hearing and actually TESTIFIED AGAINST ME by telling more crazy stories that were based on no actual proof or logical sense. The facility I was being held at actually was not supposed to be allowed to let anyone know I was a patient there and I gave explicit instructions that they were not to communicate with my parents or their lawyer but somehow they were able to ascertain my location, court date and were present at it, allowed to testify against me and tried to get me to be committed for 90 more days!!! I had a public defender represent me who I had met 10 minutes prior to this happening. The facility I was at violated some many of my human rights with this in collaboration with my parents as well as the psychiatrist that helped them get me committed it has taken a huge mental toll on me for at least a full year now. What they did was criminal to say the least and I know the others I encountered at the facility were in there under very similar circumstances but actually believed that their ‘family’ was always trying to ‘help’ them. Most of the other patients admitted while I was there were adults living with their narcissistic parents who had just been so abused and gaslit throughout their lives that they actually think they are fucked up. Its one of the most horrific situations that goes on today undetected and virtually unprovable because all the power lies with the institutions, the narcs, and those that support their stories through the legal system. My stay at this facility was over $30,000 for a mere 15 days. I have Medicaid so I was nor financially responsible for the bill but this is medicaid fraud in my opinion. My parents and those that assisted on my commitment did not have to pay a dime for my ‘care’ which was just short of being in a federal prison…and I’m not exaggerating because some of the people I met there had actually been to jail and said that the facility we were at was a notch above jail. I could go on and on but I think the question has been answered well enough to give a pretty complete picture of what crimes are going on today in the name of ‘help’ and ‘protection.’

early on Shi'ism attracted a disproportionate number of Persians. Although the Persians did not adopt Shi'im en masse until after the rise of the Safavids in the sixteenth century, some Persians did play prominent roles in Shi'ism in its early centuries. In short, Sunni teaching preserves the integral purity of Islam and refutes the Shi'i account of Islamic history by simply dismissing Shi'ism as a whole as something that entered the Muslim community from the outside rather than something that emerged from within, let alone from the person of Ali. Accounting for the Sunni-Shi'a split is slightly more complex for the Shi'a. Because they believe that history already began veering off the path that God intended for it when Abu Bakr and not Ali succeeded Muhammad as Caliph, the Shi' a have never felt the same need to idealize early Islamic history. Indeed, they experience the opposite temptation. They cannot accept the Sunni concept of the "Rightly Guided Caliphs." Abu Bala, Umar, and Uthman are all, in Shi'a eyes, usurpers. In fact, far from regarding these three as honorable and exceptional Muslims, many Shi'is hayed disparaged them as nawasib, meaning those who hate the Prophet's lineage. Some Shi'a have at various times in history returned this hate to the nawasib in the form of ritual cursing. As part of their communal prayers Shi'a have often called upon God to punish the Rashidun, the very same figures that the Sunni revere as divinely blessed. The practice of ritual cursing has been a source of controversy among Shi'i clerics. Today most condemn the practice. The modern Islamic Republic of Iran, for example, formally bans the practice. Being the vastly smaller party, the Shi' a cannot so freely or openly reject Sunnism as alien to Islam without running the risk of retaliation. Consequently Shi'i scholars have expressed a wide range of opinions on the legitimacy of the Sunnis and their beliefs. Thus although they may question the legitimacy of some Sunni beliefs and practices, very few dispute the fundamental claim of Sunnis to be Muslims. Nonetheless, ritual cursing remains a popular aspect of communal prayers. And because clerical authority among the Shi'i primarily flows upward from the rank and file rather than from the top down, some Shi'a clerics opt to tolerate the cursing rather than jeopardize their personal authority by condemning it. Although the Sunni revere Ali, they cannot and do not ascribe the same authority to him as do the Shi'a. Sunnis accordingly accuse the Shi'a of attributing exaggerated importance to the person of Ali. Indeed, the charge that the Shi'a created a "religion of Ali" as opposed to Islam, the religion of Muhammad, was one of the Sunnis' earliest criticisms of the Shi'a. The charge is not entirely baseless. There have been, and are, among the Shi'is a small number who have gone so far as to assert that Ali was closer to God than Muhammad. According to them, the intended recipient of God's final revelation was not Muhammad, but Ali, and that the angel Gabriel erred by delivering the revelation to Muhammad. This notion, as well as the still more extreme idea that God became incarnate in Ali, is absolutely scandalous to the vast majority of Sunnis for whom the centrality of Muhammad as the God's last and best prophet is axiomatic. Although these beliefs have never found a place in mainstream Shi'i doctrine, Sunni polemicists have not hesitated to tar the Shi' a as a whole with the radical ideas of the sects that branched off from the Shi'a mainstream. Shi'a conceptions of the transmission of religious knowledge and the nature of spiritual leadership constitute another field of dispute with Sunnis. These conceptions are tied to the Shi'i rejection of the Rashidun and the doctrine that the caliphate properly belongs to the Prophet's family. The Shi'a contend that Ali was Muhammad's rightful successor not merely because he was his closest male relative, but also because Muhammad had passed on to Ali esoteric knowledge. They further believed that only persons possessing certain traits passed on through inheritance could master such knowledge. After Ali's death the Shi' a maintained that his line of male successors held the first claim to the post of Imam. This belief in the special role of the descendants of Muhammad and Ali manifested itself in the Shi'i institution of the Imamate. The word "imam," which literally means simply the one in front, acquired very different meanings in Sunni and Shi'a Islam. Whereas in Sunni Islam it typically refers simply to the one who stands in front and leads the congregation in prayer, or occasionally as an honorary title for particularly revered scholars, in Shi'a Islam it came to denote the supreme leader of the Muslim community, an analogue to the Caliph. Hence whereas the Sunni narrative of Islamic history traces the development of the Caliphate from the Rashidun through the Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties until the final destruction of the Abbasid dynasty and the Caliphate in 1258 by the Mongols, the dominant Shi'a narrative runs through a series of "Imams," beginning with Ali and his sons Hassan and Husayn and ending with the twelfth Imam, Muhammad al-Mandi (this school of Shi' ism is appropriately known as the "Twelvers;" the next largest group is known as the "Seveners" for they believe that there were only seven imams before the line ended). This twelfth and final Imam did not, according to the Twelver Shi'a, die but rather disappeared and went into occultation. In 874 he disappeared from sight and communicated from a cave through deputies. This is known as the "lesser occultation." Then in 941 he disappeared entirely in what is known was the "greater occultation." As his moniker al-Mandi, a rough translation of which is "messiah," suggests, he will come back from occultation to establish a reign of true justice. Until his return there will not be another imam. Reflecting this belief in twelve imams, the dominant group of Shi'a today is known as the "Twelvers" to distinguish them from the other, much smaller related sects. Although the Sunnis too, believe in a mandi, they have no figure in occultation or equivalent to the Twelfth Imam. According to the Twelver Shi' a, a candidate for the position of imam generally had to satisfy several conditions. Most of these are unremarkable: being of mature age, possessing sound mind and body, holding a sound command of theological knowledge, and being capable of rule. These qualities are not, however, enough. Keeping in conformity with the long-standing Shi'a insistence on the special role of the Prophet's direct lineage, the Twelver Shi' a contend that the imam must also be a direct descendant of Ali either through Hassan or Husayn. Only such a descendant can be both close enough to God and in possession of the esoteric knowledge necessary to rule and "guide men to attainment of happiness and perfection." It is not the umma that selects the Imam but God. The Shi'i conviction that Muhammad passed on esoteric knowledge to Ali and that possession of this knowledge is a perquisite of the Alid line provides yet another source of friction and contention between Sunni and Shi' a. Sunnis regard this interest in the esoteric as a preoccupation that has more to do with pagan superstition than with Islam. Again, a central facet of Sunni Islam's claim to superiority is the contention that the Quran constitutes a clear and straightforward book of guidance and that Islam rests upon a wholly rational understanding of the oneness of God (as contrasted in particular with the Christian mystery of the Holy Trinity). For many Sunnis, the suggestion that esoteric knowledge is necessary both contradicts what the Quran itself claims and undermines its authority by suggesting that there are other sources of authoritative knowledge outside the Quran. Hence a common slur wielded by Sunnis against Shi' is is batini, a word that connotes the inner or hidden aspect of things. The word entered common discourse in reference to a particular sub-sect of Shi' a that placed an exceptional emphasis on esoteric knowledge. Sunni polemicists have since adopted batini as a general term of abuse for the Shi'a, accusing them of superstition and un-Islamic obfuscation and obscurantism. THE QURAN Another subject of dispute concerns the Quran. For Sunnis, the Quran is the literal word of God. This belief in the Quran's nature as a flawless and direct expression of God is central to Islam's understanding of itself as the final revelation of God, a revelation that surpassed all that came before and that cannot itself be surpassed. Unlike the Torah or the Christian Bible, which however much divine inspiration they may contain are corrupted and unreliable guides to God's will, the Quran is perfect. Indeed, its perfection is in itself a miraculous proof of Muhammad's message.THE HISTORY OF SUNNI-SHI'A CONFLICTThe consolidation of the Shi'a as a distinct community within Islam took place following the martyrdom of Husayn at the battle of Karbala. From that point onwards, the Shi'a rejected the Sunni Caliphs and looked to their Imams instead as the authentic authorities in Islam. Inevitably, the Shi'a began to invent and cultivate distinct traditions, rites, and doctrines, including a separate branch of jurisprudence. In the beginning, however, the Shi'a lacked state institutions and thus, as a minority holding controversial and even heterodox ideas, were subjected to repression by the Sunni authorities. With no avenues out of this situation, the Shi'a adopted a doctrine of dissimulation, taqiyya, according to which it is permissible for a Shi'a believer to deceive outsiders and deny his beliefs for the sake of self-preservation. This doctrine has since been disowned by many Shi'a scholars but has nonetheless further strengthened among the Sunni images of the Shi'a as the mysterious, malevolent, and immoral internal enemy. The victory of Yazid over Husayn at Karbala also marked the rise of the Umayyad dynasty, named after the clan to which Muawiyah and Uthman belonged, the Umayya. It is thus no surprise that the Umayyads persecuted the Shi'a consistently. When the Umayyad grip on the caliphate began to weaken, its two main rivals, the Shi'a and the Abbasids, met along with representatives of the Banu Hashim tribe to choose a new candidate for caliph. They settled upon a Muslim named Abu al-Abbas Abdullah ibn Muhammad al-Saffah, who won backing from the Shi'a by emphasizing his blood ties to the Prophet's household through his uncle and by letting the Shi'a believe that he would vest authority in the Shi'i Imam. Al-Saffah toppled the Umayyads in 750. Shi'a hopes for this new dynasty, the Abbasid, were sorely disappointed. The alliance fell apart as soon as the Abbasids secured a victory over the Umayyads. Not only did the Shi'a come to blows with the Abbasids, but they themselves disintegrated into quarrelling sects. The result was that the Sunni Abbasids gained control of the Caliphate. Al-Saffah thereupon perpetuated the Umayyad practice of succession. Successive Abbasid Caliphs waged campaigns of repression against the Shi'a. The Abbasids' transgressions allegedly include the murder of SW.' as through mass beheadings and live burials, the assassination of the sixth Shi'i Imam, and the destruction of the tomb of Husayn at Karbala.GEOPOLITICAL AND SPIRITUAL RIVALRY: FATIMIDS VS. ABBASIDSIt was during the Abbasid period that the Shi'a managed for the first time to pose an institutional and geopolitical challenge to the Sunni Abbasid Caliphate. In 909 a North African Muslim claiming descent from the Prophet Muhammad's daughter Fatima and Ali established a new dynasty, which became known as the Fatimid Dynasty (909-1171). They espoused a form of Shi'ism known as Ismailism. After extending their control over much of North Africa, the Fatimids seized Egypt from a local Sunni dynasty in 972. With a firm base in Egypt, the Fatimids were able to project their power and extend their control into the Levant and present-day Syria, thereby directly challenging the Abbasid Caliphate, which was based in Baghdad, in the heartland of the Islamic world. During roughly two centuries of control, the Fatimids managed to leave their stamp upon Egypt. They gave the city of Cairo its name and they founded perhaps the Muslim world's most famous institute of higher learning, the university of al-Azhar. Ironically, after Egypt fell again under Sunni control, al-Azhar would go on to acquire the reputation of the guardian of Sunni orthodoxy. The Fatimid Shi'i influence is reflected in the fact that even today Sunni Egyptians are known for their heightened reverence of the family of the Prophet. The Fatimid challenge to the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad was more than a mere geopolitical one. As descendants of Ali and as Shi'is, the Fatimids directly and deliberately challenged the Sunni Abbasids' legitimacy as rulers of the Islamic world. Significantly, the Fatimid threat came at a time when the Abbasid Caliphate was especially vulnerable and faced threats from within and without. The Islamic world's unity had already fractured and rendered the Caliphal claim to rule the lands of Islam a nominal one. The Caliphate had been in decline and its power diminishing for some time. In the tenth century, a Shi'i dynasty known as the Buwayhids from northern Iran asserted control over Baghdad, and with it the Caliphate. They accepted the titular authority of the Caliph, but exercised real power. From the perspective of later Sunni historiography, the worst of these challenges to the Caliphate came in the form of the Christian Crusaders. In the twelfth century the Crusaders from Europe were pushing in to the Middle East and reversing conquests made long ago by Muslims. The fortuitous arrival from Central Asia of the Seljuk Turks provided the boost that rescued the Sunni world. The Seljuks, who had converted to Sunni Islam while still in Central Asia, supplied fresh manpower and energy to what had been a flagging faith. They destroyed the Buwayhids and once again placed the Caliphate under Sunni guardianship. Not least important, the Seljuks extended state support to education and providing for the construction of madrasas and other institutions of learning. This support rejuvenated Sunni scholarship and enabled Sunni scholars to meet and refute the Shi'a challenge in the realm of doctrine and ideas. To many Sunni historians, the overlapping Shi'a and Crusader threats to the Sunni Caliphate were not unrelated or coincidental. Instead, they perceived a shared aversion and hostility to true Islam joining the Shi' a and Crusaders together. It took a great Sunni warrior, Saladdin, to defeat these threats. After first overthrowing the Fatimids in Cairo and securing his rear, Saladdin was able to rally the forces of Islam and begin the expulsion of the Crusaders. Yet even Saladdin's efforts did not suffice to stamp out Shi'a perfidy. A radical group of Shi'a known most famously as the "Assassins," waged an extended campaign of terror against the Sunni Abbasids and Seljuks. Secure in high mountain redoubts from Abbasid-Seljuk armies, the Assassins dispatched trained killers to murder Sunni officials. In 1258 the Sunni world experienced a catastrophe. In that year invading Mongols under Hulagu Khan captured Baghdad. Along with the city the Abbasid Caliph al-Mustasim and his household came into Hulagu's control. Fearing prophecies that predicted divine retribution should he spill the caliph's blood, Hulagu ordered the last Caliph to be rolled up in a carpet before he was trampled to death by horses The Mongol destruction of the caliphate was an unprecedented disaster for Sunmi Muslims. After all, the temporal success of the Muslims, the conquests, had served as divine proof of Islam's truth. Now the premier institution of Sunni Islam no longer existed, not even as a symbol. Although later a Muslim claiming to be a surviving member of al-Mustasim's household would emerge in Cairo and be proclaimed Caliph by the Mameluk Sultan, his authority was restricted to matters of ceremony and purely religious matters. For that reason Muslim historians referred to this dubious Mameluk institution as the "Shadow Caliphate." Moreover, large numbers of Muslims were now subjected to the rule of the Mongols. Whereas the Shi' a found accommodation with the Mongols, Sunni Muslims could only despair at the disaster wrought upon them.IBN TAYMIYADuring these dark days of Mongol rule one of the most influential Sunni jurists and theologians emerged, Ibn Taymiya (d. 1328). The problem of Islam's loss of power and the spread of non-orthodox ideas and practices among Muslims pre-occupied Ibn Taymiya. The answer he found was that Muslims had failed to practice their faith with the necessary rigor. In order to restore the realm of Islam to its rightful glory Muslims must return to the vigorous, austere, and, above all, uncompromising Islam that, Ibn Taymiya argued, existed solely in the Quran . Ibn Taymiya maintained that there was no need for either the reason of philosophers or for the esotericism of the mystics and embraced an exceedingly literalist interpretation of the Quran. His critics, for example, charged him with anthropomorphism, taking the Quran's mention of the ear or hand of God as proof of God's possession of such appendages. More ominously, Ibn Taymiya argued that the Mongols, recent converts to Islam, were in fact apostates because they did not practice Islam to the full and proper extent. As apostates, they were fair targets for assassination and killing. It is not a coincidence that Ibn Taymiya's thought and writings are today especially authoritative among Sunni Muslim radicals trying to make sense of Islam's fall from glory and restore its strength. Ibn Taymiya's literalism, rejection of authority and sources beyond the Quran and hadith, and his readiness to declare Muslims apostates all mark Sunni radical groups today. Ibn Taymiya reserved a special contempt and hatred for the Shi'a.These Shi'a were the enemy from within, heretics who posed as Muslims but who sought to sap and destroy Islam from the inside. In a charge that would be repeated centuries later by Sunnis such as Saddam Hussein and Abu Musab Zarqawi alike as they fulminated against the lack of Shi'a resistance to US forces outside Baghdad in 2003, Ibn Taymiya accused the Shi'i Grand Vizier of the last Caliph, Ibn al-Alqami, of having secretly betrayed the Caliph and assisted Hulagu Han sack Baghdad. It is important to note that Ibn Taymiya's enmity for the Shi'a did not stem simply from a need to find a convenient scapegoat to explain the predicament of Islam. His animosity to the Shi'a was consistent with his beliefs about the nature of revelation, authority, and the history of early Islam. Where the Shi'a posited an Islam with hidden or esoteric sides that demanded divinely designated individuals to ascend to leading positions from which they could use their abilities to safely guide the Muslim community, Taymiya argued for a literalist, puritanical Islam based solely on the Quran and the Sunna. Thus Taymiya dismissed the Shi'i institution of Imam as wholly improper. Neither the Quran nor the Sunna made any mention of it and thus it lacked any sort of proper pedigree. Moreover, there was no need in Islam for an Imam or anyone else possessing a unique ability to achieve esoteric knowledge because there was no such knowledge. The Quran and the wisdom were clear and direct guides to all Muslims. Ibn Taymiya dismissed the Shi'a view of Ali as wildly exaggerated. If Ali had in fact been so special and close to God he could be mentioned by Allah or Muhammad. He regarded the Shi'a belief in the occultation of the Twelfth Imam as absurd. Echoing the general Sunni concept of the good leader as one who wields authority to provide order first and foremost, Ibn Taymiya argued that the proof of a ruler's worth lies in his ability to take power and wield it. Someone who could not even be present, like the occulted Twelfth Imam, was useless to a community and could not be a leader by definition. Similarly, the Shi'i pathos of the repeated failures of "rightful" leaders to take their places was nonsensical. The fact that these would-be leaders could not claim and hold power demonstrates that they were unfit even to be leaders. Ibn Taymiya's hostility to the Shi'a is not rooted only in contingent or coincidental history, but is a logical extension of his construction of Islam. His Islam is clear, literal, outwardly directed, and puritanical. When Muslims practice it correctly, they have God's blessing and will know success in this world, as the record of the Prophet and Rashidun demonstrates. Their failure to practice it correctly brought about their weakness and the loss of the caliphate. To overcome this weakness they must return to the Islam of the Golden Age and fearlessly take up arms against Islam's enemies. It is, therefore, no surprise that Wahhabi and other militant Sunni groups that draw on Ibn Taymiya espouse a similarly virulent antagonism toward the Shi'a. At the same time it should be noted that Ibn Taymiya could condone tactical alliances with the more mainstream of the Shi' a, the Twelvers. This is consistent with Ibn Taymiyah's emphasis on the need for the political defense of Islam. Because Islam embraces both the affairs of this world as well as that of God, the preservation of secular power was also a priority. The Shi'a could never be accepted as Muslims and were not trustworthy, but if necessary tactical alliances with them were permissible.THE ASSASSINSThe image that Sunni polemicists created of the Shi' a as an unstable and dangerous group of heretics predisposed to fanaticism was not wholly without some empirical support. In 1090 an Ismaili Shi'i from Yemen named Hassan-i Sabah set up a stronghold in the mountain of Alamut just south of the Caspian, not far from Qazvin, Iran. Following the death of the Fatimid Caliph al-Mustansir in 1094, Hassan-i Sabah and his followers refused to recognize the new caliph and split from the Fatimids. Sabah remained deeply hostile to the Sunni Abbasids and remained dedicated to achieving the destruction of the Sunni Abbasid Caliphate. To accomplish this goal he raised a cadre of religiously inspired killers who would track down and individually eliminate high-ranking Abbasid officials, including the Caliph himself if possible. Although they did not take their own lives, their preferred style of attack — carried out individually, up close, and in public in order to ensure the greatest amount of terror and intimidation — virtually guaranteed that they would be caught and killed.' Hassan-i Sabah therefore recruited his hit men carefully and subjected them to intense religious indoctrination. The idea of martyrdom, the Muslim belief that a Muslim who dies while in the process of fighting jihad for the sake of God would upon death instantly achieve his reward in the paradise of Heaven, was a central component in this doctrination . The preparation and instruction allegedly included the use of drugs, notably hashish. Thus, according to some, this group became known as the hashishiyin and contributed to the English language the word "assassin." Although scholars debate the likelihood of drug-use and propose alternative theories about the precise etymology of the word assassin, they all agree that the word originated with this Shi'a sect and its practice of targeted and deliberate murder. The Assassins succeeded in building up a network of fortresses in Iran and Syria from where they waged a campaign of terror for nearly a century and a half. They murdered a number of high-ranking Abbasids, including the famous Abbasid Vizier and Turk, Nizam al-Mulk, who as vizier had among other accomplishments laid the foundation for state-supported Sunni madrasahs. The Abbasids, Seljuks, and Mameluks all failed to suppress the Assassins. It took the might of the Mongols to crush and stamp the sect out of physical existence. The Ismaili sect exists today in numerous corners of the world. The Nizari sub-sect from Alamust, however, was apparently extinguished in toto by the Mongols. Although the Assassins are alleged to also have carried out a number of attacks against the Christian Crusaders (who brought the word "assassin" back with them to Europe), Sunni sources remember them not as defenders of the faith against outsiders but as a heretical movement dedicated to the destruction of Islam. Moreover, many Sunni commentators understood the Assassins not so much as an extremist sect within Shi'ism but rather as the embodiment of the mystical extremism that is the nature of Shi'ism. Sunni commentators referred to the Assassins as Batini, i.e. those who search for the inner or hidden meaning of religion. To this day Sunni polemicists invoke the Batini and the example of the Assassins to discredit the Shi'a in general as a quasi-occult and heretical movement holding nothing in common with Islam beyond nomenclature, a fact that only underscores their cunning and malicious nature.THE SAFAVID SHI'l SUPERSTATE AND THE STRUGGLE FOR THE MIDDLE EASTThe next momentous event in the history of Sunni-Shi'a relations was the rise of the Shi'i Safavid dynasty in Iran (1501-1736). The dynasty takes its name from the Safaviyeh Sufi order, which was based in Ardabil and had a following among the Turkic tribesmen of the region. Sometime around the beginning of the 15th century the Safaviyeh, for unknown reasons, switched its orientation from Sunni to Shi'i. In 1501 the head of the order, a young boy named Ismail I, captured the city of Tabriz. Within another ten years he succeeded in conquering most of Iran as well as the provinces of Baghdad and Mosul. Iran's population at this time was solidly Sunni, and scholars debate the extent of even the Safaviyeh's commitment to Shi'ism. Some scholars propose that one reason why Ismail I became such an enthusiastic proponent of Shi'ism was because its reverence for Ali and the Shi'i imams verged on deification. Shi' ism permitted Ismail I to present himself as the reincarnation of Ali and a manifestation of God and thereby win greater popular support and influence. The Shah functioned as both a temporal king and a divine representative." In any event, Ismail I upon coming to power demonstrated himself to be a fervent Shi'i. He declared Shi'ism the official religion of his state, encouraged conversion among the population, and invited leading Shi'i scholars to Iran where they could establish madrasas and develop Shi'i doctrine and thought. The result was momentous. Shi'ism took root in Iran, both binding Iran's disparate tribal and ethnic elements together and binding itself to the Persian national consciousness. To be a Shi'i became an essential part of Persian identity. And, not least important, the Shi'i religion acquired a powerful state with a large population and extensive geographic reach. Shi'ism had again become a geopolitical force in the Islamic world. The other rising power in the Middle East, the Ottoman Empire, could not ignore the Safavid state. Not only did the Safavids loom as military rivals, but as champions of Shi'ism they posed a direct ideological challenge to the staunchly Sunni Ottomans. The Ottoman Sultan Selim I judged the threat significant enough to turn the Ottomans from the west, where they had heretofore focused their conquests, to the east. He led his army through eastern Anatolia toward Iran. Along the way he dealt harshly with the Shi'i Anatolian tribes he encountered. Their religious affiliation marked them as potential allies of the Safavids, and so Selim allegedly put some forty thousand to the sword. In 1514 he brought his army against Ismail's in the battle of Chaldiran and defeated the Shi'i Safavids. The Shi'i Safavids retained control of Baghdad, the seat of the Abbasids, Two decades later Selim's son, Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent, rectified the situation. He wrested Baghdad from the Safavids and completed the conquest of Iraq. From then on Baghdad remained under Ottoman control, except for a brief Safavid reoccupation that lasted from 1623 until 1638. Istanbul integrated Iraq, composed of the three provinces of Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra, into its empire and ensured Iraq's westward orientation. In order to maintain control of Iraq, the Ottomans cultivated a local Sunni elite to assist their civil servants and military officials in the region. The Ottomans thereby established the pattern of Sunni-domination of Iraq that lasted up until the recent overthrow of Saddam Hussein.