Reviewing and Criticising Kelberg and Modarresi Tabatabai's Views on the Origin of the Twelver Shiites

Based on the historical-theological method and with the aim of comparing the views and presenting their shortcomings and lesser-known mistakes, the present paper reviews the views of Kleberg and Madarresi about the emergence of the Twelver Shi'ism. Kelberg called the emergence of the Twelver Shiites a "transfer from the Imamiyah," but Modarresi considered their emergence as "gradual development of the Shi'ism." Both regarded its history to be almost the same period of time, the middle of the fourth century AH, and in this regard they have cited the cases of reflection of the idea of "the twelve Imams" in ancient texts and have made some clear mistakes; they both have denied the recording of the Twelver beliefs in some texts which are not fully accessible to us, have neglected to record it in some sources and have had heterogeneous and sometimes contradictory views. In addition, Kleberg did not pay attention to the similarity of the word Imamiyya with the Twelver, and Modarressi had some "doubts" and false "generalizations", mistakes in "identifying the text and ancient versions of a narration" and "carelessness in understanding the terms of Mahdism".