The Iranian-Sufi Belief to the Twelve Imams in Ex-Safavid Era

The fall of Abassid Caliphate and mastery over Mugols in the Eastern part of the Islamic World caused the Shiite and Sufis get mingled and widespread. The result of such a mixture could be the bilateral relationships between these two. Believing in the Twelve Shiite Imams is one of fairly sharedfeatures among all Sufi sects, so that the Sufis of this period have left abundant traces proving this claim. This research is to echo the effect of the Shiite belief to the Twelve Imams among the Sufi sects and to investigate the background of dissemination of such a belief in Iran in the decades leading to the emergence of the Safavids. The findings of the research report that before the Safavid government establishment, the Iranian faiths to the Twelve Imams had been enormous, spontaneous, and quite arbitrary and free.