Historical Studies

The growing interest for shi'ite islam in general and for twelver shi'ism in particular, as well as the growing difficulty of access to libraries in the traditional intellectual centers of shi'ism (namely in Iran and Irak) are the main reasons of the present bibliographical work. The latter consists in the presentation of the main imamite collections in Europe: the shi?ite collection of the Oriental Department of the University of Cologne, as well as the Henry Corbin and Shaykhī collections in the Religious Sciences Section of the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris. Considering the importance of the Shaykhī literature in the history of modern imamite thought and keeping in mind that it is almost unexplored, the complete catalogue of the Shaykhī collection is also presented. Lastly, an appendix deals with the problem of censorship of older sources in some recent editions, prepared in two shi'ite countries, and with the necessity of resorting to older editions or to manuscripts which, to a large extent, are preserved in the above-mentioned European collections.