Encounters With the Hidden Imam in Early and Pre-modern Twelver Shi?i Islam

The history of what has come to be known as Twelver Shåi°åi Islam is a history of attempts to deal with the abrupt loss of the Imam. In Encounters with the Hidden Imam in Early and Pre-Modern Twelver Shåi°åi Islam, Omid Ghaemmaghami demonstrates that inthe early years of the so-called Greater Occultation, Shåi°åi authorities maintained that all contact with the Imam had been sundered, forcing him to remain incommunicado until his (re)appearance. This position, however, proved untenable to maintain. Almost a century after the start of the Greater Occultation, prominent scholars began to concede the possibility that some Shåi°a can meet the Hidden Imam. Accounts of encounters with the Imam from the Greater Occultation soon began to appear, adumbrating their exponential growth in later centuries--