The Iranian revolution has had a major impact, directly and indirectly, on the presence of Islam in the Pakistani public sphere. Indirectly, it has contributed to the flourishing of various Sunni Muslim institutions and movements, including some radical ones. Both local and foreign sponsors, especially from the Arabian peninsula, who have wished to counter the revolutionary messages coming from Iran, have resorted to supporting the radical strain in Sunni Islam. But more directly, the revolution has galvanised the Pakistani Shiᒼi communities, as it did Shiᒼi communities all over the world, setting in motion a strong movement of religious intensification and purification, and creating or strengthening transnational networks that connected Pakistani Shiᒼis with their co-religionaries in Iran and elsewhere. This paper deals with one particular aspect of the resurgence of Pakistani Shiᒼism, the emergence of women's madrasas and the movement of some of the best graduates of these madrasas to Qom in Iran for advanced studies.

Shiᒼism, in its various forms, has had a long presence in the regions that make up present-day Pakistan. Currently, Shiᒼis are believed to constitute 15 to 20 per cent of the population. Most of them are Twelver (ithnaᒼashari) Shiᒼis, but there is also a certain presence of Ismaᒼilis, especially in Karachi and in the northern territories. According to local tradition, Shiᒼism here goes back to the first centuries of Islam, when members of the Ahl-i Bait, the Prophet's family, fled eastward from Sunni persecution and found a safe haven on the banks of the Indus. The genealogies of the Pakistani sayyids (descendants of the Prophet) trace their family origins all the way back to the seventh century and believe their ancestors settled here soon after Husain's martyrdom at Karbala and the persecution of his descendants. Most sayyids in Pakistan are Shiᒼis.

However, the majority of Pakistani Shiᒼis are the descendants of Hindus who were converted to Islam by Ismaᒼili missionaries (daᒼi), whose presence in the region can be attested from the tenth century onwards. The state of Multan in fact even adopted Ismaᒼilism as the state religion for a brief period in the tenth century, under an independent dynasty allied with the Qarmatis, until its conquest and incorporation into the Sunni Ghaznavid empire under Sultan Mahmud of Ghazna in 1010.