Crossword-Solution: IMAMATE 7 letters, 15 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 11

Till as late as the last century the Imamate was an elective office among them, but with the accession of the Abu Saïd dynasty it became hereditary in that family.[8] They reject all communion with the Sunites, but I have not been able to discover that they hold any doctrines especially offensive to the mass of Moslems.

Nor can the Bahá’í Administrative Order be dismissed as a hard and rigid system of unmitigated autocracy or as an idle imitation of any form of absolutistic ecclesiastical government, whether it be the Papacy, the Imamate or any other similar institution, for the obvious reason that upon the international elected representatives of the followers of Bahá’u’lláh has been conferred the exclusive right of legislating on matters not expressly revealed in the Bahá’í writings.

Other sects of the Shiahs, as the Zaidiyah and Ismailia, make a difference in the succession of the Imamate among Hussain's descendants.

The successors of Ahmed-bin-Sayid found the obligations of being imam, and the oath which it entailed to fight against the infidel, both awkward and irksome, so his grandson, Saoud, who succeeded in 1779, never assumed the title of imam, but was content with that of sultan, and consequently the imamate of Oman has, with one short exception, been in abeyance ever since.

According to the Shi'ite Moslems, who call the office the "imamate" or leadership, no caliph is legitimate unless he is a lineal descendant of the Prophet.