Three decades after the death of the founder of Islam Muhammad (d. 10/632) in the Muslim community formed a religious-political group (Shi'a) advocates the transfer of sovereignty - the imamate - Ali b. Abi Talib, son-in-the prophet. This group was the nucleus of a movement that broke the original religious unity of the Muslim community, and later led to the division into two main parts - the Sunnis and Shiites. In terms of the value of the split went beyond the dynastic rivalries for power within the caliphate, had an enormous influence on the fate of the Muslim world, the influence is as profound as the divisions in Christianity, which divided Christendom into Catholics and Orthodox. The fall of the Umayyad Caliphate and the transfer of power to the Abbasids, took advantage of the fruits of nearly a century of struggle for power Alids, opened a broad access of non-Arab population in all spheres of social life in Muslim society. With the victory of the Abbasids Islam ceased to be a predominantly Arab. Overcoming the limitations of ethnicity, it has become international. Shiite movement has played a crucial role in this process. Shiite struggle for power, especially after the victory of the Abbasids, was accompanied by the active development of religious, political, state-legal, historical, philosophical views. The formation of Shiite ideology was closely associated with the development of Shi'ite literature in a variety of genres and types of which reflected the variety of forms Shiite ideology. The author set himself the task to give an overview of one of its major branches - the historical and religious literature of the Shiites, which occupied an important place in Islamic historiography and most fully express the formation of socio-political and historical views of the Shiites, in particular their views on the history of the Muslim community, their perceptions of the nature and character of the supreme power, etc. Overview of the Shiite historiography covers the initial period in the history of the Shiite movement (VII-X in the middle.) .. By the end of this period is completed the initial stage of formation of religious-political ideology of the Shiites, during which laid the theoretical foundations of the Shiite faith, and after that starts the phase of the development and codification of the Shiite doctrine.