The story

Peshawar Nights brings one of the best-known debates in Shia history to life in animation. In 1927, Sultan al-Wa'izin Shirazi, a young Shia scholar from Iran, sat down with the Sunni scholars of Peshawar. By his account they met for ten nights, in front of about two hundred people, while four reporters wrote down every word. They agreed on one rule: argue only from books both sides accept.

Every episode is built from Shirazi's own record of those nights, so you hear the questions and the answers the way he wrote them down. Each night picks up where the one before it left off, so we recommend watching the episodes in order, starting with the pilot.

Sources

• Sultan al-Wa'izin Shirazi, Peshawar Nights (Shabha-yi Pishawar). The debaters' words are condensed from the book, with every point kept. The words of the Imams (as) are translated and trimmed, never reworded. The staging in the hall is dramatised.

The story

Kufa sent al-Hurr ibn Yazid al-Riyahi with a thousand horsemen to stop Imam Husayn (as) on the road to Karbala. He blocked the road and halted the caravan on bare ground with no water. Then, on the morning of Ashura, he rode across to the Imam's side and asked to be forgiven, knowing what it would cost him.

Sources

• al-Shaykh al-Mufid, Kitab al-Irshad. The Imam's (as) lines are his own words, never reworded, and the rest of the dialogue is adapted from the same reports. A few moments are staged for the film, including the scout, the empty waterskin and the reins. The Imam (as) is never shown with a face.

The story

Al-Sadiq is an animated microdrama series about Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq (as). In every episode someone knocks on his door in Medina, carrying money, a grudge, a grief or a trick question, and leaves with one sentence that changes what they do next.

Each story is a real occasion recorded in the Shia hadith books, so the Imam only ever says what he actually said, translated into English and never reworded. Every episode runs about a minute and carries one lesson clear enough for a child to repeat.

Sources

• Episode 1: Shaykh al-Saduq, Ma'ani al-Akhbar, chapter on the meaning of "Allah", hadith 2. The same report is in al-Saduq's al-Tawhid. The shipwreck and the rescue are dramatised.
• Episode 2: al-Kulayni, al-Kafi, volume 2, Book of Faith and Disbelief, chapter on kindness to parents, hadith 11. His return to the Imam's door in Medina is dramatised, so the episodes connect.