A
Brief History of Imam Ja'far ibn Muhammad's Life |
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Birth and
Imamate |
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Imam
Ja'far ibn Muhammad, the son of the fifth Imam, was born in 83/702.
He died in 148/765 according to Shi'ite tradition, poisoned and
martyred through the intrigue of the Abbasid caliph Mansur.After the
death of his father he beacame Imam by Divine command and decree of
those who came before him.
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The
Imam's sciences |
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During the imamate of the sixth
Imam greater possibilities and a more favorable climate existed for
him to propagate religious teachings.This came about as a result of
revolts in Islamic Lands, especially the uprising of the Muswaddah
to overthrow the Umayyad caliphate, and the bloody wars which
finally led to the fall and extinction of the Umayyads.The greater
opportunities for Shi'ite teachings were also a result of the
favorable ground the fifth Imam had prepared during the twenty years
of his imamate through the propagation of the true teachings of
Islam and the sciences of the Household of the Prophet.
The Imam took advantage of the occasion to propagate the religious
sciences until the very end of his imamate, which was contemporary
with the end of the Umayyad and beginning of the Abbasid caliphates.
He instructed many scholars in different fields of the intellectual
and transmitted sciences, such as Zorarah,Muhammad
ibn Muslim, Mu'min Taq, Hisham ibn Hakam, Aban ibn Taghlib, Hisham
ibn
Salim,
Hurayz, Hisham Kalbi Nassabah, and Jabir ibn Hayyan, the alchemist.
Even some important Sunni scholars such as Sufyan Thawri, Abu
Hanifah,the founder of the Hanafi school of law, Qadhi Sukuni, Qadhi
Abu'l-Bakhtari, and others, had the honor of being his students. It
is said that his classes and sessions of instruction produced four
thousand scholars of hadith and other sciences. The number of
traditions preserved from the fifth and sixth Imams is more than all
the hadith, that have been recorded from the Prophet and the other
ten Imams combined.
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Martyrdom |
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Toward the end of his life the
Imam was subjected to severe restrictions placed upon him by the
Abbasid caliph Mansur, who ordered such torture and merciless
killing of many of the descendants of the Prophet who were Shi'ite
that his actions even surpassed the cruelty and heedlessness of the
Umayyads.
At his order they were arrested in groups, some thrown into deep and
dark prisons and tortured until they died, while others were
beheaded or buried alive or placed at the base of or between walls
of buildings, and walls were constructed over them.Hisham, the
Umayyad caliph, had ordered the sixth Imam to be arrested and
brought to Damascus. Later, the Imam was arrested by Saffah, the
Abbasid caliph, and brought to Iraq. Finally, Mansur had him
arrested again and brought to Samarrah where he had the Imam kept
under supervision, was in every way harsh and discourteous to him,
and several times thought of killing him. Eventually the Imam was
allowed to return to Medina where he spent the rest of his life in
hiding, until he was poisoned and martyred through the intrigue of
Mansur.Upon
hearing the news of the Imam's martyrdom, Mansur wrote to the
governor
of Medina
instructing him to go to the house of the Imam on the pretext of
expressing his condolences to the family, to ask for the Imam's will
and testament and read it. Whoever was chosen by the Imam as his
inheritor and successor should be beheaded on the spot. Of course
the aim of Mansur was to put an end to the whole question of the
imamate and to Shi'ite aspirations. When the governor of Medina,
following orders, read the last will and testament,he saw that the
Imam had chosen four people rather than one to administer his last
will and testament: the caliph himself, the governor of
Medina,'Abdullah Aftah, the Imam's older son, and Musa, his younger
son. In this waythe plot of Mansur failed. |
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