Ja'far ibn Muhammad al-Sadiq

Abu Abdallah Ja'far ibn Muhammad ibn Ali ibn al-Husayn ibn Ali (may God be pleased with him), the imam of the People of the House and one of the leading lights of guidance, as al-Mas'udi describes him. ²

Al-Mas'udi relates from him, through a chain, the testament of Ali to his sons on the morning after the night in which Ibn Muljam struck him. It is among the longest of his transmitted testaments. ²

In another report in al-Mas'udi, he called for a lamp and set upon it the letter of Abu Muslim, until it burned before he could read it. When Abdallah ibn al-Hasan came to him joyful with his letter, he told him that the people of Khurasan were not Shi'a to him. When Abdallah said that the people wanted his son Muhammad, because he was the Mahdi of this community, he answered that he was not its Mahdi. ³

In Ahmad Amin's view he was the greatest figure of his age in Shi'i legislation, and perhaps the greatest in the different eras. He was born in 83 AH and died in 148 AH, in the caliphate of Abu Ja'far al-Mansur. His mother was Umm Farwa daughter of al-Qasim ibn Abi Bakr al-Siddiq. Amin believes he kept away from politics and applied taqiyya precisely. ⁴

In an episode of his programme 'Al-Mubdi'un', Tareq al-Suwaidan presents Ja'far al-Sadiq as an imam shared by Sunnis and Shi'a alike, giving his birth as 80 AH and his death in Medina in 148 AH — a date earlier than Ahmad Amin's (83 AH) ⁵. He recounts that Ja'far used to say 'Abu Bakr begot me twice': his mother was Umm Farwa bint al-Qasim ibn Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr, and her mother was Asma' bint Abd al-Rahman ibn Abi Bakr — making him Abu Bakr's grandson from two sides and Ali's grandson as well ⁶. He takes this intermarriage — together with Umar's marriage to Umm Kulthum bint Ali (may God be pleased with her) — as evidence that closeness, not the enmity some imagine today, was the original relation among the caliphs (the speaker's view) ⁷. Of his generosity he tells: his student Hayaj ibn Bustam's report that he fed others until nothing remained for his own family; that he would himself bear the losses in financial quarrels to bring about reconciliation, so debts succeeded one another upon him not from poverty but generosity; and that he was surnamed al-Sadiq for his truthfulness, no lie ever being known of him ^{8 9 10}. Of the wisdom he selects: his answer to Sufyan al-Thawri on why the standing at Arafa lies outside the Haram — that the Kaaba is God's house, the Haram its curtain and the Station its door; the pilgrims are held at the door in supplication, admitted through Muzdalifa, and after the sacrifice and purification they visit the house in a state of purity — and his answer on the disliked fasting of the tashriq days, that the pilgrims are God's guests and a guest does not fast at his host's ^{11 12}. And the story of al-Mansur and the flies — his ready answer 'that God may humble the tyrants with them' — and the account of al-Mansur summoning him to kill him, whereupon he entered murmuring his supplication and al-Mansur rose for him, seated him on the royal couch and perfumed him with ghaliya (reported by al-Dhahabi on the authority of al-Fadl ibn al-Rabi') ^{13 14}. Of the scholars' testimony he transmits: Ibn Hajar's 'truthful jurist, imam'; the accreditation of al-Shafi'i, Ibn Ma'in and Ibn Hibban; Ibn Taymiyya's statement that he is an imam of the religion by Sunni consensus; and Abu Hanifa's 'I have never seen anyone of deeper fiqh than Ja'far ibn Muhammad' — with the story of the forty questions he answered with the positions of the Hanafis, the people of Medina, and the People of the House ^{15 16 17}. He applies his quartets to him: the House of the Prophet ﷺ was a special beginning, yet he stood out among them by extraordinary effort in learning and by disciplining his self ^{18 19}.