Did al-Hasan al-Askari leave a son? The awaited Mahdi of the Imamiyya in Minhaj al-Sunna

At the end of his account of the twelve imams, Ibn al-Mutahhar al-Hilli named the twelfth, Muhammad ibn al-Hasan, the Mahdi of the Imamiyya. Ibn Taymiyya devoted a chapter of Minhaj al-Sunna to this, discussing his existence, his occultation and the meaning of his imamate. ¹

In Ibn Taymiyya's quotation al-Hilli says: "and his son, our master the Mahdi Muhammad", and relates from Ibn al-Jawzi, with his chain to Ibn Umar, that the Prophet ﷺ said: "A man of my descendants will come forth at the end of time; his name is my name and his kunya my kunya; he will fill the earth with justice as it was filled with injustice – that is the Mahdi." ¹ Ibn Taymiyya relates that those Imamis who hold that al-Hasan al-Askari had a son say he entered the cellar at Samarra as a small child, and differ about his age: some say two years, some three, some five. ^{2 3}

Lineage. Ibn Taymiyya reports that Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari, Abd al-Baqi ibn Qani' and other experts in genealogy and history recorded that al-Hasan ibn Ali (may God be pleased with him) al-Askari had no offspring or descendants. ^{1 2}

The orphaned child. He holds that if such a child existed and were known, the ruling of the Qur'an, Sunna and consensus would be that he be placed in the custody of a guardian, and that his property be held by his father's executor, a relative or the ruler's deputy, since he was an orphan; he cites the verse on handing orphans their property once they show maturity. How then could one who must be restricted in person and property be the infallible imam of all Muslims? ³

The purposes of the imamate. He says that the Imamiyya agree – whether his existence is supposed or not – that they gain nothing from him in religion or worldly life and that he has taught no one anything, so none of the purposes of the imamate is achieved through him; he sees this as contradicting their doctrine of the divine favour of an infallible imam. ^{3 4} To the reply that he hid because of people's injustice, he answers that there was injustice in his forefathers' time and they did not hide; that his believers have filled the earth, so why has he not met them or sent someone to teach them; and that he could have taken refuge in places where his partisans lived. ⁴

Long life. He says they have prayed for his coming forth for more than four hundred and fifty years, and that a Muslim surviving so long is known to be false by the constant course of nature: no one is known to have been born in Islam and lived a hundred and twenty years. He cites the hadith of Ibn Umar in the Sahih that the Prophet said near the end of his life that at the head of a hundred years no one then on the face of the earth would remain, and holds that lifespans grow shorter as time goes on. ^{4 5}

In a footnote the editor gives the report of al-Qurtubi in his continuation of al-Tabari's history that in the time of al-Muqtadir a man claimed to be Muhammad ibn al-Hasan and Ibn Tumar, the marshal of the Talibids, told him that al-Hasan had left no son; and he quotes Ahmad Subhi's Nazariyyat al-Imama that the Shi'a split into many sects after al-Hasan al-Askari's death, some holding that he left no son, and that Ja'far ibn Ali, al-Hasan's brother, claimed his inheritance. ² He also gives from al-Kulayni's al-Kafi the account of Ahmad ibn Ubayd Allah ibn Khaqan on the search of al-Hasan al-Askari's house at his death and the division of his estate between his mother and his brother Ja'far. ^{2 3}

The Imami doctrine of the twelfth imam's birth and occultation is given here through its opponent and his editor's footnote, and needs to be set out from Imami books directly; other Sunni views on the Mahdi and academic studies of the origins of the doctrine of occultation have not yet been added.