The Four Deputies (Arabic: ٱلنُّوَّاب ٱلْأَرْبَعَة, an-Nuwwāb al-ʾArbaʿah) were the four individuals who are believed by the Twelvers to have successively represented their twelfth Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi, during his Minor Occultation (874–941 CE).
[9] Contemporary to the tenth Imam, the Abbasid al-Mutawakkil violently prosecuted the Shia,[10][11] partly due to the renewed Zaydi opposition.
[16] Tabatabai suggests that these restrictions were placed on al-Askari because the caliphate had come to know about traditions among the Shia elite, predicting that the eleventh Imam would father the eschatological Mahdi.
[17] Immediately after the death of al-Askari in 260 (874),[18] Uthman al-Amri (d. 880) claimed that the eleventh Imam had a young son, named Muhammad, who had entered a state of occultation (ghayba) due to the Abbasid threat to his life.
[19][20] According to a Shia tradition attributed to the sixth Imam, Ja'far al-Sadiq, this threat was specific to Muhammad al-Mahdi, who was expected to rise, unlike his predecessors who often practiced religious dissimulation (taqiya) and were politically quiescent.
[23] Twelver sources detail that Muhammad al-Mahdi made his only public appearance to lead the funeral prayer for his father instead of his uncle, Ja'far.
[26][27][28] Thus began a period of about seventy years, later termed the Minor Occultation (al-ghaybat al-sughra, 260-329 AH, 874–940 CE), during which it is believed that four successive agents who represented the Hidden Imam.
[24][35] As the closest associate of al-Askari,[32] the local representatives and the Shia community largely recognized Uthman's claim to be the agent of the Hidden Imam.
Tusi in his Rijal reports that the eleventh Imam had appointed Abu Ja'far and his father as agents of his son, Muhammad, in the presence of a group of Yemeni followers.
[39] Abu Ja'far, who served for some forty years in this role, has been credited with the unification of the mainstream Shia behind the son of al-Askari as the twelfth Imam in concealment.
He was also a highly respected figure in the Abbasid court because of his close ties with Abu Sahl al-Nawbakhti, the leader of the influential Nawbakhti family.
[20] However, following the 306 (918) downfall of the Banu al-Furat,[50][49] the influential Twelver family in the Abbasid court, Ibn Ruh was temporarily forced into hiding and later imprisoned in 312 (924–25) by al-Muqtadir for financial reasons.
[59] The letter, ascribed to al-Mahdi, added that the complete occultation would continue until God granted him permission to manifest himself again in a time when the earth would be filled with tyranny.
[30][31] For instance, al-Kulayni (d. 941) in his Kafi fi elm al-din refers to written decrees from the Hidden Imam to some pious men, including the first two agents.
[20][29] Sachedina holds that this later stress of the Twelver literature on the four deputies (al-nuwwab al-arba') was likely due to their prominence in Baghdad, the Shia center of the time.