Jābir ibn Yazīd al-Juʿfī (Arabic: جابر بن یزید الجُعفی), died c. 745–750, was a Kufan transmitter of hadith and a companion of the Shi'a Imams Muhammad al-Baqir (677–732) and Ja'far al-Sadiq (c. 700–765).
[1] His reputation among later Muslims was uneven: while some Sunni and Shia scholars considered him a reliable authority, others rejected him for his alleged 'extremist' or 'exaggerated' (ghulāt) ideas.
[5][6] Jabir is also transmitter of the ghulāt book Umm al-Kitāb,[7] which contains Muhammad al-Baqir's answers to questions posed by his followers.
[2] In the main part of this book, al-Baqir reveals secrets to al-Ju'fi, such as how the cosmos was created, how the human soul fell into this world, and how it could be delivered from it.
[8] According to Henry Corbin, this book resembles the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, thus illustrating a similarity between Shia Imamology and Gnostic Christology.
Its central motif is the psychological and philosophical explanation of spiritual symbols, with believers instructed to perform acts of self-purification and renewal.
According to the report that was quoted from Jabir, in his first meeting with the fifth Shi'a Imam Muhammad Baqir, he introduced himself as a Kufi and from the Ju'fi family, and his motivation was to learn from al-Baqir.
Traditional Shia and Sunni literature contains conflicting reports and narrations about Jabir, which have caused different and even contradictory opinions about his status.
But in another case, al-Sadiq forbade Jabir's name to be mentioned, because he believed that if the ignorant people would hear his hadiths, they would mock him.