Ja'far al-Sadiq
In the canonical Twelver hadith collections, more traditions are cited from Ja'far than that of the other Imams combined, although their attribution to him is questionable, making it hard to determine his actual teachings.
[18][19] During the first fourteen years of his life, Ja'far lived alongside his grandfather, Zayn al-Abidin, the fourth Shīʿīte Imam, and witnessed the latter's withdrawal from politics[20] and his limited efforts amid the popular appeal of Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyya.
[21] The widespread political and social dissatisfaction with the Umayyad Caliphate was spearheaded by Muhammad's extended family, who were seen by Muslims as God-inspired leaders in their religious struggle to establish justice over impiety.
[1] Al-Sadiq maintained his father's policy of quietism in this period and, in particular, was not involved in the uprising of his uncle, Zayd, who enjoyed the support of the Mu'tazilites and the traditionalists of Medina and Kufa.
[1] His response to a request for help from Abu Muslim, the Khorasani rebel leader, was to burn his letter, saying, "This man is not one of my men, this time is not mine.
[5][16] As the leader of the politically quiet branch of the Shia,[36] he was summoned by al-Mansur to Baghdad but was reportedly able to convince the caliph to let him stay in Medina by quoting the hadith, "The man who goes away to make a living will achieve his purpose, but he who sticks to his family will prolong his life.
[1][16] While the Twelvers and the Isma'ilis are the only extant Jaf'ari Shia sects today,[48][49] there were more factions at the time: Some followers of al-Sadiq accepted the imamate of his eldest surviving son, Abdullah al-Aftah.
[28] A minority of al-Sadiq's followers joined his other son, Muhammad al-Dibaj, who led an unsuccessful uprising against Caliph al-Ma'mun, after which he abdicated and publicly confessed his error.
[29][5] According to Tabatabai, after being detained in Samarra, al-Sadiq was allowed to return to Medina, where he spent the rest of his life in hiding until he was poisoned by order of al-Mansur.
It was then that Wahhabis, under the leadership of Ibn Saud, the founding King of Saudi Arabia, conquered Medina for the second time and razed all the tombs except that of the Islamic prophet.
He also married Hamida Khatun, a slave-girl from Berber or Andalusia, who bore al-Sadiq three more sons: Musa al-Kazim (the seventh Twelver Imam), Muhammad al-Dibaj, and Ishaq al-Mu'tamin.
[60] After Ali,[11] al-Sadiq is possibly the most famed religious scholar of the House of Muhammad,[19][12][61] widely recognized as an authority in Islamic law, theology, hadith, and esoteric and occult sciences.
[16][6][47] The most extensive contributions of al-Sadiq were to the Twelver Shia, helping establish them as a serious intellectual force in the late Umayyad and early Abbasid periods, according to Gleave.
[44][1] Similar to Muhammad,[68] Imam is believed to be infallible thanks to this unique knowledge,[69] which also establishes him as the sole authorized source for interpreting the revelation and guiding the Muslims along the right path.
[19] Building on the work of his father,[72] al-Sadiq is remembered as the eponymous founder of the Ja'fari school of law (al-Madhab al-Ja'fari), followed by the Twelver Shia.
[28][5][6] According to Lalani, the Isma'ili jurisprudence (fiqh), as codified by al-Qadi al-Numan, is also primarily based on the large corpus of statements left behind by al-Sadiq and his father, al-Baqir.
[77] Taqiya was introduced by al-Baqir[78] and later advocated by al-Sadiq to protect his followers from prosecution at the time when al-Mansur, the Abbasid caliph, conducted a brutal campaign against the Alids and their supporters.
[16] This compromise, widely adopted afterward,[16] is highlighted when al-Sadiq was asked if God forces His servants to do evil or whether He had delegated power to them: he answered negatively to both questions and instead suggested, "The blessings of your Lord are between these two.
[19] It is ascribed to al-Sadiq that, "The Book of God [Quran] comprises four things: the statement set down (ibarah), the implied purport (isharah), the hidden meanings, relating to the supra-sensible world (lata'ij), and the exalted spiritual doctrines (haqaiq).
[83] Ja'far al-Sadiq's significance in the formation of early Muslim thought is demonstrated by the fact that his name is used as a reference in Sufi, scientific, Sunni legal, Ismaili, and ghulāt circles.
[3] According to Imami Shi'as, Ja'far al-Sadiq, is the sixth imam who was responsible for turning the imamiya into a powerful intellectual movement during the late Umayyad and early Abbasid eras.
[19][8] Attar praises al-Sadiq as the one "who spoke more than the other imams concerning the ṭariqat," who "excelled in writing on innermost mysteries and truths and who was matchless in expounding the subtleties and secrets of revelation.
[1] The same Imami heresiographers also claim that al-Mufaddal ibn Umar al-Ju'fi (died before 799) and his followers, the Mufaddaliya, likewise regarded al-Sadiq as a god and themselves as his prophets.
[84][28][9] A Quran commentary (tafsir), a book on divination (Ketb al-jafr), numerous drafts of his will, and several collections of legal dicta are among the works attributed to al-Sadiq.
[98] However, it differs from other treatises attributed to al-Mufaddal by the absence of any content that is specifically Shi'i in nature, a trait it shares with only one other Mufaddal work—also dealing with a rational proof for the existence of God—the Kitāb al-Ihlīlaja ('Book of the Myrobalan Fruit').
Though both preserved by the 17th-century Shi'i scholar Muhammad Baqir al-Majlisi (died 1699), the only thing that connects the Tawḥīd al-Mufaḍḍal and the Kitāb al-Ihlīlaja to Shi'ism more generally is their ascription to Ja'far al-Sadiq and al-Mufaddal.
[93] The Tawḥīd al-Mufaḍḍal is in fact a revised version of a work falsely attributed to the famous Mu'tazili litterateur al-Jahiz (died 868) under the title Kitāb al-Dalāʾil wa-l-iʿtibār ʿalā al-khalq wa-l-tadbīr ('Book of Proofs and Contemplation on Creation and Administration').
It is on personal conduct, with chapters on various topics such as legal interests interspersed with general moral issues, and advice on how to lead a spiritual life and thus purify the soul.
[6] Mohammad Baqer Majlesi considered this work to have been written by Shaqiq al-Balkhi, who supposedly quoted it from "one of the people of knowledge," and not explicitly from Ja'far al-Sadiq.
[6] Despite Majlesi's doubts about its authenticity, this work remains very popular as a manual of personal worship and has been the subject of a number of commentaries by prominent Shia and Sufi scholars.
