[6] Contemporary to the tenth Imam, the Abbasid al-Mutawakkil violently prosecuted the Shia,[7][8] partly due to the renewed Zaydi opposition.
[8][11] Among them was Uthman ibn Sa'id,[12] who is said to have disguised himself as a seller of cooking fat to avoid the Abbasid agents, hence his nickname al-Samman.
[13] 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.
[16] By the time of Muhammad al-Jawad, the ninth Imam, some of the representatives took administrative and military roles in the caliphate by practicing religious dissimulation (taqiya).
[24] Immediately after the death of al-Askari in 260 (874),[25] Uthman 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.
[27] 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.
[28][29] As the closest associate of al-Askari,[22] the local representatives and the Shia community largely recognized Uthman's claim to be the agent of the Hidden Imam.