Imam Ja’afar as Sadiq (Part 2 of 3)
By Professor Nazeer Ahmed
CA
Ja’afar ibn Muhammad al-Sadiq was born in the year 700 CE. His father Imam Muhammad al-Baqir was the son of Imam Zainul Abedin and the grandson of Imam Hussain ibn Ali. The year was the 83 rd year of the Hijrah or 20 years after the tragedy of Karbala. We have specifically highlighted the chronology of Karbala, because it defined, as we shall see, many of the convulsions that took place during the lifetime of Imam Ja’afar.
His mother Umm Farwah bint Qasim ibn Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr was a great, great grand daughter of Asma Bint Umais who was married to Abu Bakr Siddiq. Therefore, through familiar relationship Imam Ja’afar was related both to Abu Bakr (r) and Ali (r) and through Imam Hussain and Fatima az Zahra (r) to the Prophet Muhammed (pbuh).
Imam Ja’afar received his early education from his father Imam Baqir and his maternal grandfather al-Qasim. The stream of knowledge, both esoteric and exoteric, through Imam Baqir leads in an unbroken chain to Imam Zainul Abedin, Imam Hussain, Fatima az Zahra, Ali Ibn Abi Talib (r) and the Prophet. The stream of knowledge from his maternal side leads in an unbroken chain to Abu Bakr (r) and the Prophet. So it is that in Imam Ja’afar the esoteric and exoteric streams emanating from Abu Bakr (r) and Ali Ibn Abi Talib (r) meet. Ali (r) was referred to by the Prophet as “the doorway to my knowledge”. Abu Bakr (r) received his immersion in the Prophetic knowledge in the cave during the Hijrah of the Prophet from Mecca to Madina. This sublime event is alluded to in the Qur’an: “When the two of them were in the cave, (And) when he said to his companion: “Do not despair! Verily, Allah is with us.” (9, 40). The confluence of the streams of esoteric knowledge from Abu Bakr as Siddiq and Ali Ibn Abi Talib has profound meanings in Sufi liturgy and it is beyond the scope of this brief paper.
In addition to his training from his father and grandfather, Imam Ja’afar received formal education in the Qur’an and Hadith from eminent ulema of the age. He was also well versed in mathematics, philosophy, astronomy, anatomy, alchemy and the natural sciences.
It was a period of rapid expansion of the Umayyad Empire. Imam Ja’afar was only eleven years old when Tariq ibn Ziyad and Musa ibn Nossayr crossed the Straits of Gibraltar (711-712 CE) and in a campaign extending over seven years, conquered Spain and Portugal. At the eastern extreme of the empire, Muhammad bin Qasim Al-Thaqafi subdued Sind and Multan (711-714) in modern Pakistan. Imam Ja’afar was seventeen when Omar bin Abdel Aziz became the Caliph in Baghdad. It was during the reign of this pious Caliph and his fair and just administration towards all subjects that conversion in Persia and Egypt gathered momentum. And Imam Ja’afar was thirty-three (733CE) when Omayyad armies under Abdur Rahman I were stopped at the Battle of Tours in France and retreated to Sorbonne, thus marking the farthest reach of Muslim conquests in Europe.
Even as the Omayyad Empire expanded to include all of West Asia, western India, Central Asia, North Africa and Spain, it was seething with discontent from within. The memory of Karbala was fresh in the minds of the Omayyads and the Shiites alike.
Omayyad rule was harsh towards the Shiites and looked upon them with suspicion. There were many revolts but two of them are worth mentioning. In the year 740 CE, when Imam Ja’afar was forty years old, Zayd bin Zainul Abedin led a revolt against the Umayyad Caliph al Hisham (d 744CE). The claim that Banu Hashim and Ahle Bait were the rightful heirs to the leadership of the ummah did not disappear with the assassination of Ali (r), the abdication of Hassan (r) or the martyrdom of Hussain (r). It just went underground. After the death of Imam Zainul Abedin (712CE), his second son Zaid ibn Ali, considering it his duty to oppose Omayyad tyranny, invoked the example of Karbala and led an armed insurrection against the Umayyads. He had banked on the loyalty of the Kufans in the struggle. However, the Kufans, true to their historical perfidy, first promised their support and then pulled out of the fray just as they had done to Imam Hussain at the Battle of Karbala. Zaid ibn Ali died in the battle.
There was another uprising, led by the Abbasids which had a profound and lasting impact on Islamic history. Dissatisfied with the spiritual approach taken by Imam Zainul Abedin after Karbala, some supporters of Bani Hashim looked elsewhere for leadership. They found a leader in Muhammad bin Hanafia, a son of Ali ibn Abi Talib (r) from one of his marriages after the death of Fatima az Zahra (r). This is the beginning of the non-Fatimid branch of the Alavis. After Muhammad bin Hanafia, his son Abu Sulaiman Abdullah became the Imam but he was poisoned by the Omayyad Caliph Sulaiman. As he lay dying, Abdullah looked around for someone from his family to pass on the Imamate. As no one from his immediate family was available, he found a Hashemite, Muhammad bin Ali Abbas, from a nearby town. Muhammad bin Ali Abbas was a grandson of Abbas, uncle of the Prophet. Thus, through a twist of historical circumstance, one branch of the Imamate passed from children of Ali ibn Abi Talib to the children of Abbas. This branch is referred to as the Abbasids. It was the Abbasids who established their Caliphate in the year 750 CE and ruled the vast Islamic Empire from Baghdad for more than five hundred years until the Mongols destroyed Baghdad in 1258 CE.
Imam Ja’afar as Sadiq stayed above the political convulsions of the age, focusing instead on teaching and training the community. In this respect he presages the great Sufi Shaykhs who were to grace the canvas of Islamic history in later centuries, most of whom, with some notable exceptions like Shaykh Sanusi of Libya (d 1860), Shaykh Shamayl of Daghestan (d 1871), and Shaykh Abdel Qadir of Algeria (d 1883), shunned politics and political involvement, emphasizing instead the spiritual and ethical well-being of man. This outlook was of immense benefit to Islamic civilization. Imam Ja’afar avoided the ruthless persecution that awaited Umayyad rule focusing instead on scholarship and teaching. There was wisdom in this strategy. History owes a debt of gratitude to Imam Sa’adiq for his dedication to knowledge and teaching which produced great luminaries in the fields of jurisprudence, tasawwuf, science and mathematics.
Imam Ja’afar is known in history as one of the greatest of Islamic scholars and teachers. The method of teaching those days was in a halqa or a semi-circle where a shaykh imparted knowledge and wisdom to those who attended his halqas. It was the age when transmission of knowledge was through a discourse between a teacher and his pupil or a Sufi sage and his murid. Such halqas were held in the house of a shaykh or in a mosque. Imam Ja’afar initially taught at the halqa started by his father Imam Baqir. As the attendance grew the halqas were held in the mosque of the Prophet in Madina. So great was his radiance that he immediately attracted a large number of students. Many of these students were learned and well-known shaykhs themselves, much older than Imam Ja’afar and in some fields as learned as he. Such was the humility of the scholars those days. They did not consider it beneath their dignity to learn from a younger man more knowledgeable than themselves.
Among those who frequented his halqas in the early years was Imam Abu Haneefa who said with reference to his association with Imam Ja’afar as Sadiq: “Were it not for the two years I spent in the company of Ja’afar as Sadiq, I would be wandering”. He referred to Imam Ja’afar as “the most learned scholar I have ever seen”. The reference here is to the transmission of spiritual knowledge.
Shariah has both an external aspect and an internal aspect. The internal aspect of Shariah is the anchor to which the external aspect is tethered. Imam Abu Haneefa is known as Imam al-Azam (the Great Imam) in the field of jurisprudence. As acknowledged by Imam Abu Haneefa, the spiritual underpinnings of the Hanafi school of jurisprudence owes much to the spiritual knowledge transmitted by Imam Ja’afar as Sa’adiq and through an unbroken chain of transmissions and his lineage to the spirituality of Ali Ibn Abi Talib (r), Abu Bakr as Siddiq (r) and (for those who wish to immerse themselves into this deep ocean) to Noor e Muhammadi, the Light of Muhammad (pbuh).
Another great scholar who attended the halqa of Imam Ja’afar was Imam Malik ibn Anas, after whom the Maliki School is named. Most students of Islamic jurisprudence do not realize that much of the Maliki Fiqh is based upon the rulings given by Ali ibn Abi Talib (r) during the Caliphate of Omar ibn al Khattab (r). Imam Malik (711-795CE) of Madina was younger than Imam Ja’afar as Sadiq (700-765 CE) and Imam Abu Haneefa (699-767CE). Imam Malik said of Imam Ja’afar: "I was his regular visitor for a period of time, and I never saw him once without praying, fasting or reciting the Qur'an.” In the next generation after Imam Abu Haneefa and Imam Malik, Imam Shafii (d 820) of Damascus studied the teachings of Imam Abu Haneefa and Imam Malik and developed the Shafii school of Fiqh. The Hanbali Fiqh which grew out of a protest movement against the Mutazalites used the earlier schools of Fiqh as its basis. Thus all the major schools of Fiqh, Hanafi, Maliki, Shafii, Hanbali and Ja’afariya owe a debt of gratitude to the knowledge transmitted by Imam Ja’afar as Sadiq. (www.historyofislam.com)
