Ja'far ibn Muhammad al-Sadiq

Abu Abdallah Ja'far ibn Muhammad ibn Ali ibn al-Husayn ibn Ali (may God be pleased with him), the imam of the People of the House and one of the leading lights of guidance, as al-Mas'udi describes him. ²

Al-Mas'udi relates from him, through a chain, the testament of Ali to his sons on the morning after the night in which Ibn Muljam struck him. It is among the longest of his transmitted testaments. ²

In another report in al-Mas'udi, he called for a lamp and set upon it the letter of Abu Muslim, until it burned before he could read it. When Abdallah ibn al-Hasan came to him joyful with his letter, he told him that the people of Khurasan were not Shi'a to him. When Abdallah said that the people wanted his son Muhammad, because he was the Mahdi of this community, he answered that he was not its Mahdi. ³

In Ahmad Amin's view he was the greatest figure of his age in Shi'i legislation, and perhaps the greatest in the different eras. He was born in 83 AH and died in 148 AH, in the caliphate of Abu Ja'far al-Mansur. His mother was Umm Farwa daughter of al-Qasim ibn Abi Bakr al-Siddiq. Amin believes he kept away from politics and applied taqiyya precisely. ⁴