20 Facts About Ja'far al-Sadiq

Ja'far al-Sadiq was about thirty-seven when his father, Muhammad al-Baqir, died after designating him as the next Imam.

Ja'far al-Sadiq's house was burned by order of al-Mansur, though he was unharmed, and there are reports of multiple arrests and attempts on his life by the caliph.

Ja'far al-Sadiq held the Imamate for at least twenty-eight years.

In contrast, similar to his father and his grandfather, Ja'far al-Sadiq adopted a quiescent attitude and kept aloof from politics.

Ja'far al-Sadiq viewed the imamate and caliphate as separate institutions until such time that God would make the Imam victorious.

Several influential followers of Ja'far al-Sadiq are recorded to have first followed Abdullah and then changed their allegiance to Musa.

Ja'far al-Sadiq was buried in the al-Baqi Cemetery in Medina, and his tomb was a place of pilgrimage until 1926.

The governor learned that Ja'far al-Sadiq had chosen four people, rather than one, to administer his will: al-Mansur himself, the governor, the Imam's oldest son Abdullah al-Aftah, and Musa al-Kazim, his younger son.

Ja'far al-Sadiq married Hamida Khatun, a slave-girl from Berber or Andalusia, who bore al-Sadiq three more sons: Musa al-Kazim, Muhammad al-Dibaj, and Ishaq al-Mu'tamin.

Ja'far al-Sadiq was known as Hamida the Pure and respected for her religious learning.

Amir-Moezzi considers him possibly the most brilliant scholar of his time, and the variety of views ascribed to Ja'far al-Sadiq suggest that he was an influential figure in the history of early Islamic thought, as nearly all the early intellectual factions of Islam wished to incorporate Ja'far al-Sadiq into their history in order to bolster their schools' positions.

Ja'far al-Sadiq is cited in a wide range of historical sources, including the works of al-Tabari, Ya'qubi, al-Masudi, and Ibn Khallikan.

Ja'far al-Sadiq argued that God's law is occasional and unpredictable and that Muslims should submit to the inscrutable will of God as revealed by the Imam.

Ja'far al-Sadiq is viewed at the head of the Sufi line of saints and mystics by the Sufi writers Abu Nu'aym and Farid al-Din Attar.

Gleave and Bowering suggest that Tafsir al-Quran, Manafe' Sowar al-Quran, and Kawass al-Qoran al-Azam, three mystical commentaries of the Quran attributed to Ja'far al-Sadiq, were composed after his death because these works demonstrate a mastery of the recent lexicon of Muslim mysticism.

Many Twelver Shi'i traditions state that al-Baqir and Ja'far al-Sadiq did not have supernatural abilities and did not perform the miracles attributed to them.

Nevertheless, al-Mufaddal's status as a close confidant of Ja'far al-Sadiq led to a large number of writings being attributed to him by later authors, including major works such as the Kitab al-Haft wa-l-azilla and the Kitab al-Sirat.

The work presents itself as a dialogue between al-Mufaddal and Ja'far al-Sadiq, who is the main speaker.

The Kitab al-Ihlilaja is presented as Ja'far al-Sadiq's opinions transmitted through al-Mufaddal.

Jafar Ja'far al-Sadiq describes his own argument with an atheist Indian doctor in it.