“You are then free...

“You are then free,” said the Imam Ali Naqi, “to ask for your personal needs, after which you should offer a prayer in salutation to the Imam Muhammad Taqi, using these same words.” Majlisi, who has included these traditions in his instructions for modern pilgrims to this Shrine, makes the observation in explanation of the unusual - brevity of the prescribed prayer, “that it was necessary in those times to take great care in dissimulation (taqiyah) that the Shias should not suffer injury.”[^4] Another tradition that dates from the same century in which these two Imams died is attributed to a certain Hasan ibn Jamhur, who said: “In the year 296 A.H., when Ali ibn Ahmad al-Frat was Vizier, I saw Ahmad ibn Rabi”, who was one of the Caliph's writers, when his hand had gotten infected so that it had bad odour and turned black.

Everyone who saw him had no doubt but that he would die. In a dream, however, he saw Hazrat Ali, and said to him: “O Amiru'l Momineen, will you not ask God to give me my hand?” Hazrat Ali answered, `go to Musa ibn Jafar and he will ask this for you from God.' In the morning they got a litter and carpeted it, gave him a bath and anointed him with perfume. They had him lie down in the litter and covered him with a robe.

Then they carried him to the tomb of Imam Musa, whose intercession he sought in prayer. The afflicted man took some of the earth from the tomb and rubbed it on his arm up to the shoulder and then bound the arm up again. The next day, when he opened the bandage, he saw that all the skin and flesh of the arm had fallen off, and that only the bones and veins and ligaments remained, and the bad odour had also ceased, When the vizier heard of this he took the men to testify as what had happened.

In a short time the healthy flesh and skin grew back again, and he was able to resume his work of writing.”. Majlisi adds the comment that “in every period there have been so many miracles (mu'jizaat) and demonstrations of power (karamat) at the tomb of these two saints that there is no need to describe cases of the past.

In our own times there are so many instances occurring and recurring that to recount them would be a lengthy process.”[^5] After the Abbasid caliphs had fallen more under the authority of the commanders of their armies of Turkish mercenaries, there was a rising of the Buyids (or Buwaihids) in Persia; and in A.D.