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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Islam: Faith, Practice & History Lesson 43: The Sixth Imām (Ja‘far bin Muhammad) Name: Ja‘far. Agnomen: Abu ‘Abdillāh. Title: As-Sādiq. Father: Muhammad bin ‘Ali. Mother: Umm Farwah. Birth: 17th Rabi I, 83 AH in Medina. Death: 25th Shawwāl 148 AH in Medina. Birth & Early Days Imam Ja‘far as-Sādiq, son of the fifth Imam, was born in 83 A.H./702 C.E.

After the death of his father in 114 A.H., he became Imam by Divine Command and decree of the Imam who came before him. His Imamate: Continuation of Scholarly Jihād During the 34 years of imamate of as-Sādiq (a.s.) greater possibilities and a more favorable climate existed for him to propagate religious teachings.

This came about as a result of revolts in Islamic lands, especially the uprising of the Muswaddah to overthrow the Umayyad caliphate, and the bloody wars which finally led to the fall and extinction of the Umayyads. The greater opportunities for Shi’ite teachings were also a result of the favourable ground the fifth Imam had prepared during the twenty years of his imamate through the propagation of the true teachings of Islam and the sciences of the Ahlu ‘l-Bayt of the Prophet.

Imam as-Sādiq took advantage of the occasion to propagate the religious sciences until the very end of his imamate, which coincided with the end of the Umayyad and beginning of the Abbasid caliphates. He instructed many scholars in different fields of the intellectual and transmitted sciences, such as Zurārah, Muhammad ibn Muslim, Mu’min at-Tāq, Hishām ibn Hakam, Abān ibn Taghlib, Hishām ibn Sālim, Hurayz, Hishām Kalbi Nassābah, and Jābir ibn Hayyān, the alchemist.

Even some important Sunni scholars such as Sufyān Thawri, Abu Hanifa (the founder of the Hanafi school of law), Qadi Sukuni, Qadi Abu ’l-Bakhtari and others, had the honor of being his students. It is said that his classes and sessions of instruction produced four thousand scholars of hadith and other sciences.

Refering to the two years that he spent as a student of Imam as-Sādiq (a.s.), Abu Hanifa used to say: “If it had not been for those two years, Nu‘mān[^1] would have perished.” The number of traditions preserved from the fifth and sixth Imams is more than all the hadith that have been recorded from the Prophet and the other ten Imams combined. That is why the Shi‘a school of laws in Islam is known as “Ja‘fari”.