This was the time Imams of Ahlul Bayt were waiting for.

This was the time Imams of Ahlul Bayt were waiting for. Our 5th Imam opened a school to teach Qur’an and Hadith as it was taught by the Holy Prophet and Imam ‘Ali AS). Imam Muhammad el Baqir was said to have been high esteemed for his learning and eloquence as well as on account of his noble birth. According to Ibn Khalikan, the Imam received the title of Baqir (Splitter of knowledge) due to his ample knowledge of Deen and his enthusiasm to teach to other people.

Many historians like Yakubi asserts that the Imam split open knowledge, that is scrutinized it and examined the depths of it so that it can be spread to all people truly and correctly. In his life of respectable and scholarly retirement at Madina, the Imam was frequently called upon to explain particular teachings in regard to Imamate.

A synopsis of his teaching in the Ma’athirul-Baqir is given in Cannon Sell’s Ithna Ashariya, an interesting part of which may well be quoted, as it shows the emphasis at this early period on the intellectual and spiritual character of the Imamate. A man one day said to the Imam, “Was the Prophet heir to all the knowledge of the Prophets?" He replied, “Yes” then he was asked whether he had inherited it. He said he had.

He was then asked if he could raise the dead to life, restore sight to the blind, and cleanse the leper. He said yes, by valor of God, the most high. He therefore put his hand on the blind eyes of a man sitting next to him and prayed. The next moment the blind man’s eyesight was restored. Many more such stories were told by various historians of the time.

The Imam discoursed fully on many topics such as the nature of the soul and Nafs, the nature and attributes of God, the qualities of the Ulemas. He discouraged arguments about the divine nature, saying that it was not possible for men to understand it. One day a mu’tazili leader Wasil bin Ata asked the Imam what the anger of God meant. He said, it was simply punishment, but that this anger was not to be compared to the anger of men. God’s nature did not change.

He defined a Rasul as a prophet who hears the voice of the angel(of revelation) and sees the angel in a bodily form. A Nabi, he said, is a Prophet who also hears the voice of the angel under the same conditions, but does not see him, and the Imam’s condition is like that of the Nabi but not like that of the Rasul. He said that the Imams were pure and that the Ahlul Bayt were free from sin.