Thus the fundamental point to be investigated is how the...

Thus the fundamental point to be investigated is how the Imamate of Ja'far attained so great a prominence, as attested to by the testimony of Shi'i as well as Sunni sources, after having been reduced to an insignificant following by the abandonment of the line of the quiescent Imams by the majority of the Shi'is, who had been persuaded to join the extremist and revolutionary factions.

The answer to this question, however, cannot be found without examining a series of events and their ultimate results-the results which appeared in the success of the 'Abbasid house and the subsequent repudiation and frustration of the Shi'i cause.

As Moscati has observed, after their success the 'Abbasids joined hands with the rest of the Muslims and pushed the Shi'is, on whose strength they had risen to power, into the role of an opposition.[^12] It is not possible, nor would it be desirable, to go into the details of all those events of far-reaching consequences which took place before and during the Imamate of Ja'far and, as we have tentatively assumed above, made it crucial. Nevertheless, a broad outline and brief survey is necessary.

When the Umayyad's autocratic rule and their libertine way of life frustrated the expectations of Muslims, especially after the massacre at Karbala, many Muslims conceived the idea of Al-Mahdi; a leader they considered as directly guided by God. Though the use of the term Mahdi became the chief characteristic of the Shi'is, it had a great appeal among non Shi'is as well. The first to be proclaimed as the Mahdi was 'Ali's third son Muhammad,[^13] born of a Hanafite woman.

The mass acre of Husayn,[^14] the only surviving grandson of the Prophet, at Karbala, the destruction of the Ka'ba, the siege of Medina and the misfortunes inflicted on the pro 'Alid Kufans were sufficient grounds for a Mahdi uprising, though vengeance for “the blood of the Son of the Prophet” was the main cry.[^15] The reluctance of Husayn's surviving son Zayn al-'Abidin to involve himself in political adventures caused the restless Kufan sympathizers of the House to seek the moral support of any other member of 'Alid descent.

Thus, in the beginning it was perhaps not the personality of Muhammad b. al-Hanafiya which impressed the Kufans, but rather the basic need for a figurehead in whose name the movement could be launched. In fact, even Muhammad b.