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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books The Origins and Early Development of Shia Islam Chapter 11: The Doctrine of the Imamate It has been explained in detail in the preceding chapter how the activist claimants of the House of 'Ali were crushed, their apparently popular movements collapsed one after the other, and the 'Abbasids finally managed to firmly establish themselves as the sole authority of both the state and religion.

A process of assimilation was set into motion and most of the cross-currents represented by a number of politic-religious or religio-political groups were gradually being absorbed, under the patronage of the state authority, into a synthesis to be known as the Jama'a, which was supposed to support and in turn was supported by the 'Abbasid caliphate.

In this setting the strategic task of the Imam Ja'far as-Sadiq was to save the basic ideal of Shi'ism from absorption by the emerging synthesis on the one hand, and to purify it from extremist and activist tendencies within itself on the other. Thus the circumstances in which the Imamate of Ja'far happened to fall afforded him a unique opportunity, denied to his father and grandfather, to firmly establish and explain the principles of legitimacy.

The rudiments of the concept and function of the Imam had already been introduced by 'Ali in his speeches, by Hasan in his letters to Mu'awiya and by Husayn in his correspondence with the Shi'ism of Kufa and Basra, which we have discussed in the preceding chapters. After the death of Husayn, the concept of legitimacy within the family of Muhammad and of the function of the Imam restricted to religious and spiritual guidance of the community were laid down by Zayn al-'Abidin and Muhammad al-Baqir.

Now, after the removal of other contenders from the scene Ja'far enjoyed a strategically advantageous position, and it was his task to elucidate the doctrine of the Imamate and elaborate it in a definitive form. In this attempt Ja'far put the utmost emphasis on two fundamental principles.

The first was that of the Nass that is, the Imamate is a prerogative bestowed by God upon a chosen person, from the family of the Prophet, who before his death and with the guidance of God, transfers the Imamate to another by an explicit designation (Nass).