By: Seyyed Ali Shahbaz

 

“Peace be upon the Most Straight Door (to true guidance); The Most Upright Path, the Divinely-Designated Knower; The Spring of Wisdom; The Lantern in darkness; The Chief of Arabs and non-Arabs; The Guide to orthodoxy… My Master Abu-Ja’far, Muhammad the son of Ali the Magnanimous.”

The above passage is part of the tribute the devotees pay at the holy shrine of the person whose life was cut short this day in 220 AH in the prime of youth.

The identity of the person is obvious from the phrases of the passage. He was the namesake of Prophet Muhammad (SAWA). His father carried the name of the Prophet’s Divinely-designated heir, Imam Ali ibn Abi Taleb (AS). He himself was the son of the Martyr of Khorasan, Imam Ali ibn Musa ar-Reza (AS).

As a matter of fact, he was the 9th Infallible Heir of the Seal of Messengers and during his brief life of 25 years – of which 17 were as the Imam of the Age – he embodied the characteristics mentioned in the above-mentioned passage.

He was granted imamate, or divinely-decreed authority at the tender of age 8 years by the Almighty Creator, Who informs us in Surah Mariyam of the holy Qur’an, of how He gave wisdom to Prophet Yayha or John the Baptist in childhood, and how He made the infant Jesus (AS) announce from the cradle his mission as the servant and prophet of God. 

In like manner, the 9th Imam proved to the skeptics his mission as God’s representative on earth. When his father’s assassin, Mamoun – the self-styled caliph of the usurper Abbasid regime – tried to test his wisdom by pitting him against the Mu’tazalite Ideologue in front of the whole court, in the hope of humiliating him, the beardless boy made the grey-bearded scholar stammer and stutter for words. 

Details of the debate, the questions asked – some of them pertaining to the Hajj pilgrimage and its rules – and the inability of Yahya ibn Aksam to provide answers when cross-questioned; are beyond the scope of this brief column, and so is the brilliant display of the bezels of wisdom by the under-teen lad to the astonishment of the whole court. Those interested can refer to relevant books of hadith and history, especially the English translations of such books as “Tuhaf al-Aqoul” and “al-Irshad”, which were written a thousand years ago.

It is also not possible to go into detail how Ali ibn Ja’far, the aged grand uncle of the 9th Imam, rose to his feet in the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina to courteously seat the young boy in his place when he entered an academic gathering. Ali ibn Ja’far told the surprised scholars that there is nothing to be amazed about his respectful attitude towards the young grandson of his elder brother Imam Musa Kazem (AS), since it is God Almighty Who has bestowed this boy with the rank and status of succession to Prophet Mohammad (SAWA).

The young 9th Imam, for his part, demonstrated the knowledge beyond years that he possessed. No wonder, because of his impeccable characteristics and charitable dissemination of the pearls of wisdom, he soon earned the epithets of “at-Taqi” or the Pious, and “al-Jawad” or the Generous. 

Throughout the 17 years of his imamate, Imam Jawad (AS) spread the pure and pristine teachings of Prophet Muhammad (SAWA) far and wide, and trained a generation of scholars in different branches of sciences. Some of these are Husain bin Sa’eed, the author of 30 books, Khaled al-Burqi who wrote over a hundred books and treatises, and Ahmad bin Muhammad Bizanti – of Greek Byzantine origin as his surname suggests – who compiled the encyclopedic work “Jame’ Bizanti”.

Could there be a better proof that Imam Mohammad Taqi (AS) was the “Most Straight Door” (to true guidance), “The Most Upright Path”, “The Divinely-Designated Knower”, “The Spring of Wisdom”, “The Lantern in darkness”, “The Chief of Arabs and non-Arabs”, “The Guide to orthodoxy”, etc., during his brief life?

These characteristics, if they guided the seekers of truth to the straight and unwavering path of God, they made usurpers of the political rights of the Prophet’s Ahl al-Bayt, quake in their boots. This was the reason, Mamoun forced Imam Muhammad Taqi (AS) to accept his daughter, Omm Fazl, as wife in 215 AH, although the Prophet’s Heir was already married and was father of children. The plot was to keep an eye on the activities of the young Imam.

Three years later in 218 AH Mamoun died and was succeeded by his brother, Mu’tasim, who has earned lasting notoriety for splintering the Ummah into four court-sanctioned schools of jurisprudence by forbidding Ijtehad, or reasoning on the basis of the holy Qur’an and the Prophet’s Sunnah and Seerah for resolution of various issues that Muslims face. The next year this tyrant forced Imam Jawad (AS) to come to Baghdad, where he could be under closer surveillance.

It would be tedious to recount the 9th Imam’s explicit ruling in the caliphal court that a habitual criminal’s four fingers of the hand be severed, leaving the thumb and palm intact, since as a creature of the All-Merciful Lord, the convict should be allowed to perform the ritual prayer in the correct manner, which requires 7 organs of the body to touch the ground while in prostration – the forehead, the two palms, the two knees, and the two toes.

This verdict made the court mullahs jealous of the Imam, since it invalidated their misinterpretation of Islamic laws to cut the thief’s hands from the wrists or from the elbows downwards. They poisoned the ears of Mu’tasim, who entrusted his niece Omm Fazl the task of martyring her husband through food poisoning.

This unpardonable crime was committed on the threshold of the annual Hajj pilgrimage to holy Mecca, where every year the 9th Imam used to be present in the garb of the “Exemplary Pilgrim” to teach the tenets of Islam to visitors from far and near.

The self-styled caliph was gleeful with joy as reports reached his palace this day on the last of the month of Dhu’l-Qa’dah at regular intervals that his fatal dose of poison was having the desired effect on his innocent victim.

As the husband writhed in acute pain, the traitorous wife stopped the maids and servants from providing any antidote to the venerable descendant of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA). He was laid to rest in the suburb of Baghdad beside his grandfather, Imam Musa al-Kazem (AS).

Today, there is no sign of the graves of the accursed Abbasid caliphs, let alone their palaces, while Imam Jawad (AS) who reposes in peace in the magnificent gold-plated twin-domed mausoleum of Kazemayn continues to rule the hearts and minds of believers all over the world, as pilgrims throng to seek guidance, spiritual solace, resolution to their material needs, and salvation in afterlife through the intercession of the Infallible Imams with God Almighty.