Further reading: Zeynep Celik,
The Remaking of Istan-
bul: Portrait of an Ottoman City in the Nineteenth Cen-
tury (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993);
John Freely, Istanbul the Imperial City (London: Viking,
1996); Bernard Lewis, Istanbul and the Civilization of
the Ottoman Empire (Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, 1963); Orhan Pamuk, Istanbul: Memories and the
City (New York: Vintage, 2006).
Istanbul
385 J
386
AF
J:
Jaafar al-Sadiq
(ca. 699–765) early Shii
scholar recognized as the sixth Imam by Ismaili and
Twelve-Imam Shiis
Abu Abd Allah Jaafar ibn Muhammad, also known
as Jaafar al-Sadiq, was born in the holy city of
m
edina
and was the son of the fifth Shii Imam,
Muhammad al-Baqir (676–ca. 743). Both are
held to be among the
ahl
al
-
bayt
, descendants
of the prophet m
Uhammad
through a
li
ibn
a
bi
t
alib
(d. 661) and his wife F
atima
. Umm Farwa,
his mother, was a descendant of a
bU
b
akr
(d.
634), Muhammad’s close companion and the first
caliph. According to traditional accounts, Jaafar
performed the
haJJ
with his father and accompa-
nied him when he was summoned to d
amascUs
by the Umayyad caliph Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik
(r. 723–743) for questioning. Some accounts state
that Hisham later poisoned Muhammad al-Baqir,
who was buried in Medina. Jaafar succeeded his
father as Imam and has been credited for estab-
lishing the doctrine of nass (designation of an
imam by God or a previous imam), theoretically
reducing disputes over succession to the imamate
by limiting the number of claimants. He lived at
a time when there was a great struggle occurring
among Muslim factions contending for leader-
ship in the
umma
. Indeed, he witnessed both the
violent end of the U
mayyad
c
aliphate
at the hands
of the Abbasids in the mid-eighth century and the
Abbasid suppression of its former Shii allies in the
aftermath of their victory over the Umayyads. He
was also well aware of factional disputes among
the Shia themselves over the question of leader-
ship. When the Abbasids came to power, Jaafar
was interrogated and imprisoned as a potential
threat to their rule. It is not surprising, therefore,
to learn that he endorsed practicing taqiyya (pious
dissimulation) to avoid persecution at the hands
of Sunni rulers. He was also credited with having
set forth the doctrine of the Imams’ infallibility
(isma) because of their esoteric knowledge.
The Shia have regarded Jaafar as one of the
leading imams, but he has been cited as an author-
ity in many different strands of Islamic learning
and tradition. He was remembered as a master
teacher of
hadith
among both Sunnis and Shiis.
He was famous for being a hadith transmitter in
both branches of the Muslim community, and sev-
eral prominent Muslim scholars were said to have
studied with him, including Abu Hanifa (d. 767)
and m
alik
ibn
a
nas
(d. 795). These were the epon-
ymous founders of the Sunni Hanafi and Maliki
Legal Schools. Likewise, Jaafar was remembered
as the eponymous founder of the Jaafari Legal
J
School of the Shia. In addition to law, he was also
embraced as an authority in the fields of
theology
,
Arabic grammar,
alchemy
, and fortune telling.
Sufis included him in their genealogies of spiritual
authority, and an early q
Uran
commentary with
mystical overtones has been ascribed to him.
According to Shii tradition, Jaafar, like his
father, was poisoned to death by an enemy; in
Jaafar’s case it was the caliph Mansur (r. 754–775).
Jaafar was buried in Medina’s Baqi Cemetery,
and his tomb was an object of pilgrimage until
destroyed by the Wahhabis centuries later. After
his death, there was a dispute among Shii fac-
tions over succession to the imamate. Those who
claimed that the seventh Imam was his eldest son,
Ismail (d. 760), eventually became the Ismaili
branch of s
hiism
. Those who supported the can-
didacy of Jaafar’s son Musa al-Kazim (d. 799) and
his heirs later became the Twelve-Imam branch
of Shiism. One Shii faction, no longer extant,
claimed at the time that Jaafar was not really dead,
but that he had gone into a state of concealment
(
ghayba
) and would return as the Mahdi, or Mus-
lim messiah. This claim was attributed to other
imams in both branches of Shii tradition.
See also a
bbasid
c
aliphate
;
aUthority
;
imam
;
i
smaili
s
hiism
; t
Welve
-i
mam
s
hiism
.
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