Refutation of ʿAbd Allāh b. Jaʿfar’s Claim to the Imamate

[1] An editor’s footnote to this report in the published first edition of al-Imāma wa'l-Tabṣira (which I have been referring to) notes that ʿAlī b. Bābuwayh al-Qummī’s source for it says the unnamed brother being discussed is Ismāʿīl. This is supported by ʿAbd Allāh’s saying that “[Are] my mother and his [not] the same?,” and it is known that both Ismāʿīl and ʿAbd Allāh were born to Fāṭima bt. al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (al-Irshād, vol. 2, p. 209). However, there exist variants of this tradition in al-Faḍl b. al-Ḥasan al-Ṭabrisī’s Iʿlām al-Warā (vol. 2, pp. 12-13) and Ibn Abī’l-Fatḥ al-Irbilī’s Kashf al-Ghumma (vol. 3, p. 270) with the wording « وأصلي وأصله واحداً » (“[Are] my pedigree and his [not] the same?”) instead of « وأمي وأمّه واحدة » (“[Are] my mother and his [not] the same?”), which is noted by ʿAllāma al-Majlisī in his gloss, in Mirʾāt al-ʿUqūl (vol. 3, p. 336), of Shaykh al-Kulaynī’s recension of this report in al-Kāfī (which is identical to this variant here). That, and the fact that Ismāʿīl undeniably predeceased Imam al-Ṣādiq صلوات الله عليه, therefore ruling him out of the succession to the Imamate, is why al-Majlisī identifies the unnamed brother as Mūsā al-Kāẓim صلوات الله عليه, and thus argues that this report constitutes a textual designation of Mūsā as Imam al-Ṣādiq’s successor. The same cannot be argued for Ismāʿīl if we maintain that he is the unnamed brother, for the reason disclosed above, and because this tradition is only in this book and al-Kāfī as identical recensions because both ʿAlī b. Bābuwayh al-Qummī and Shaykh al-Kulaynī included it in chapters about validating Imam al-Kāẓim’s صلوات الله عليه rightful Imamate (which is the case in al-Kāfī) or refuting ʿAbd Allāh’s claim to the Imamate (which is the case here), and neither interpreted this report as having anything to do with Ismāʿīl, even with « وأمي وأمّه واحدة » in the text. Altogether, this constitutes a second-order reason to reject that the wording implies Ismāʿīl. Al-Majlisī does, however, note the difficulty posed by taking his own interpretation at face value in his gloss to this tradition in his Mirʾāt al-ʿUqūl (vol. 3, p. 336), which I have mentioned above, because he is rightfully presupposing the first-principles fact that Ismāʿīl undeniably predeceased Imam al-Ṣādiq صلوات الله عليه. This does not, however, stop him from saying what I have presented below with Mūsā al-Kāẓim صلوات الله عليه in mind: قوله: وأمّي وأمّه واحدة، فيه: أنّه لم تكن أمهما واحدة فيحتمل أن يكون المراد بها الامّ العليا فاطمة عليها السلام، فانّ الانتساب إليها سبب الامامة وفي ربيع الشيعة واعلام الورى وإرشاد المفيد: وأصلي وأصله واحداً وهو أظهر « انّه من نفسي » اي من طينتي وفيه خلقي وخلقي وشمائلي، وهذه العبارة تطلق لبيان كمال الاتّحاد في الكمالات والفضائل والدرجات، ونهاية الاختصاص كما قال النبي صلى الله عليه وعلى آله عليّ منّي وأنا من عليّ. والحاصل أنّ إنتسابك إليّ بالنسب الجسداني وإنتسابه إليّ بالروابط الجسمانيّة والروحانيّة والعقلانيّة معاً، وإذا كان هو بهذه المنزلة منه عليهما السلام فكان أولى بالامامة من سائر الاولاد فهو نصّ على إمامته. His statement, “My mother and his are the same” contains a difficulty, for their mother was not the same. Thus, it may carry the intended meaning of the supreme mother, Fāṭima عليها السلام, because descent from her is a precondition of Imamate. In Rabīʿ al-Shīʿa, Iʿlām al-Warā and al-Mufīd's al-Irshād [the wording is]: “My pedigree and his are the same,” and it is the more apparent reading. As for “Indeed, he is of my own soul,” that is that “he is [created] from my own clay, and he has my constitution, character and qualities.” This expression is used to convey the most perfect unity of perfections, virtues and degrees [of elevation], and the utmost exclusivity [of merit], as the Prophet صلى الله عليه وعلى آله said: “ʿAlī is of me, and I am of ʿAlī.” What this suggests is that: “Your relation to me is a corporeal relation, while his relation to me is a substantial, spiritual and sapiential one altogether.” When he is in such a position to him عليهما السلام, then he is the most worthy of the Imamate among all his offspring, so this statement is an explicit designation of his Imamate. As for the acknowledgement by Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān mentioned earlier that Ismāʿīl predeceased his own father in his Sharḥ al-Akhbār fī Faḍāʾil al-Aʾimmat al-Aṭhār, vol. 14, pp. 309-310: وكان إسماعيل أحبهما اليه وأثرهما به. وولد لاسماعيل [محمد] بن إسماعيل، وبلغ مبلغ الرجال في حياة أبيه، وتوفي أبوه في حياة أبيه جعفر بن محمد عليه السلام بالعريض، فحمل على رقاب الرجال حتى دفن بالبقيع. وكان أبوه جعفر بن محمد عليه السلام يأمر به، فينزل، ثم يكشف عن وجهه، وينظر اليه، ففعل ذلك، وهو يُسار به الى البقيع مراراً. وكان ذلك سبباً. وكان قوم من الشيعة يقولون: توفي إسماعيل في حياة أبيه. يقولون: انه عهد اليه، وانه هو عهد الى ابنه محمد وهم على ذلك الى اليوم يقولون بامامة ولده واحد بعد واحد. Ismāʿīl was the more loved and favoured of the two of them to him (Imam al-Ṣādiq عليه السلام). Ismāʿīl had a son, Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl, who reached the age of maturity (for males) in the lifetime of his father. His father (Ismāʿīl) died in the lifetime of his own father, Jaʿfar b. Muḥammad عليه السلام, at al-ʿArīḍ. He was carried upon the shoulders of men until he was buried in al-Baqīʿ. While he was being carried to al-Baqīʿ, Jaʿfar b. Muḥammad عليه السلام would order him to be lowered, uncover his face, and look at him. He did this repeatedly. This was the reason. A group of the Shīʿa would say: “Ismāʿīl died in the lifetime of his father.” They said: “Verily, he (Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq) has rendered the covenant to him (Ismāʿīl), and indeed he rendered the covenant to his own son, Muḥammad,” and they are upon that up to the present day, affirming that the Imamate belongs to [Ismāʿīl’s] scions, one after another. The expected retort, if it is ever made, would be that I have misrepresented the context in which Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān says this, which is in a Firaq al-Shīʿa-style exposition by him on all of the various Shīʿī splinter sects. My answer to this objection is two-pronged. The first prong is a question: why is Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān describing his own sect, the Ismāʿīliyya, in the third-person and with an indifferent, matter-of-fact tone? The second is that the Ismāʿīliyya have no concept of ʿilm al-rijāl (the study of transmitters of the traditions with the goal of determining their reliability) or ʿilm al-dirāya (the study of the traditions themselves with the goal of determining their authenticity) to begin with, which is why Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s Daʿāʾim al-Islām has traditions and reports from Abū Jaʿfar al-Bāqir and Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Ṣādiq صلوات الله عليهما blatantly ripped straight from the pages of Imāmī compilations and sources, with their chains of transmission intact, and that is the exception rather than the norm for Ismāʿīli literature. Jaʿfar b. Manṣūr al-Yaman’s Sarāʾir wa Asrār al-Nuṭaqāʾ, a key polemical work aiming to “refute” Imāmī claims and aggrandise the Ismāʿīli creed, has no chains of transmission for any of the “traditions” and “reports” he cites in it. The point is that the absence, by-and-large, of both ʿilm al-rijāl and ʿilm al-dirāya as would otherwise have been applied to the foundational texts of the Ismāʿīli sect means that whatever is said in these texts must be taken at face value, even if the contents of Sharḥ al-Akhbār, in which Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān matter-of-factly acknowledges that Ismāʿīl predeceased his own father, blatantly contradict the contents of Sarāʾir, in which Jaʿfar b. Manṣūr al-Yaman claims that Ismāʿīl actually went into hiding in a way indistinguishable from the Occultation of Imam al-Mahdī عجل الله فرجه for which he lambasts the Imāmiyya in the very same book! At any rate, there is no case to be made for the Ismāʿīli creed when its foundations are as firmly established in truth as a man’s feet would be in mid-air…which is to say, not in the least. After all, why else would ʿAlī b. Bābuwayh al-Qummī قدس الله سره include only one report in (chapter 14 of) this book, to refute the claim upon the Imamate made on behalf of Ismāʿīl?