The Ja'fari School

1A teacher in Madinah

Picture Madinah in the second century after the Hijrah. The city of the Prophet ﷺ is a place of learning: in the Prophet's Mosque scholars sit in circles, and students travel from Kufa, Basra, Egypt and Khurasan to hear hadith, ask questions and write down the answers. In this world taught Ja'far ibn Muhammad, whom Muslims to this day call as-Sadiq – "the Truthful".

His father was Muhammad al-Baqir, his grandfather Ali Zayn al-Abidin, and his grandfather's father was Husayn ibn Ali, the grandson of the Prophet ﷺ. Through his mother, Umm Farwah, Imam Ja'far was also a descendant of Abu Bakr as-Siddiq, for she was a granddaughter of al-Qasim ibn Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr, one of the well-known jurists of Madinah. In his person two lines meet that both traditions of Islam love.

Imam Ja'far passed away in 148 AH (765 CE) in Madinah and was buried in the cemetery of al-Baqi', near his father and his great-grandfather Hasan. For Twelver Shia Muslims he is the sixth Imam. His life fell in a turbulent time, when Umayyad rule ended and the Abbasid era began. In precisely this period of upheaval he devoted himself above all to teaching, and so his circle became one of the most important of its age.

2A teacher honoured by Sunni scholars too

Imam Ja'far does not belong to one tradition alone. Sunni scholars also mention him with great respect, and it is worth knowing this without exaggerating it.

• In the hadith collections: Imam Muslim narrates in his Sahih, from Ja'far ibn Muhammad, from his father, from Jabir ibn Abdillah, the famous detailed account of the Prophet's ﷺ pilgrimage. Jurists of every school have derived the rulings of Hajj from exactly this report.
• Imam Malik: It is reported of Malik ibn Anas, may Allah have mercy on him, that he often visited Ja'far ibn Muhammad and always found him praying, fasting or reciting the Quran, and he praised his piety.
• Imam Abu Hanifa: It is also reported of Abu Hanifa, may Allah have mercy on him, that he met Imam Ja'far and held his knowledge in high esteem. Sunni biographers, such as adh-Dhahabi in his great biographical dictionary of scholars, describe Imam Ja'far as one of the great scholars and devout men of his time.

We deliberately say "it is reported". There are different accounts of the exact nature of these meetings, and an honest teacher says no more than he knows. What is certain is this: Sunni and Shia Muslims alike speak his name with love, and many Sufi paths trace their spiritual chain through him back to the Prophet ﷺ.

3His students and his legacy

Around Imam Ja'far and his father Imam al-Baqir gathered a large circle of students. Shia tradition names, among others, Zurarah ibn A'yan, Muhammad ibn Muslim, Aban ibn Taghlib and Hisham ibn al-Hakam. They wrote down what they heard, and so many small written collections came into being, often called Usul, "source books", in the tradition. Later scholars drew on this material when they compiled the great hadith collections.

Because so much of what Twelver Shia Muslims transmit in matters of law goes back to Imam Ja'far and his father, their school of law bears his name: al-Madhhab al-Ja'fari, the Ja'fari school. This does not mean he wrote a textbook in the modern sense. It means that his answers, explanations and rulings form the core around which the school grew.

4Twelver Shi'ism

The Ja'fari school is the school of law of Twelver Shia Muslims (Ithna 'ashariyyah or Imamiyyah). They believe that leadership of the community after the Prophet ﷺ passed to twelve Imams from his family:

1. 1Ali ibn Abi Talib
2. 2Hasan ibn Ali
3. 3Husayn ibn Ali
4. 4Ali Zayn al-Abidin
5. 5Muhammad al-Baqir
6. 6Ja'far as-Sadiq
7. 7Musa al-Kazim
8. 8Ali ar-Rida
9. 9Muhammad al-Jawad
10. 10Ali al-Hadi
11. 11Hasan al-Askari
12. 12Muhammad al-Mahdi

In their belief the twelfth Imam lives in occultation (ghaybah) and will return at the end of time to fill the world with justice. In this teaching the Imams are not prophets, but guardians and interpreters of the message guided by Allah. Sunni Muslims also love and honour these figures as members of the Prophet's ﷺ family, even though they understand their station differently in theology.

For law, the occultation has an important consequence: because the Imam cannot be asked directly, the scholars carry the responsibility of deriving the law from the sources. This gave rise to the system of the marja'iyyah, which we will come to shortly.

5The sources of law

Ja'fari scholars usually name four sources from which the law is derived:

• The Quran: the word of Allah, the first and highest source.
• The Sunnah: the words, actions and tacit approval of the Prophet ﷺ. In the understanding of this school, this also includes the reports of the twelve Imams, because they are regarded as reliable preservers and interpreters of the prophetic Sunnah. When Imam Ja'far explains how to pray, this is understood as him passing on the Sunnah of his grandfather ﷺ.
• Consensus (ijma'): the agreement of scholars carries weight, above all because it indicates that a view goes back to the teaching of the Imams.
• Reason ('aql): reason counts as a source where it reaches clear judgements – for example that justice is good and injustice is bad – and as a tool for drawing conclusions from the texts.

One difference from the Sunni schools is well known: analogical reasoning (qiyas), in the sense of transferring a ruling to a new case on the basis of a merely presumed similarity, is not accepted as an independent source in the Ja'fari school. Its scholars base this on statements of the Imams. Instead, they developed a very refined doctrine of practical principles (al-usul al-'amaliyyah): what should one do when a text is missing or unclear? Then rules apply such as the presumption of permissibility (bara'ah), the continuation of the prior state (istishab) or caution (ihtiyat). Anyone interested in legal theory will find remarkable depth here.

6Ijtihad and the marja'iyyah

A special feature of the Ja'fari school is that the door of ijtihad – independent legal reasoning by qualified scholars – has always remained open. Every generation has its own mujtahids who think the law through anew from the sources.

This leads to a simple principle for daily life:

• Whoever is a mujtahid follows his own judgement.
• Whoever is not a scholar – and that is the great majority of believers – follows a qualified scholar. This is called taqlid, following.
• The scholar whom many people follow is called marja' at-taqlid, literally "point of reference for following".

A marja' usually publishes a practical treatise (risalah 'amaliyyah) in which he summarises his rulings on prayer, fasting, purity, trade and many other topics. According to the prevailing view, believers who begin following a scholar should choose a living mujtahid, namely the one they consider, to the best of their knowledge, the most learned. In this way the law stays alive and can answer new questions – from banking to medicine.

In the course of history there were two currents: the Usulis, who emphasise legal theory and ijtihad, and the Akhbaris, who wished to keep more closely to the wording of the reports. Since the eighteenth century the Usuli approach has prevailed in the major centres of learning.

7The Four Books

Just as Sunni Muslims have their great hadith collections, Twelver Shia Muslims have four classical works, together called al-Kutub al-arba'ah, "the Four Books":

1. 1al-Kafi by Muhammad ibn Ya'qub al-Kulayni (d. 329 AH). It is the largest and oldest of the four and contains sections on matters of belief (al-Usul), on law (al-Furu') and miscellaneous reports (ar-Rawdah).
2. 2Man la yahduruhu al-faqih – "For one who has no jurist at hand" – by ash-Shaykh as-Saduq Ibn Babawayh (d. 381 AH). The title already shows its purpose: a reference work for people with no scholar nearby.
3. 3Tahdhib al-Ahkam by ash-Shaykh at-Tusi (d. 460 AH), a large collection of reports on law.
4. 4al-Istibsar, also by ash-Shaykh at-Tusi, in which he examines reports that seem to contradict each other and reconciles them.

It is important to know that Ja'fari scholars of the Usuli approach do not regard every report in these books as automatically authentic. They examine the chains of transmission and the content, much as Sunni hadith scholarship does. Later came great compilations such as Wasa'il ash-Shi'ah by al-Hurr al-Amili and Bihar al-Anwar by al-Majlisi. Also highly valued are Nahj al-Balaghah, a collection of Ali's sermons and letters compiled by ash-Sharif ar-Radi, and as-Sahifah as-Sajjadiyyah, the supplications of Imam Zayn al-Abidin – texts that many Sunni readers also love for their language and spirituality.

8Great scholars

The history of the school is rich in scholars whose influence reached far beyond their own community. A few names worth knowing:

• ash-Shaykh al-Mufid (d. 413 AH) in Baghdad, teacher of a whole generation.
• ash-Sharif al-Murtada (d. 436 AH), an important theologian and jurist, brother of ash-Sharif ar-Radi.
• ash-Shaykh at-Tusi (d. 460 AH), author of two of the Four Books and of works on legal theory and Quranic exegesis. According to tradition he moved from Baghdad to Najaf, and with him begins the long history of learning in that city.
• al-Muhaqqiq al-Hilli and al-'Allamah al-Hilli from Hilla in Iraq, whose textbooks, such as Shara'i' al-Islam, were taught for centuries.
• Shaykh Murtada al-Ansari (d. 1281 AH), whose works on legal theory and commercial law are still the basis of advanced study today.

Beyond law, scholars from this tradition also contributed to Islamic civilisation, for example Nasir ad-Din at-Tusi, whose work in astronomy, mathematics and philosophy was read throughout the Islamic world.

9Najaf and Qom

Scholars are trained in the hawzah, the traditional seminary. Two cities are especially well known:

• Najaf in Iraq, the city where Ali ibn Abi Talib is buried. For almost a thousand years it has been a place of study where students from many countries learn.
• Qom in Iran, where the hawzah was re-established in the early twentieth century and where many students are trained today as well.

Teaching follows an old path: first Arabic grammar, logic and foundations, then legal texts and legal theory, and finally advanced study (bahth al-kharij), in which the teacher develops questions freely from the sources. Whoever completes this path may become a mujtahid. Other well-known places of learning include Karbala, Mashhad and Lebanon.

10What you notice in daily life

If you pray next to a Ja'fari Muslim, you may notice small differences. They are not a departure from Islam but the result of different reports and legal interpretations. Similar differences exist between the Sunni schools too.

• Hands in prayer: they are usually held at the sides, as many Malikis also do.
• The turbah: many Shia Muslims place their forehead in prostration on a small piece of earth or clay, the turbah. The reason is legal: according to this school, prostration should be on earth or on something that grows from the earth and is neither eaten nor worn. One prostrates on the earth, not to it – worship belongs to Allah alone. Often the earth comes from Karbala, out of love for the place where Husayn died.
• Combining prayers: Ja'fari Muslims often pray the noon and afternoon prayers, and the sunset and night prayers, directly one after the other. There are still five prayers, only at three times. They also rely on a report that Imam Muslim narrates in his Sahih from Ibn Abbas: that the Prophet ﷺ combined prayers in Madinah without fear or travel being the reason.
• Ablution: the arms are washed from the elbow to the fingertips, and the feet are wiped with the wet hands rather than washed. Scholars derive this from their reading of Surah 5:6.
• The call to prayer: after "Hayya 'ala l-falah" comes the phrase "Hayya 'ala khayr al-'amal" – "Hasten to the best of deeds".

Khums

Another distinctive feature is khums, the "fifth". It is based on Surah 8:41: "And know that whatever you obtain of spoils, a fifth of it belongs to Allah and to the Messenger and to the near relatives …" According to Ja'fari teaching, this duty applies not only to the spoils of war but also to the surplus of annual income left after living costs. In this teaching, one part is used for needy descendants of the Prophet ﷺ, another part, through the scholars, for religious purposes such as education, mosques and social aid. Khums comes in addition to zakat; it does not replace it. Sunni scholars understand the verse more narrowly, relating it mainly to spoils of war and treasures from the earth. Here too: two careful readings of the same verse.

11Recognition among the schools

Already in the twentieth century scholars worked for rapprochement. In Cairo an association for bringing the schools closer together was founded, and Shaykh Mahmud Shaltut, then Shaykh of al-Azhar, declared in a well-known fatwa in 1959 that it is permissible to follow the Ja'fari school in worship, just like the other recognised schools.

The Amman Message of 2004, endorsed in 2005 by scholars from many countries, names the Ja'fari school explicitly among the eight recognised schools of law and forbids declaring its followers unbelievers. In the Gulf states, where the Maliki school has a long tradition, Sunni and Shia neighbours have lived side by side for generations, worked together and prayed in the same holy places of Makkah and Madinah.

12In closing

Whoever gets to know the Ja'fari school meets a tradition full of seriousness: a deep love for the Prophet's ﷺ family, a long chain of scholars and a legal theory that belongs among the finest in Islamic intellectual history. You do not have to follow it in order to respect it. And you do not have to share each of its views in order to learn from it.

Allah says: "O mankind, We created you from a male and a female and made you peoples and tribes so that you may know one another" Surah 49:13. Getting to know one another is the first step to understanding. Imam Ja'far as-Sadiq taught students of many backgrounds in Madinah. Perhaps that is the most beautiful way to honour his legacy: to learn together, with an open heart and good manners.