184 No god but God
According to Imam Ja‘far as-Sadiq, these exquisitely wrought lines
conceal a message from God to the Shi‘ah. God’s light, Ja‘far claimed,
is actually Muhammad; its containment in the glass, a reference to the
prophetic knowledge that he passed on to Imam Ali, who “is neither a
Jew [of the East] nor a Christian [of the West].” And just as the sacred
oil glows without being touched by fire, so divine knowledge issues
from the mouth of the Imam, “even if Muhammad had not spoken it.”
“Light upon Light!” exclaims the Quran.
“Imam to Imam!” replied Ja‘far.
The first of the “fixed” Imams to succeed Muhammad was obviously
Ali, followed by his sons Hasan and Husayn, respectively. The fourth
Imam was the only son of Husayn to have survived Karbala, Ali (also
known as Zayn al-Abadin), who was eventually allowed to return to
Medina after spending some years in captivity in Damascus. Ali Zayn
al-Abadin was succeeded in 712 C.E. by his son Muhammad al-Baqir
(who was four years old at the time of Karbala), though a small faction
within the Shi‘ah rejected al-Baqir as the fifth Imam and chose instead
to follow another of al-Abadin’s sons, Zayd ash-Shahid. This faction
officially broke off from the main body of the Shi‘ah and became
known as the Zaydis.
The majority of the Shi‘ah accepted the succession of al-Baqir,
who then passed the Imamate to his son Ja‘far as-Sadiq. As the sixth
and most influential Imam, Ja‘far formalized the Karbala rituals and
established the principles of Shi‘ism’s main school of law. The Jafari
school, as it is known, differentiates itself from Sunni schools of law,
first by recognizing a different set of hadith, which include stories of
the Imams as well as of Muhammad, and second by vigorously
employing ijtihad, or independent juristic reasoning, as one of the pri-
mary sources of Shi‘ite jurisprudence.
For years the Shi‘ah were divided among themselves over the per-
missibility of the mujtahid (literally, one who employs ijtihad) to rely
only on rational conjecture to issue authoritative legal decisions, or
fatwas. The Akhbari school, for example, rejected the use of ijtihad
altogether, requiring its Ulama to base their legal decisions solely on
the traditions of the Prophet and the Imams. But it was the Akhbaris’
rivals, the Usuli school, whose enthusiastic support for the use of ijti-