Imam Al-Hadi

Today is a doleful day in Islamic history. On the 3rd of Rajab in the year 254 AH (868 CE) another Infallible Imam of the Ahl al-Bayt of Prophet Muhammad (SAWA) was martyred. This time the terrible tragedy took place in the city of Samarra in Iraq. The victim was Imam Ali an-Naqi al-Hadi (AS). He was 10th in the line of divinely-decreed succession that had begun 234 years earlier on 18th Zilhiija, 10 AH, with the Prophet's proclamation of his dear cousin and son-in-law, Imam Ali ibn Abi Taleb (AS), as vicegerent at Ghadir-Khom, on the expresses revelation of ayah 67 of Surah al-Ma'edah, while returning from the Farewell Pilgrimage. At 42 years, Imam Hadi (AS) was in the full bloom of manhood when martyred in a cowardly manner through a fatal dose of poison by al-Mu'taz, the 13th Abbasid caliph and the 26th of the line of Godless debauchees and bloodthirsty tyrants that had started in 41 AH with the seizure of the caliphate by the Omayyad scoundrel, Mu'awiyah ibn Abu Sufyan, from the Prophet's elder grandson, Imam Hasan (AS). The reason for his martyrdom was obvious. It was his number "ten". This was a worrisome number, and too close for comfort for the usurpers, in view of the Prophet's famous hadith (recorded by both Sunni and Shi'ite narrators) that the number of his rightful successors would be 12, with the last of them to rise as Qa'em al-Mahdi (AS) to end oppression and corruption on earth by establishing the global government of peace, prosperity, and justice. That was also the reason for the martyrdom of his predecessor, the Prophet's 9th Infallible Successor, Imam Muhammad at-Taqi al-Jawad (AS), by the caliph Mu'tasim in 220 AH in Baghdad at the young age of 25 years – also through poisoning – when Imam Ali al-Hadi (AS) was a mere boy of 8 years. The next step taken by the crafty Mu'tasim (born of a Turkish slave-girl to the infamous Haroun Rasheed), was to place the orphan of his venerable victim under the tutourship of the scholar al-Junaydi, to try to indoctrinate and mislead him in the matters of faith, on the assumption of ending once and for all the chain of Infallible Guidance linked directly to the Prophet. It was obvious that the arrogant Abbasid usurper was ignorant of the fact that the All-Wise God says explicitly in the Holy Qur'an of having granted Yayha (John the Baptist) the Scripture while still a child, and entrusted the Prophethood to Jesus while still an infant in the cradle. To the horror of the caliph, it was the young boy who taught the bearded scholar of knowledge he knew not. Imam Hadi (AS), not just acquainted al-Junaydi with the finer points of Arabic literature but also enlightened his mind with the proper understanding of the holy Qur'an, to the extent that he concluded that this was divine cause beyond the ken of ordinary human beings. Mu'tasim, notorious for his prohibition of ijtehad (independent reasoning on the basis of the Holy Qur'an and the Prophet's practice concerning exigencies) and his splintering of the general Muslim populace into four court-sanctioned schools of jurisprudence, also gave free rein to his neo-Muslim Turkish slave generals to repress any voice of dissident – a blunder which in later years resulted in disorder on a massive scale. Nonetheless, despite the persecution of the Prophet's progeny and widespread official promotion of all sorts of vices in society, the Tenth Imam continued his guiding role by grooming in various branches of sciences a large number of scholars, whose names are immortal to this day – Seyyed (Shah) Abdul-Azeem al-Hasani (his shrine is in Rayy, south of Tehran), Fazl bin Shazaan an-Naishabouri, Ali bin Mahzyar al-Ahwazi, Ali bin Bilal al-Baghdadi, Ali bin Ja'far al-Hamadani, etc. The most testing times for the Imam during his 34-year mission, was the almost 14 year misrule of the tyrant Mutawakkel – born of a Greek concubine to Mu'tasim and notorious as the "most infidel of the Abbasid caliphs" (Akfar al-Muluk al-Abbasiyya). Mutawakkel forced Imam Hadi (AS) to leave Medina and live under virtual house arrest at Samarra, especially after the reception that the Prophet's successor was accorded in Baghdad on his way by tens of thousands of Muslims of various persuasion. The Imam had to endure with patience the destruction of the shrine of Imam Husain (AS) by the caliph and the ban on all pilgrimages to Karbala. The scholar Ibn Sikkit (to be brutally murdered by Mutawakkel for boldly replying that even Imam Ali's (AS) slave Qanbar was better than the caliph's sons when asked whether the caliph's brats could be compared to the Prophet's grandsons, Imam Hasan and Husain), composed an elegy in this regard: “By Allah, if the Umayyads had killed the (grand)son of the Prophet unjustly, "His cousins (the Abbasids) did the same; "Here (in Karbala) is his tomb destroyed! "They felt sorry that they did not participate in killing him, "So they chased him in the grave.’ Time and space do not allow me to go into details of the life of the Tenth Imam, who rests in eternal peace in the shrine in Samarra, which is being built on a grand scale following the two blasphemous bomb blasts (22nd February 2006 and 13th June 2007) triggered by US-backed terrorists. To be brief, he ably groomed the seekers of truth, wherever in the world, for the long occultation of the 12th Imam. Among the lasting legacies of Imam Hadi (AS), mention could be made of two Ziyarahs or standard forms of salutations to the Prophet's Infallible Successors. The first is that of Imam Ali (AS) for the Day of Ghadeer or completion of faith and divine favours on mankind. The second is the Ziyarat-al-Jame'at al-Kabira that embodies the unrivalled merits of the Ahl al-Bayt.