Imam Al Hassan Ibn Zayd (D. 270AH)
Imam al-Ḥasan ibn Zayd
Peace Be Upon Him
Imam al-Ḥasan ibn Zayd ibn Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl ibn al-Ḥasan ibn Zayd ibn al-Ḥasan al-Sibṭ ibn ʿAlī (peace be upon them). He made his call during the days of al-Mutawakkil the ʿAbbāsid, and his emergence was in the year 250 AH over Ṭabaristān and the regions of Daylam, where he carried out the rulings of God.
There were many battles between him and the ʿAbbāsid armies. In some of his wars, the people fled from him — so he and his household stood firm in the face of twenty thousand horsemen.
“So he fought them with his sword until the army returned to him.”
— Imam al-Manṣūr Billāh (peace be upon him), in Al-ShāfīImam Abū Ṭālib (peace be upon him) also recounted this.
It is known from the science of semantics (ʿilm al-maʿānī) that the conceptual indicator (al-qārīna al-maʿnawiyya) in rational figurative usage (al-majāz al-ʿaqlī) may be the customary impossibility of the predicate’s standing with the subject — as in their saying: “The commander routed the army” (when in fact his soldiers did the routing). So it is said: except in the case of these Imams, the banners of prophethood, for the attribution of that feat to individuals among them is in fact established as customary — actually true of them, not merely figurative.
So he turned back the armies of the polytheists when they had
gathered for the plotting against the religion and assembled in force.
He restored and maintained the two sacred shrines: the shrine of the Commander of the Faithful ʿAlī (peace be upon him) and that of his grandson al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī (peace be upon them).
Among the splendid pieces of the poetry of Imam al-Ḥasan is what he wrote to the ʿAbbāsids:
There is no injustice in our religion, nor self-aggrandizement —
with the sword we mount over the skulls of the unbelievers.
O our people: two pledges of allegiance, this is one —
here is this one, and there was that — the pledge of the Tree.
Return to us the inheritance of our father —
his ring, the staff, and the striped mantle.
And the House of the One of the Throne — hand it over to us —
a pure band from among us shall have charge of it.
For long have the debauchees defiled its sacred rites
and made manifest their iniquity therein.
— Imam al-Ḥasan ibn Zayd (peace be upon him)
He died in the year 270 AH and left no surviving descendants (peace be upon him). May God’s mercy and peace be upon him.