Imam al-Mutawakkil ʿalā Allāh Aḥmad ibn Sulaymān
Imam al-Mutawakkil ʿalā Allāh Aḥmad ibn Sulaymān
Peace Be Upon Him
Imam al-Mutawakkil ʿalā Allāh, Abū al-Ḥasan Aḥmad ibn Sulaymān ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Muṭahhar ibn ʿAlī ibn Imam al-Nāṣir li-Dīn Allāh Aḥmad, son of Imam al-Hādī ilā al-Ḥaqq Yaḥyā ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn al-Qāsim ibn Ibrāhīm (may God be pleased with them). His rising was in the year 532 AH.
He gained widespread authority over all of Yemen. The Friday sermon was delivered in his name at Yanbuʿ and Khaybar. The Jīl and the Daylam submitted to the rulings of his authority, and he entered the regions of Ṣaʿda with about twenty thousand horsemen and foot-soldiers. Among those who gathered around him was the erudite judge Isḥāq ibn Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Bāʿith (d. 555 AH — may God be pleased with him).
Among his great battles by which he demolished the props of the base heretics: a battle in Yemen1 that ended with five hundred slain and five hundred captives. His cavalry in this battle numbered one thousand and eight hundred horses.
His companions had been on the brink of perishing, so the Imam stretched his hand to the heavens and said: “O God, there remains nothing but Your help.” So God sent against the enemy a stormy wind that faced their faces — and the Imam charged and his companions charged, and his enemies were routed. The Legatee ʿAlī (peace be upon him) had already alluded to this battle and to the place in which it would occur.
By his sword the rulings of the upright ḥanīfī religion were established. The judge Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdullāh al-Ḥimyarī2 said in an ode addressing him:
You have raised up the lance-shaft of the religion, O son of Muḥammad —
and you became, like the sun, your pillar of light manifest;
So the horizons shone, made bright by you, with a radiant blaze —
abundant is the prostration to it of the Lord of the Worlds.
Five hundred — its jugular vein was severed from among them —
and five hundred whom its fetters weighed down;
And they flew to the tops of the mountains, fleeing in scattered bands,
out of fear of it, their hearts palpitating.
— Qāḍī Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdullāh al-Ḥimyarī
His father — who was himself among those fit for the Imamate — saw in a dream two angels saying: “Glad tidings to you, O son of the purity, of Hāshim — of a glorious son whose dynasty is praised; of Aḥmad al-Manṣūr, of Hāshim — blessed be the matter in one whose name is Aḥmad.”
ʿAbdullāh ibn Muḥammad al-Ṭabarī related from al-Hādī, tracing it to the Commander of the Faithful ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, from the Messenger of God ﷺ — mentioning the risers from the offspring of the Messenger, what would come to be of them, and who would be among their eminent figures in the two dynasties — until he reached Imam Aḥmad ibn Sulaymān and mentioned his pledge of allegiance, his description, and all that would come to be of his affair to its end.
The affair of the flood and the rain by which God helped him — and other than this there is much. Imam al-Manṣūr Billāh (peace be upon him) exhaustively treated all of this in Al-Shāfī and elsewhere.
The judge al-Ḥimyarī also said concerning him:
O son of the daughter of the Prophet, every tongue —
is praising; but my tongue’s praise is as nothing in comparison;
Great miracles have appeared in you —
which we did not suppose could be in any human being:
You heal the blind-from-birth sufferer and cure —
by God’s healing, the eyes of the blind.
Yet in the one who is an ally of God, there are not to be —
denied in him the special qualities of the All-Merciful.
— Qāḍī Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdullāh al-Ḥimyarī
- Uṣūl al-Aḥkām fī al-Sunna — The Foundations of the Rulings in the Sunnah; among the most exalted writings of the People of the House
- Kitāb al-Risāla al-ʿĀmma — The General Epistle
- Kitāb al-Maṭāʿin — The Points of Censure
- Al-Hāshima li-Anf al-Ḍalāl — The Crusher of the Nose of Misguidance, with its commentary Al-ʿUmda
- Kitāb Ḥaqāʾiq al-Maʿrifa fī Uṣūl al-Dīn — The Realities of Divine Knowledge, on the Foundations of Religion
- Kitāb al-Madkhal fī Uṣūl al-Fiqh — The Introduction to the Principles of Jurisprudence
Scholarly References & Annotations
This battle was in the year 552 AH.
The judge (qāḍī) Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdullāh al-Ḥimyarī. See his biographical notice in Maṭlaʿ al-Budūr, no. 1181 — vol. 4 — p. 327 — Maktabat Ahl al-Bayt edition.