Imam Al Qasim Ibn Ibrahim Ar Rassi (D. 246AH)
Imam al-Qāsim ibn Ibrāhīm al-Rassī
The Star of the Family of the Messenger — Peace Be Upon Him
Imam Abū Muḥammad — the star of the family of the Messenger and the Imam of the rational and the transmitted sciences — al-Qāsim ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Ismāʿīl ibn Ibrāhīm ibn al-Ḥasan ibn al-Ḥasan al-Sibt — peace and salutations of God be upon them.
He rose up — when he heard of the death of his brother Imam Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm — in Egypt in the year 199 AH, and he persisted in calling people to God until the year 246 AH.
Imam Abū Ṭālib (peace be upon him) said: He (peace be upon him) was of complete and sound build, white of complexion.
It has come down from his grandfather the Messenger ﷺ — as the Imams have reported — that he said:
“O Fāṭimah, from you shall come a guide and a rightly guided one and one whose two front teeth are stripped away;1 were there to be a prophet after me, it would be he.”2
It was said to the jurist, the scholar, the disciple of the People of the House, Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn Manṣūr al-Murādī: “People say that you did not manage to take much from al-Qāsim ibn Ibrāhīm, though your companionship with him was long.”
“Yes, I accompanied him twenty-five years; but you suppose that whenever we wished to speak with him, we simply spoke with him — and who among us was able to do that? When we would meet him, it was as though I were made to drink sorrow, on account of his grief over the Community and the affliction it suffered from the scholars of evil and the insolent tyrants.”
It is also reported that he heard the sound of a tunbur (lute) among his troops, so he said: “By God, these are not people by whom victory is to be won” — and he abandoned them.
He called to God in the midst of some hardships, and the house filled with light.
- Muḥammadtransmitted his father’s jurisprudence
- Al-Ḥasan
- Al-Ḥusayn
- Sulaymān
- ʿĪsā
- Mūsā
- ʿAlī
- Ibrāhīm
- Yaʿqūb
- Dāwūd
- Ismāʿīl
- Yaḥyā
Imam Abū Ṭālib said: Among the companions who took knowledge from him — the excellent and noble ones — were his children Muḥammad, al-Ḥasan, al-Ḥusayn, and Sulaymān, as well as:
- Muḥammad ibn Manṣūr al-Murādī the disciple, accompanied him twenty-five years
- Al-Ḥasan ibn Yaḥyā ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn Zayd ibn ʿAlī
- Yaḥyā ibn al-Ḥasan ibn Jaʿfar ibn ʿUbaydullāh ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn (al-ʿAqīqī) author of Kitāb al-Ansāb; had a set of questions addressed to the Imam
- ʿAbdullāh ibn Yaḥyā al-Qumīsī al-ʿAlawī from whom al-Nāṣir lil-Ḥaqq transmitted much
- Muḥammad ibn Mūsā the disciple, the worshipper; transmitted much jurisprudence from him
- ʿAlī ibn Jahshiyār
- Abū ʿAbdullāh Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan ibn Sallām al-Kūfī of much jurisprudence and copious transmission
- Al-Dalīl al-Kabīr The Great Proof — on the science of Divine Oneness (tawḥīd). Imam al-Manṣūr Billāh noted that in it he recounts the doctrines of the philosophers and argues against them concerning composition and structure.
- Al-Radd ʿalā Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ The Refutation of Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, and his rebuttal of his words in Al-Intiṣār.
- Kitāb al-Munāẓara maʿa al-Mulḥid The book in which he recounted his disputation with the heretic in the land of Egypt.
- Al-Radd ʿalā al-Mujbira The Refutation of the Predestinarians.
- Taʾwīl al-ʿArsh wa-l-Kursī The Interpretation of the Throne and the Footstool — against the anthropomorphists (al-mushabbiha).
- Al-Nāsikh wa-l-Mansūkh The Abrogating and the Abrogated.
- Fuṣūl al-Imāma His discourse on the chapters of the Imamate and the refutation of the opponents of the Zaydiyyah.
- Al-Radd ʿalā al-Naṣārā The Refutation of the Christians.
- Al-Maknūn The Concealed — on manners and wisdom; containing vast knowledge, comprehensive refinement, and beneficial admonition.
- Kitāb al-Ṭahāra Ritual Purity.
- Ṣalāt al-Yawm wa-l-Layla The Prayer of the Day and Night.
- Al-Jāmiʿ Parts on the interpretation of the piercing crushing verses (qawāriʿ) of the Qurʾān.
- Al-Farāʾiḍ wa-l-Sunan Obligations and Practices — transmitted by his son Muḥammad; containing clusters of arranged jurisprudential questions.
- Al-Manāsik The Rites of Pilgrimage.
- Answers to the Questions of Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad al-Nayrūsī & ʿAbdullāh ibn al-Ḥasan al-Kallārī Transmitted by al-Nāṣir al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī al-Uṭrush.
- Questions of ʿAlī ibn Jahshiyār
Know that the most intense concern of the early Imams (peace be upon them) was with the exposition of the science of Divine Oneness and Justice, and the obligations of God in which the misguided ones of the nations went astray — and none was saved from drowning except whoever clung to their rope and held fast to their religion.
For they are the proofs of God over His creation and the summoners to His religion. They never ceased contending in battle for the religion of God which their grandfather, the warning Prophet, brought, and which their father — the Legatee, the guide, the founder of the foundations of Islam, who struck with Dhū al-Fiqār the crowns of heads of the polytheists and the rebellious rabble — followed him in upholding and conveying, until he raised up the pillar of Islam with that keen, sharp sword. The blessings of God be upon them both and upon their kindred, the good, the foremost ones. For they draw from the gate of the City of Knowledge, and that trace they follow — as Imam al-Nāṣir lil-Ḥaqq al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī (peace be upon him) said:
And their knowledge is traced back by chain of authority to the saying of their grandfather —
from Gabriel, from the Creator, whenever they speak.
— Imam al-Nāṣir lil-Ḥaqq al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī (Peace Be Upon Him)
This Imam al-Qāsim and his brother Imam Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm are the two Renewers (mujaddidān) at the turn of the second century — the year 200 AH.
Their father, Ibrāhīm ibn Ismāʿīl, was nicknamed Ṭabāṭabā. Some of the verifying Sayyids said: its meaning is “master of masters” (sayyid al-sādāt).
The nickname Ṭabāṭabā is also the title of the Sayyid, the Imam, the scholar, the verifier, the resplendent eloquent one, Abū al-Ḥasan Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Ismāʿīl ibn Ibrāhīm ibn al-Ḥasan ibn al-Ḥasan (peace be upon them) — by whose saying the masters of eloquence cite as a proof-text:
Marvel not at the wearing-out of his undergarment3 —
he has buttoned its buttons over the moon.
Scholarly References & Annotations
Al-Rabāʿiyya (on the pattern of thamāniyya): the tooth between the front incisor (thaniyya) and the canine (nāb); plural: rabāʿiyyāt. One who sheds them is called rabāʿ. From Al-Qāmūs — noted by the Author (peace be upon him).
Al-ʿIqd al-Thamīn fī Tabyīn Aḥkām al-Aʾimma al-Hādīn by Imam al-Manṣūr Billāh (peace be upon him), p. 139; Maʾāthir al-Abrār (1/340); Nihāyat al-Tanwīh fī Izḥāq al-Tamwīh by Imam al-Hādī ibn Ibrāhīm al-Wazīr (peace be upon them), p. 188; Hidāyat al-Rāghibīn ilā Madhhab al-ʿItra al-Ṭāhirīn, p. 255.
Al-ghilāla (with kasra): an undergarment worn beneath the outer garment — from Al-Qāmūs. Also: the age of Imam al-Qāsim is given as seventy-seven in Al-Shāfī (1/764) and elsewhere; however, what is indicated by the preceding account — that his age was twenty-six in the year 199, and that his death was in the year 246 — puts his age at seventy-three years — noted by the Author (peace be upon him).