Imam Muhammad Ibn Al Qasim
Imam Muḥammad ibn al-Qāsim
Peace Be Upon Him
Imam Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn al-Qāsim ibn ʿAlī ibn ʿUmar al-Ashraf ibn ʿAlī Sayyid al-ʿĀbidīn ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Sibṭ ibn ʿAlī the Legatee — peace and salutations of God be upon them. This Imam lived in the days of al-Muʿtaṣim the ʿAbbāsid, and he had many battles with the Black-Clad Ones (al-Musawwida), the ʿAbbāsids, and he died in his days.
Imam al-Manṣūr Billāh ʿAbdullāh ibn Ḥamzah (peace be upon them) said: He made his call in Khurāsān, and the Zaydiyyah gathered to him, as did the people of merit from various schools.
Fighters whose names were on his register — gathered from the Zaydiyyah and people of merit from multiple schools of thought.
He used to wear garments of white wool. He was in knowledge, jurisprudence, religion, asceticism, and excellence of doctrine at the utmost degree.
He was of medium build among men, brown-complexioned, with prostration having left its mark on his face.
He is the one who professed divine justice (al-ʿadl) and oneness (al-tawḥīd) and called to it — and he is an exemplar (qudwa) among the Zaydiyyah.
There is disagreement about the cause and circumstances of his death. The reported accounts are as follows:
- He died at Wāsiṭ.
- Rather, he died in prison.
- Al-Muʿtaṣim poisoned him.
- He went into hiding during the days of al-Muʿtaṣim and al-Wāthiq, was seized during the days of al-Mutawakkil, and died in prison.
His age was fifty-three years. In Maqātil al-Ṭālibiyyīn it is reported that his emergence from al-Muʿtaṣim’s prison was in the year 229 AH. His descendants are in Ṭabaristān.
This Imam (peace be upon him) comes chronologically before the previously mentioned Imam — that is, al-Qāsim ibn ʿAbdullāh — so let there be no confusion about this, for a slight discrepancy may occur in the sequence of the verse.
Strict ordering may not even be intended in constructions whose grammatical basis supports it, such as the particles fā- and thumma. For fā- occurs in the conjoining of a clause giving detail upon a preceding summary statement. What I hold is that of this type is, for example, God’s saying (Exalted is He): “So We took vengeance upon them, that is, We drowned them” [al-Aʿrāf: 136] — because “vengeance” is a summary term which He detailed by “drowning” — not as al-Zamakhsharī claimed, that “so We took vengeance upon them” means “We willed the vengeance,” for that is merely an application based on the belief of the Muʿtazila and others that God’s (Exalted is He) willing of His actions is other than His carrying them out, and other than His knowledge of their containing some benefit (maṣlaḥa). And God knows best.
And thumma occurs in marking the discrepancy between the contents of the two clauses, since it is for sequence with an interval (al-taʿqīb bi-tarākhin), as the scholars of semantics (ahl al-maʿānī) have mentioned, with its evidences found in the Mighty Book. And the ordering may be in the reporting (al-ikhbār) — the telling — not in the occurrence of events, as in the saying:
Indeed, one who became a master, then whose father too became a master —
then before that his grandfather had also become a master.
This is the most fitting interpretation in construing the Qurʾānic verses and the poetic lines, even though Ibn Hishām claimed that other than it is more profitable; and the interval (al-muhla) in the reporting is attained from the standpoint of the semantics, according to the view of one who makes thumma denote interval (al-tarākhī).
This being so — and do not be heedless of the requirers (al-mūjibāt), the permitters (al-mujawwizāt), and the embellishers (al-muḥassināt) of separation (al-faṣl) and conjunction (al-waṣl) in rhetoric. And God is the Patron of granting success.