Imam Muhammad Ibn Jaf’ar Ibn Yahya Ibn Abdullah
Imam Muḥammad ibn Jaʿfar ibn Yaḥyā ibn ʿAbdullāh
Peace Be Upon Him
Among the People of the House of Prophethood, there made the call in this era Imam Muḥammad ibn Jaʿfar ibn Imam Yaḥyā ibn ʿAbdullāh ibn al-Ḥasan ibn al-Ḥasan (peace be upon them).
He used to ride and go about in the markets, enjoining what is right and forbidding what is wrong. He is the one who rose up at Lower Ṭahārt1 — present-day Tiaret in northern Algeria.
Ṭahārt — with a fatḥa on the h, a sukūn on the r, and a t with two dots above it — is the name of two facing cities in the far Maghrib: one called “the Old,” which is “the Upper” (al-ʿUlyā), and the other “the New,” which is “the Lower” (al-Suflā). Thus in Muʿjam al-Buldān. It is now known as Tiaret (Tiyāret), a city in northern Algeria.
He is the maternal grandfather of Imam al-Manṣūr Billāh ʿAbdullāh ibn Ḥamzah (peace be upon them) — the Greatest Imam, author of Al-Shāfī, Al-ʿIqd al-Thamīn, and other major works of the Zaydī tradition. Through this Imam, the lineage of the Yemeni Imāmate traces back to Imam Yaḥyā ibn ʿAbdullāh, brother of al-Nafs al-Zakiyyah and Ibrāhīm.
Scholarly References & Annotations
Ṭahārt — with a fatḥa on the h, a sukūn on the r, and a t with two dots above it — is the name of two facing cities in the far Maghrib; one of them is called “the Old,” which is “the Upper” (al-ʿUlyā), and the other “the New,” which is “the Lower” (al-Suflā). Thus in Muʿjam al-Buldān. It is now called “Tiyāret” (Tiaret), a city in northern Algeria — noted by the Author (peace be upon him).