Imam Yahya Al Hadi (D. 298AH)
Imam al-Hādī ilā al-Ḥaqq Yaḥyā ibn al-Ḥusayn
The Guide to the Manifest Truth — Peace Be Upon Him
He is Imam al-Hādī ilā al-Ḥaqq al-Mubīn, Abū al-Ḥusayn Yaḥyā ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn al-Qāsim ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Ismāʿīl ibn Ibrāhīm ibn al-Ḥasan ibn al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib — may God be pleased with them.
He was born in the purified city of Medina in the year 245 AH. He was carried to his grandfather al-Qāsim (peace be upon him), who placed him in his blessed lap, sought God’s protection for him, and said to his father: “By what have you named him?”
He said: “Yaḥyā” — and al-Ḥusayn had had a brother named Yaḥyā who had died before that — so al-Qāsim wept when he mentioned him, then said: “By God, he is Yaḥyā, the master of Yemen.” He said this only because of reports that had been related mentioning him. Al-Qāsim remained alive one year after that.
To this, Imam al-Dāʿī Yaḥyā ibn al-Muḥassin alluded in his words:
And al-Qāsim openly proclaimed the glad tidings — of a riser in whom there was, for him, a sign:
Of guidance, knowledge, and purity — the Chosen One had disseminated about him his reports,
…of his merit, and made awaiting him obligatory.
— Imam al-Dāʿī Yaḥyā ibn al-Muḥassin
Imam al-Manṣūr Billāh (peace be upon him) said: He was of the lion-like Asadī type, wide-eyed1, thick-forearmed, with a great distance between his shoulders and his chest, slender in the shins and the hindquarters — like a lion.
His rising was in the year 280 AH. Through him God established the religion in the land of Yemen, and revived the marks of the obligations and the sunnahs. He renewed the rulings of the Seal of the Prophets and the traces of the Master of the Legatees. He had against the Qarāmiṭa — who had departed from Islam — over seventy battles, in all of which he had the upper hand; and against the Banū al-Ḥārith, over seventy battles. The Friday sermon was delivered in his name at honoured Mecca for seven years, as is mentioned in ʿUmdat al-Ṭālib and elsewhere.
Imam Abū Ṭālib (peace be upon him) said: Imam al-Nāṣir al-Uṭrūsh used to urge the people to support al-Hādī Yaḥyā ibn al-Ḥusayn, saying: “Whoever is able to support him and is near him, his support of him is obligatory upon him; and whoever is able to support me and is near me, let him support me.”
Concerning him there are reports from his grandfather the Prophet ﷺ and his father the Legatee ʿAlī, among them: from the Commander of the Faithful (peace be upon him), who said:
“There is no sedition but that I know its driver and its crier” — then he mentioned a sedition to occur between year eighty and year two hundred [i.e., 280 AH] — “Then there will come forth a man from my progeny whose name is the name of a prophet; he will distinguish between truth and falsehood, and God will unite the hearts of the believers at his hands.”
— Commander of the Faithful ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib (peace be upon him)
The Messenger ﷺ pointed toward Yemen and said:
“There shall come forth a man from my offspring in this direction whose name is Yaḥyā al-Hādī; through him God shall revive the religion.”
— The Messenger of God ﷺ2
God facilitated for him the knowledge of al-Jafr3 — that in which God revealed to His Prophet the knowledge of what will be until the Day of Resurrection. With him was Dhū al-Faqār, the sword of the Commander of the Faithful. To this the author of Al-Bāsima alluded:
Who was distinguished with al-Jafr among the sons of Fāṭima —
and with Dhū al-Faqār, and who quenched the thirst of those parched by need.
— Author of Al-Bāsima
Among the true historical testimonies is what the ḥāfiẓ Ibn Ḥajar testified concerning Imam al-Hādī in Fatḥ al-Bārī, his commentary on al-Bukhārī, interpreting the prophetic report: “This affair of authority shall continue to remain in Quraysh as long as two of them remain.”4 He concluded that the ḥadīth was confirmed true by the continuance of the affair in Quraysh in Yemen from the third century AH among the Banū al-Ḥasan — and that none undertakes the Imamate among them except one who is a scholar striving for justice.
The erudite scholar Yaḥyā ibn Abī Bakr al-ʿĀmirī said in Al-Riyāḍ al-Mustaṭāba: Then in the time of al-Muʿtamid, al-Muʿtaḍid, and al-Muqtadir, down to al-Mustaʿṣim — the last of the ʿAbbāsid caliphs — the People of the House took refuge in lands where they could not be subdued, such as Jīlān, Daylamān, and the highland of Yemen. Their affair became firmly established and they undertook the Imamate with its conditions. There rose among them in the highland of Yemen about twenty-some Imams, the first and most deserving of mention being Imam al-Hādī Yaḥyā ibn al-Ḥusayn. He had come to Yemen when the doctrine of the Qarāmiṭa and the Bāṭiniyya had spread throughout it, so he waged against them a severe struggle, and there occurred between him and them over eighty battles in none of which was he defeated. He possessed vast knowledge and extraordinary courage.
Al-ʿĀmirī continued: Then after al-Hādī rose his son al-Murtaḍā Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā, then his son al-Nāṣir Aḥmad ibn Yaḥyā; both combined the traits of perfection and excellence like their father, and both were buried beside him in Ṣaʿda. From their offspring are most of the nobles of Yemen.
He also mentioned that the imams of the [legal] schools each pledged allegiance to one of the Imams of the People of the House: Abū Ḥanīfa pledged allegiance to Ibrāhīm ibn ʿAbdullāh ibn al-Ḥasan, Mālik pledged allegiance to his brother Muḥammad, and al-Shāfiʿī pledged allegiance to their brother Yaḥyā.
Ibn Ḥazm, author of Al-Muḥallā, said in mentioning the descendants of Imam al-Nāṣir Aḥmad ibn Yaḥyā al-Hādī: “This Yaḥyā, surnamed al-Hādī, has an opinion in the rulings of jurisprudence which I have examined and found does not depart from the community altogether.”
Nashwān al-Ḥimyarī said in Al-Ḥūr al-ʿĪn: The first to call in Yemen to the doctrine of the Zaydiyyah and to spread the doctrine of their imams was Yaḥyā ibn al-Ḥusayn, surnamed al-Hādī ilā al-Ḥaqq. He settled among Khawlān and said:
By God, by God the Mighty — an oath by which the greatest Throne of God trembles —
Indeed, for love of you, O Ḥusayn, I conceal a love in God, which at times I disclose and at times I keep hidden.
And for the love of all the House of the Family of Muḥammad — for love of them is an obligation upon me and a source of gain;
A people by whose love and by whose religion I worship, and by whose proofs I give legal opinions and adjudicate.
— Imam al-Hādī (peace be upon him), cited by Nashwān al-Ḥimyarī
When his merits became widespread and his qualities became manifest, a delegation of the people of Yemen came to him and asked him to rescue them from the seditions, so he assisted them and made the first expedition. Then he turned back and returned when he observed some of the soldiery taking a small amount of people’s wealth, whereupon there befell the people of Yemen hardships and seditions they had no power to withstand. So they renewed their plea and implored him, and he responded and went out a second time in the year 284 AH.
“O people of Yemen, you have three rights upon me: that I judge among you by the Book of God and the Sunnah of His Messenger ﷺ, that I give you precedence at the distribution of the stipend, and that I precede you at the enemy encounter. And I have upon you: sincere counsel, and obedience so long as I obey God.”
— Imam al-Hādī to the people of Yemen
A scholar from among the scholars of the Shāfiʿīs who came from Iraq to visit him related of his knowledge, justice, merit, and prophetic conduct what dazzled the minds — that he witnessed him personally undertaking with his noble hand the treatment of the wounded, and personally undertaking the feeding of the orphans and the destitute, and other deeds which are well known and inscribed on the pages of history.
God did not spread His lights across the regions of the world, nor disseminate in blessed Yemen His blessings and traces — for eleven centuries — except for a great matter. Indeed, he filled Yemen with security and faith, with knowledge and justice, with mosques and institutes, and with imams of guidance.
From an ode of his (peace be upon him) addressed to al-Daʿʿām ibn Ibrāhīm al-Arḥabī5 — urging him to struggle in the way of God and recalling the past glorious deeds of Hamdān alongside the Commander of the Faithful ʿAlī and the Prophet ﷺ:
Rise, for the opportunity of Yemen has been made possible for us —
and connect now to the merits that were yours in the early time:
Glorious precedents, honorings, and noble deeds —
that were accomplished with the Pure One, al-Hādī ʿAlī, the father of al-Ḥasan;
And the Day of Ṣiffīn, with the horsemen marked for battle,
plunging into the floods of death behind their shields;
And terror raging, and the Day of Nahrawān was yours —
with the dust raised high amid the white swords and the fortified positions;
And their support of the Commander of the Faithful out of pure affection
and for the revival of the sunnahs.
So rise and add nobility surpassing nobility —
among the tribe of Hamdān and the tribes of Yemen.
For in you, by God’s praise, we recognize that —
since you are the lion of battle in peace and in strife.
So seize the matter, O Daʿʿām, with a rising —
as long as the spirit of the soul’s life is in the body.
— Imam al-Hādī ilā al-Ḥaqq (peace be upon him)
Al-Daʿʿām answered him:
There came the letter of a truthful, quick-witted imam —
commanding us, in it, with the obligatory and with the sunnahs:
This imam’s forefather is the Messenger of God, followed by
the best of creation, an imam from the Banū al-Ḥasan;
Abū al-Ḥusayn, the pure Hāshimī —
so his abandonment is not lawful, O people of discernment!
And how could that be, when at Ghadīr Khumm,
obedience to him was made an obligation upon us?
You are the foremost, O son of the chosen ones —
for we have none but you all, in spite of the rancorous, spiteful one.
Advance toward right guidance and divine enablement, relying upon God —
for with me is support, with my body,
And with my sons and with all my wealth, and with the clans of Hamdān on a steadfast course;
They come one after another to your support, O son of the pure ones,
as floods of rain pour one after another from the rain-clouds.
With me are horsemen of Hamdān, sincere to God, truthful in word and in religion.
I am your spearhead; I shatter the sharp edge of the assault
of whoever opposes you, O son of the Messenger of God, in Yemen.
A letter has healed our breasts — you are its writer —
and it has awakened us from the slumber of drowsiness.
You recalled the past deeds of my forefathers,
who strove in the support of your forefather in a bygone time.
I am their successor in the lineage of their leader —
Yaḥyā the imam — without incapacity and without being cheated of a fair share.
After your word there is no other word that we would follow,
O son of al-Ḥaṭīm and son of the Black Stone and the Corner!
O son of the Legatee, Commander of the Faithful,
and O scion of al-Batūl and of him who attained the divine favors!
My rope is joined to your rope, without falsehood —
and the affection from me toward you all is led by the halter,
toward following you. So keep it as a gift from one who listens,
who will not forget you in the homeland.
Indeed, we regard whoever turns away from your guardianship
as one who denies it, turning out of ignorance toward an idol.
So resolve upon what God shows you of right guidance —
until you become distinct, emerging from the unveiling of trials;
And my deeds in your campaign will become manifest as truth —
and my word concerning you is not the word of a feeble one.
— Al-Daʿʿām ibn Ibrāhīm al-Arḥabī, chief of Hamdān
As for the Qurʾān, it was sent down upon the Arabs in their language, and God addressed them in it in their speech. The Arabs introduce into their speech al-nafs as a connective for all that they utter of their discourse; and they may add other particles such as mā and lā which have no independent meaning, except that they beautify speech and connect utterances. Of this is the word of the All-Merciful: “He said: O Hārūn, what prevented you, when you saw them go astray, from following me? Did you then disobey my command?” [Ṭā Hā: 92–93] — and the like of this is abundant in what the Possessor of Majesty and Honor sent down.
As for the saying of God (Glorified be He): “And the heavens will be folded up in His right hand” [al-Zumar: 67] — this is a similitude that God struck for them from what the Arabs know. For the Arabs say of the owner of a thing: “It is in his hand” and “It is in his right hand,” intending thereby the affirmation of ownership. He struck for them a similitude of the execution of His judgment in the heavens and His power over them by means of what they know of their own ability over what they fold up and spread out.
As for the knowledge and the proof in the Imams — it is their superiority over the people of their age, and their lucidity over all the people of their religious community. Their knowledge and their proof is the knowledge of the recondite knowledge of the prophets, and the acquaintance with the hidden secrets of the messengers.
Those deserving the Imamate from the offspring of the Messenger are identified by: descent through birth from the Messenger ﷺ; their knowledge of God (Glorified be He); the piety which God made the support of Islam; the knowledge of what is lawful and forbidden; and the baring of heads, the unsheathing of swords, and the raising of banners for God — confronting His enemies, manifesting the call to God, reviving the Book and the Sunnah, establishing truth and justice among the subjects, and acquaintance with the recondite meaning of God’s Book and His revelation.
Sulaym, who undertook his service, related: that one night he decided to spend the night at the door — without the Imam knowing — in order to observe what he would do.
“So he spent the whole night awake in bowing and prostration, and I would hear the falling of his tears and a sobbing in his throat — peace be upon him.”
— Sulaym, his servant
He (peace be upon him) could in most times only manage to dictate a legal question while on the back of his horse — yet he left the following books, with Imam al-Manṣūr Billāh noting that approximately thirteen more were omitted out of dislike for prolixity:6
- Kitāb al-Aḥkām
- Al-Muntakhab
- Kitāb al-Funūn
- Kitāb al-Masāʾil
- Masāʾil Muḥammad ibn Saʿīd
- Kitāb al-Tawḥīd
- Kitāb al-Qiyās
- Kitāb al-Mustarshid
- Al-Radd ʿalā Ahl al-Zaygh — Refutation of the People of Deviation
- Kitāb al-Irāda wa-l-Mashīʾa — Will and Volition
- Kitāb al-Riḍāʿ — Suckling
- Kitāb al-Muzāraʿa — Sharecropping
- Kitāb Ummahāt al-Awlād
- Kitāb al-ʿAhd — The Covenant
- Kitāb Tafsīr al-Qurʾān — in six parts
- Maʿānī al-Qurʾān — in nine parts
- Kitāb al-Fawāʾid — two parts
- Kitāb Masāʾil al-Rāzī — two parts
- Kitāb al-Sunna
- Al-Radd ʿalā Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya
- Kitāb Tafsīr Khaṭāyā al-Anbiyāʾ — Exegesis of the Faults of the Prophets
- Kitāb Abnāʾ al-Dunyā
- Kitāb al-Walāʾ — Clientage
- Masāʾil al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbdullāh al-Ṭabarī
- Masāʾil Ibn Asʿad
- Jawāb Masāʾil Naṣārā Najrān — Answer to the Questions of the Christians of Najrān
- Kitāb Bawār al-Qarāmiṭa — The Perdition of the Qarāmiṭa
- Kitāb Uṣūl al-Dīn
- Kitāb al-Imāma wa-Ithbāt al-Nubuwwa wa-l-Waṣāya
- Kitāb Masāʾil Abī al-Ḥusayn
- Al-Radd ʿalā al-Imāmiyya
- Al-Radd ʿalā Ahl Ṣanʿāʾ
- Al-Radd ʿalā Sulaymān ibn Jarīr
- Al-Bāligh al-Mudrik fī al-Uṣūl — commented upon by Imam Abū Ṭālib
- Kitāb al-Manzila bayna al-Manzilatayn — The Station Between the Two Stations
Consider this output together with his preoccupation with manifesting the upright religion, and his striking — with Dhū al-Faqār — the heads of the people of deviation and distortion. Their beginning in authorship was from the age of the Legatee ʿAlī (peace be upon him), for they used to write down what he dictated to them of the divine sciences and the consummate wisdoms. Their writings have filled the nation with the proofs of the intellects and corroborated them with the soundly-transmitted reports.
As for divine unity and justice, their imam in it is their father the Legatee, who delivered the sermon on it from the tops of the pulpits and instructed his children, the inheritors of it, one after another. As for the Sunnah of their grandfather, it was through the gate of the City of Knowledge that they entered — and the owner of the house knows best what is in it. As for the sciences of the Arabic language, from them they were suckled, in them they crawled and grew up, receiving them father from father — undefiled by the tongues of the non-Arabs, unaltered by the distortions of the hybrid-born. They are the pure Arabs, the lords of Zamzam, of the open valleys, and of al-Ḥaṭīm.
God took him to Himself as a martyr by poison, while he was fifty-three years of age, on the night of Sunday with ten nights remaining of Dhū al-Ḥijja in the year 298 AH. He was buried on Monday in his noble grave facing the prayer-niche of the congregational mosque he founded in Ṣaʿda.
Al-Sayyid Abū al-ʿAbbās related that when his death was announced to Imam al-Nāṣir al-Uṭrūsh, he wept with sobbing and lamentation and said: “Today the pillar of Islam has collapsed.”
He had seen a radiant light during his lifetime, and he laid out the sacred mosque upon the spot of that glow. That was the first foundation for the present Ṣaʿda, flourishing by his blessing. The old Ṣaʿda was below the mountain of Talmuṣ, as is well known.
- Muḥammad
- Aḥmad
- Al-Ḥasan
Among those who undertook the jihād before Imam al-Hādī and his children were ʿAlawī nobles from the children of al-ʿAbbās ibn ʿAlī (peace be upon them). Among them:
Killed as a martyr alongside Imam al-Hādī at Najrān by treachery. His case resembles the case of Imam al-Ḥusayn at al-Ṭaff. Rancor, vengefulness, and audacity had reached their utmost — sufficient [to illustrate that] is the verse chanted by the Qarmaṭī poet as he severed his head: “I have healed my soul and attained my desire — and I care not, after this, what befalls me of God’s wrath and of the Prophet’s curse.”
His son wrote to Imam al-Hādī a long ode, of which:
O son of al-Ḥusayn, Ḥār has allied — to kill us, O Banū al-ʿAbbās!
O son of al-Ḥusayn, they have divided up our wealth and our horses;
so relieve us with a stern assault!
Hasten with your support, O son of the noblest Hāshimī —
and free your kinsman from the hand of the snatcher!
In it are the vipers and the serpents, all of them —
giving us to drink the poison of death in a cup.
Corruption has appeared in our land and our country —
the wicked Qarāmiṭa have undertaken that;
They have disbelieved in the Lord of mankind, O son of Muḥammad —
and disbelief is their nature, so they are disbelievers.
And in elegising his father, he said:
Grief has prevented my two eyes from sleeping —
and the tears have flowed from my eyelids pouring down,
He was a refuge for the Muslims and a shelter —
and a hope, and a stronghold, and an order of affairs.
May God reward my father with the chambers of eternal Paradise —
and grant him a garden and peace;
For indeed he was faithful to the covenant to God —
and upholding the truth and guidance;
He supported the religion and stood firm upon the truth —
and fulfilled to the imam the two pledges of allegiance.
Poet, horseman, and hero — one of the valiant horsemen of al-Hādī (peace be upon him), with splendid heroic stances. He was wounded in a campaign to Najrān to avenge his father, was carried to Khaywān, and died there. Among his offspring are the Āl al-Miṭāʿ in Ṣanʿāʾ and Dār ʿUmar Sanḥān. Imam al-Hādī elegised him:
A grave at Khaywān has enclosed a glorious man —
choice of forefathers, an ʿAbbāsī;
The grave of ʿAlī ibn Abī Jaʿfar —
of Hāshim, like the firm-rooted mountain;
One who delivers the thrust that leaves the foe crumbling —
as though it were the thrust of Jassās.
— Imam al-Hādī ilā al-Ḥaqq (peace be upon him) elegizing ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad
Scholarly References & Annotations
Al-najal (with vowels): the wideness of the eyes — noted by the Author (peace be upon him); source: Al-Shāfī (1/839).
Mentioned by Imam al-Manṣūr Billāh ʿAbdullāh ibn Ḥamzah (peace be upon him) in Sharḥ al-Risāla al-Nāṣiḥa, p. 398.
God Most High facilitated his attaining Al-Jafr and his understanding its meanings. It was written on a hide (jild), which is why it was called ʿilm al-Jafr — the knowledge of the parchment. It is not the knowledge of the Unseen that God has reserved to Himself; rather, it is among what God taught His Messenger ﷺ of the matters of the Unseen — such as the victory of the Romans, the killing of the transgressing faction against ʿAmmār, and the fighting of the oath-breakers and the renegades. God said: {Knower of the Unseen, He does not disclose His Unseen to anyone except to a messenger whom He has approved} [al-Jinn: 26–27]. The Author (peace be upon him) has a treatise on this: Īḍāḥ al-Amr fī ʿIlm al-Jafr, an answer to a question from al-Zindānī.
See the investigation concerning this prophetic report in Lawāmiʿ al-Anwār by Imam Majd al-Dīn ibn Muḥammad al-Muʾayyidī (peace be upon him): vol. 2/p. 594 (1st ed.); vol. 2/p. 659 (2nd ed.); vol. 2/p. 806 (3rd ed.).
Al-Daʿʿām al-Arḥabī (d. ca. 298 AH): al-Daʿʿām ibn Ibrāhīm ibn ʿAbdullāh ibn Yaʾs al-Arḥabī, chief of Kahlān and lord of Hamdān in his age, famed for bravery, horsemanship, cunning, and generosity. He rose against the Āl Yaʿfur in Yemen, seized the kingdom from them, and ruled Ṣanʿāʾ. He returned to Ṣanʿāʾ together with al-Hādī in the year 288 AH, and fought alongside him against the Qarāmiṭa and others until the end of his days. From Al-Aʿlām by al-Ziriklī (2/339).
Imam al-Manṣūr Billāh (peace be upon him) said: “We have omitted about thirteen books out of dislike for prolixity; they are known and present with us.” Source: Al-Shāfī (1/840).