Introduction to Imamah, Part 1

Imamah, Part 1 In his own will, an Imam paid for ten years of professional mourners — and it had nothing to do with vanity. This opening session sets the terms for the entire Imamah series: the roughly 250 years between the Prophet's death and the lesser occultation are studied as a single continuous life, not eleven separate biographies. The Imams themselves are quoted saying so directly: "We are all one light… our will is one." A narration attributed to any one of them may correctly be attributed to any other, since their knowledge and mission are one. To make the case that dates and family trees are not what matters, the session turns to Imam Muhammad al-Baqir, peace be upon him, the fifth Imam, who willed money to hire mourners to lament him publicly for ten years in Mina, during the Hajj season, following his death by poisoning. An Imam who placed no value on worldly opinion had no need to be wept for. What he needed was for his death, and the oppression behind it, to remain impossible to bury in silence. If eleven lifetimes are really one, what changes about how each Imam's choices should be read? What the evening covers The 250-year-old person. Why the series treats the first eleven Imams as a single continuous figure rather than a list of names. Ten years of mourning in Mina. The political reasoning behind Imam al-Baqir's final request, and what it was designed to make impossible to ignore. What a real biography needs. Why birth dates and family trees are judged insufficient. The mountaineer. An early image for how apparently contradictory choices across 250 years belong to one unbroken journey toward the same summit.

In this session

Full session

Full Video on YouTube

Play

Sermon: Introduction to Imamah, Part 1

Play Read

Nohe: The Generosity of Ahl al-Bayt

Play

Ziyarah: Ziyarat Aal-e-Yasin

Play