Musa al-Kazim

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Musa al-Kazim (Arabic: مُوسَىٰ ٱبْن جَعْفَر ٱلْكَاظِم, romanized: Mūsā ibn Jaʿfar al-Kāẓim; 745–799) was a descendant of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and the seventh imam in Twelver Shia Islam. Musa is often known by the title al-Kazim (lit. 'forbearing'), apparently a reference to his patience and gentle disposition. He was born in 745 in Medina to Ja'far al-Sadiq, the sixth Shia imam, who died in 765 without publicly designating a successor to save his heir from the wrath of the Abbasid caliphs. The subsequent crisis of succession was eventually resolved in favor of al-Kazim, with a dissenting group, now known as the Isma'ilis, separating from the mainstream Shia. After the death of al-Sadiq, Musa al-Kazim remained in Medina, where he kept aloof from politics and devoted himself to religious teachings. He was nevertheless tightly restricted by the Abbasid caliphs and spent much of his adult life in their prisons. To counter these restrictions, he established an underground network of...

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