Ja'far al-Sadiq

Ja'far ibn Muhammad al-Sadiq lived from about 702 to 765 and was a descendant of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, recognized as the sixth and last agreed-upon Imam among both Twelver and Ismaili Shia Muslims. He had a unique lineage among the Twelve Imams, descended from Ali through his father and from Abu Bakr through his mother. A scholar, jurist and hadith transmitter, he was the eponymous founder of the Ja'fari school of Islamic jurisprudence, the primary legal school of Twelver Shia Islam, and more traditions are cited from him in the canonical Twelver hadith collections than from all the other Imams combined. He taught one of the largest recorded bodies of students in early Islamic history, with sources reporting that around four thousand scholars studied under him, including the Sunni jurists Abu Hanifa and Malik ibn Anas, who went on to found the Hanafi and Maliki schools of Sunni jurisprudence. Born in Medina, he was about thirty years old when his father, Muhammad al-Baqir, the fifth Imam, died after naming him as his successor.