Jafar al-Sadiq

Ja'far al-Sadiq (c. 702–765 CE) was the sixth Imam in the Twelver and Ismaili lines of Shi'ism, a great-grandson of Ali's son Husayn, and a scholar of Medina. He taught jurisprudence, hadith, Qur'anic exegesis, and theology to a broad circle of students, among them the jurist Abu Hanifa, according to later accounts. Many traditions from him are preserved in early Shi'i collections, especially al-Kafi of al-Kulayni (d. 941). Later tradition attributes works on alchemy and on the science of letters to him, though these attributions are not accepted by most historians.