Ali al-Hadi
c. 828 CE–c. 868 CE · Medina
Ali al-Hadi (Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn Muhammad), also called al-Naqi ("the pure") and al-Hadi ("the guide"), is revered in Twelver Shia Islam as the tenth of the Twelve Imams — the line of spiritual leaders whom Twelvers hold to be the rightful guides of the community after the Prophet Muhammad. His standing as Imam is a position held by Twelver Shia Muslims; Sunni Muslims honor him as a pious descendant of the Prophet but do not share the doctrine of the Imamate.
He was born around 212 AH (about 828 CE), traditionally at a village near Medina, the son of Muhammad al-Jawad, the ninth Imam. According to Twelver tradition he assumed the Imamate as a child after his father's death (c. 220/835), and most of his father's followers accepted him.
Around 233 AH (848 CE) the Abbasid caliph al-Mutawakkil summoned him from Medina to the new garrison-capital at Samarra; he reportedly arrived on 23 Ramadan 233 (1 May 848) and remained there for the rest of his life under official watch. Scholars differ on how confined he was: the historian Wilferd Madelung notes he could move within the town, while Shia tradition emphasizes a prisoner-like restriction. He died at Samarra in 254 AH (c. 868 CE). Most Shia authors report that he was poisoned by the Abbasids, though the early Shia scholar al-Mufid records no cause; the poisoning is a traditional claim, not an attested fact. He was buried at Samarra, in what became the al-Askari Shrine, and was succeeded by his son Hasan al-Askari.
Life journeyclick any stop, or use ←/→Trace on the map →
Medina
What they did here
Twelver sources place his birth around 212 AH (c. 828 CE) at a village near Medina (named in tradition as Surayya), son of the ninth Imam Muhammad al-Jawad. He lived and led the community from Medina until his summons to Iraq. The exact birth date and village are traditional estimates; the gazetteer slug Medina is used for the Medina locality.
About Medina
Medina (al-Madina, formerly Yathrib), in the Hejaz of western Saudi Arabia, is the city to which the Prophet Muhammad emigrated in 622 (the hijra), establishing the first Muslim community; it contains his tomb and is Islam's second-holiest city. As the cradle of early Islamic law and hadith scholarship it remained a major centre of learning that drew the scholars connected here.
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers, teachers, and rulers whose lives overlapped with Ali al-Hadi’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Islamic world
- al-Muzani· 791 CE–878 CE
- al-Darimi· 797 CE–869 CE
- Al-Farghani· 800 CE–870 CE
- al-Kindi· 801 CE–873 CE
- Abu Yazid al-Bistami· 804 CE–875 CE
- Abu Tammam· 804 CE–845 CE
- Hunayn ibn Ishaq· 809 CE–873 CE
- Muhammad al-Bukhari· 810 CE–870 CE
- Dawud al-Zahiri· 815 CE–884 CE
- Abu Dawud al-Sijistani· 817 CE–889 CE
- Qusta ibn Luqa· 820 CE–912 CE
- Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj· 821 CE–875 CE
- Al-Buhturi· 821 CE–897 CE
- Ibn Majah· 824 CE–887 CE
- al-Tirmidhi· 824 CE–892 CE
- Abu Ya'la al-Mawsili· 825 CE–919 CE
- Al-Mubarrad· 826 CE–898 CE
- Thabit ibn Qurra· 826 CE–901 CE
- Ibn Qutayba· 828 CE–889 CE
- al-Junayd al-Baghdadi· 830 CE–910 CE
- Hasan al-Askari· 846 CE–874 CE
- Al-Baladhuri· –892 CE
- Al-Ya'qubi· –905 CE
- Abu Bakr al-Bazzar· –905 CE
Christian world
Jewish world
Rulers world
Works
No works attributed in the corpus yet.