6 – Nafīsa bt. al-Ḥasan b. Zayd b. al-Ḥasan b. ʿAlī, the ʿAlid*

A noble, honored, and righteous lady, daughter of the Commander of the Believers al-Ḥasan b. Zayd, himself the son of the Prophet’s grandson al-Ḥasan b. ʿAlī (may Allah be pleased with him). She was an ʿAlid, a Ḥasanid, and the one for whom the great mausoleum standing between Miṣr and al-Qāhira was erected.

Her father governed Medina on behalf of al-Manṣūr, who later dismissed and imprisoned him for a time. When al-Mahdī assumed power, he released him, honored him, restored his wealth, and performed Hajj with him; he died at al-Ḥājir (1).

She herself moved from Medina to Egypt with her noble husband Isḥāq b. Jaʿfar b. Muḥammad al-Ṣādiq—so it is said—and she died in Egypt in the month of Ramaḍān, 208 AH.

Little reliable information has reached us about her.

Some of the ignorant commoners of Egypt hold toward her an excessive veneration that defies description; what they do is impermissible because it involves shirk. They prostrate themselves before her and seek her forgiveness—practices that were among the intrigues spread by the propagandists of the ʿUbaydiyya (2).