from a household of Prophethood.

When the people finally rallied to pledge their allegiance to ʿAbd al-Malik, Ibn ʿUmar said to Ibn al-Ḥanafiyyah, “Nothing now remains—give the pledge.” Ibn al-Ḥanafiyyah therefore committed his oath of loyalty to writing and later traveled to present it to ʿAbd al-Malik in person.

Ibn al-Ḥanafiyyah died in Muḥarram in Madinah at the age of sixty-five. His children were ʿAbd Allāh, Ḥamzah, ʿAlī, Jaʿfar the Elder, al-Ḥasan, Ibrāhīm, al-Qāsim, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, Jaʿfar the Younger, ʿAwn, and Ruqayyah, all born to different mothers (1).

Al-Zubayr ibn Bakkār relates that his partisans claimed he had not died, and al-Sayyid (2) composed the following verses about him:

O legatee—my life be your ransom—
you have lingered too long upon that mount!
You have harmed your kin and those loyal to you,
for they named you the caliph and the imam.
All the people of the earth have turned against you
because you have remained apart from them sixty years (3).
Ibn Khawlah has never tasted the flavor of death,
nor has any land enclosed his bones.
He now abides in the verdant ravine of Radwā,
where the angels converse with him.
For him there is a true place of repose
and gatherings where the noble speak with him.
May Allah guide us, since you have undertaken (4)
an affair through which—and for which—perfection is sought,
the perfection of devotion (5) to the Mahdī until
you behold our banners (6) advancing in ordered array (7).

A faction of the Rāfiḍah maintains that he is the Imam and that his reappearance is awaited at the end of time, just as another group among them awaits Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan al-ʿAskarī (8), whom they claim will emerge from the cellar of Sāmarrāʾ. These notions are among their fables, deliriums, ignorance, misguidance, and slanders (9). We shall clarify the matter further in its proper place, if Allah wills. Allah knows best.