Hishām ibn ʿAbd al-Malik appointed him chief judge after ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn al-Khashkhāsh al-ʿUdhri. Later he requested to be relieved, so Hishām excused him and put Yazīd ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Abī Mālik in his place. This Numayr would not issue a verdict on the basis of a single witness supported by an oath.

He was wont to say, “Refinement comes from one’s fathers, but righteousness comes from Allah.”

Several authorities said that he died in 121 AH; others said 122 AH. A further report places his death in 115 AH—an exceedingly unusual claim. Allah, exalted is He, knows best.

[Then entered the year 122 AH]

In that year Zayd ibn ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib was killed (1). The reason was that, after receiving the bayʿah (pledge of allegiance) from those inhabitants of Kūfa who supported him, he ordered them at the beginning of the year to rise up and prepare. While they were arming themselves, a man named Sulaymān ibn Surāqah went to Yūsuf ibn ʿUmar, the governor of Iraq, who was then in al-Ḥīrah, and informed him of Zayd’s activities and the Kūfans with him. Yūsuf ibn ʿUmar thereupon began searching for him with relentless determination.

When the Shīʿah learned of this, they gathered around Zayd and said, “May Allah have mercy on you—what is your view of Abū Bakr and ʿUmar?”

He replied, “May Allah forgive them both. I have never heard anyone of my household disavow them; no one says anything about them except good.”

They said, “Why, then, do you seek to avenge the blood of the Family?”

He answered, “We were the people most entitled to this authority, yet the others claimed it for themselves and pushed us aside. That, however, did not make them disbelievers in our eyes. They assumed leadership, ruled justly, and acted in accordance with the Book and the sunnah.”

They asked, “So why do you fight these rulers?”

He replied, “These men are not like the former ones; they have wronged the people and wronged themselves. I am calling to the Book of Allah and the sunnah of His Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, to revive the sunnahs and extinguish innovations. If you heed the call, it will be better for you and for me; and if they repent, I have not been appointed as a guardian over them.”

They repudiated him, abandoned him, broke their pledge, and left. Hence they were called al-Rāfiḍah (the repudiators) from that day, while those who remained with him were called the Zaydiyyah. The majority of Kūfa’s people are Rāfiḍah, whereas most of the people of Mecca to this very day follow the Zaydiyyah school.

Within that school there is truth—namely their deeming the two Shaykhs upright—and falsehood—namely the belief that ʿAlī takes precedence over them. ʿAlī is not superior to them, nor even to ʿUthmān, according to the sounder of the two positions held by the people of the sunnah and the authentic reports established from the Companions (may Allah be pleased with them). We have already discussed this in the earlier biographies of Abū Bakr and ʿUmar.

Zayd then resolved to march out with the companions who still remained. He appointed the night of Wednesday, the first of Ṣafar that year, as their rendezvous. News of this reached Yūsuf ibn ʿUmar, who wrote to his deputy in Kūfa—al-Ḥakam ibn al-Ṣalt—ordering him to gather all the populace in the congregational mosque. Al-Ḥakam therefore assembled them on Tuesday, the last day of Muḥarram, one day before Zayd’s planned sortie.

Zayd set out with his followers on the night of Wednesday, in biting cold. His men lit fires and began calling out, “O Manṣūr! O Manṣūr!” When dawn broke