This sect, in turn, divided into two positions concerning Abū Muslim. One faction among them, known as the Rizāmiyya—followers of a man named Rizām—claimed(1) that Abū Muslim had been killed. Another faction(2) said that Abū Muslim had not died(3). It is also reported that they deemed lawful(4) what their predecessors had not declared lawful(5) for them.
There was also a group among the Kaysāniyya who claimed(6) that Abū Hāshim had appointed(7) Abd Allah ibn Amr ibn Harb as imam and that the spirit of Abū Hāshim had passed into him. They subsequently discovered that Abd Allah ibn Amr was lying, so they went to Medina in search of an imam. There they met Abd Allah ibn Muāwiya ibn Abd Allah ibn Jafar ibn Abī Tālib, who called upon them to take him as their imam. They therefore accepted him as imam and claimed(8) that he had been designated as successor(9).
Some of them then said that he had died; others said that he would not die until he rose; and still others said that, rather(10), he was the promised Mahdī and was alive in the mountains of Isfahan.