and one hundred, in the year 121 or 122, toward the end (1) of Hishām’s caliphate. Abū Hātim al-Bustī (2) said: Zayd ibn Alī ibn al-Husayn was killed in Kufa in the year 122 (3). He was crucified on a wooden gibbet and was among the most distinguished and learned members of the Prophet’s Household. The Shīa claimed him as one of their own.
[I say: From the time of Zayd’s uprising, the Shīa split into the Rāfida and the Zaydiyya. When he was asked about Abū Bakr and Umar and invoked Allah’s mercy upon them both, a group deserted him (4). He said to them, “You have deserted me.” They were therefore called the Rāfida (5) because they deserted him, while those Shīa who did not desert him (6) were called Zaydīs because of their affiliation with him.] (7)
When he was crucified, devout worshippers would come by night to his gibbet (8) and engage in worship beside it (9). Al-Shabī died early (10) in Hishām’s caliphate, or toward the end of the caliphate of his brother Yazīd ibn Abd al-Malik, in the year 105, or close—
(1) A, L, and B read: “at the end of.”
(2) A, L, and B read: “al-Sabtī”; M reads: “al-Sunnī.”
(3) A, L, and B read: “the year twenty-two”; M reads: “the year 128,” which is an error.
(4) A and L read: “He invoked Allah’s mercy upon them, whereupon they deserted him.”
(5) L reads: “Have you deserted me?” They were therefore called the Rāfida.
(6) A and L read: “Some of them did not desert him,” which is a corruption.
(7) The passage enclosed in brackets is omitted from N and M.
(8) N and M read: “to the gibbet.”
(9) The account of Zayd’s uprising, his disagreement with the Rāfida (and the reason they were given that name), and then his killing and crucifixion is related by al-Ash'arī in *al-Maqālāt*, 1:129–30. Al-Fakhr al-Rāzī also relates part of it in *I'tiqādāt Firaq al-Muslimīn wa-l-Mushrikīn*, p. 52. However, al-Ash'arī gives another reason for the name Rāfida: they were so called because they rejected the imamate of Abū Bakr and Umar (*al-Maqālāt*, 1:87).
(10) N and L read: *tuwuffiya fī awwali* (“died at the beginning of”); M reads: *tuwuffiya awwala*, with the same meaning but without *fī* (“at/in”).