Jafari School

The legal school of Twelver Shia Islam.

Jafari jurisprudence rejects analogy as a source, on a report from Jafar al-Sadiq that religion is not reached by analogy, and puts reason (aql) in the place the Sunni schools give it.

Al-Azhar recognised the Jafari school as one it is valid to follow, a recognition renewed by the Amman Message, though the school is not taught there as one of the Sunni four.

Khums, a fifth of annual surplus after expenses, is a standing obligation in Twelver law, half of it to the descendants of the Prophet and half at the disposal of the source of emulation. No Sunni school levies it this way.

The source of emulation is a living office with no Sunni counterpart: the most learned jurist of the age, whose rulings bind those who choose to follow him and who receives the khums directly.

Twelver law holds the door of independent reasoning open and binds the believer to follow a living jurist, so a ruling lapses at its author's death and must be taken up again by his successor.

The collection of sermons, letters and sayings attributed to Ali is a foundational text of Twelver learning and is read in the school as a source of its ethics and its political thought.

Worn in some Twelver regions as custom rather than required by a ruling of the school, which excepts the face and the hands.

Read as a monument of early exegesis rather than as an authority of the school.

The Twelver call to prayer adds the summons to the best of deeds, and commonly the testimony to Ali, to the phrases the Sunni schools use.

The tenth of Muharram is kept in Twelver practice as the mourning of the killing of Husayn at Karbala, with lamentation assemblies and processions, rather than as the recommended fast the Sunni schools observe.

Joined with the noon prayer in ordinary Twelver practice rather than kept to its own separate time.

Twelver law permits the noon and afternoon prayers to be joined at one sitting, so the five daily prayers are commonly performed at three times of day.

Twelver law makes the tamattu form of the pilgrimage binding on those who live outside the sacred precinct, where the Sunni schools leave the choice among the three forms open.

Jafari law requires that a fish bear scales, and excludes the shellfish and crustaceans that the Maliki, Shafii and Hanbali schools permit.

Imam in Twelver usage names the twelve designated successors of the Prophet before it names the leader of a congregation.

The Twelver call to rise carries the same additional phrases as the call to prayer, and adds the summons to the best of deeds twice.

Joined with the sunset prayer in ordinary Twelver practice rather than kept to its own separate time.

The opening of Muharram begins the Twelver mourning season for Karbala rather than a new year observance.

Circumcision is an obligation in Jafari law rather than a recommended custom.

Mid Shaban is kept in Twelver practice as the birth of the twelfth Imam rather than as a night of decree.

Twelvers keep the night of power over the nineteenth, twenty first and twenty third nights of Ramadan. The nineteenth is also the night Ali was struck in the mosque at Kufa.

Joined with the night prayer in ordinary Twelver practice, and begun at true nightfall rather than at sunset.

Twelvers keep the birth of the Prophet on 17 Rabi al-Awwal rather than the 12th, and the week between the two dates is observed in Iran as a week of unity.

Jafari law holds the fixed term marriage, mut'a, valid alongside permanent marriage, where the Sunni schools regard it as abrogated.

Twelvers prostrate on bare earth or on a tablet of clay, the turba, commonly taken from Karbala and laid on the rug rather than prostrating on its pile.

Twelvers pray with the arms at the sides rather than folded, and prostrate on bare earth or on a tablet of clay rather than on the pile of the carpet.

The Twelver funeral prayer is made with five pronouncements of the takbir rather than four, the additional one carrying the invocation on the Family of the Prophet.

The Twelver fast is broken at true nightfall rather than at sunset, so the evening meal falls later than in Sunni practice.

The Twelver testimony commonly carries a third clause naming Ali as the friend of God.

The Twelver testimony commonly adds a third clause naming Ali as the friend of God, recited alongside the two clauses the Sunni schools require.

Consultation has a place in Twelver political thought but none in designating the Imam, whose office rests on designation and not on the agreement of the community.

The Twelver rosary follows the tasbih of Fatima, thirty four pronouncements of God's greatness, thirty three of praise and thirty three of glorification, taught by the Prophet to his daughter.

Twelver law sets out its obligations as ten branches of religion rather than five pillars, adding khums, jihad, commanding right, forbidding wrong, and loyalty to the Family of the Prophet.

The Baqi cemetery beside the Prophet's Mosque holds the graves of four of the Twelve Imams. Its shrines were demolished in 1925 and Twelvers mark the anniversary as a day of sorrow.

Twelver scholarship treats the canonical readings as the transmissions of named reciters rather than as seven revealed forms of the text, while reciting in the transmission of Hafs like most of the Muslim world.

The Witr in Twelver practice is the closing unit of the night prayer rather than a separate prayer of near obligatory rank after Isha.

In Jafari ablution the head and the feet are wiped with the moisture left on the hand rather than washed, and the arms are washed downward from the elbow.

Zakat in Jafari law falls on nine specified categories of wealth and stands beside khums rather than covering surplus wealth generally.

Jafari law levies zakat on nine named categories, four crops and three livestock and the two coined metals, rather than on wealth in general.

Jihad is a chapter of Jafari law, and the school holds that offensive jihad requires the Imam, which in the occultation means it is suspended and only the defensive form remains.

Admits aql, reason, in the place analogy occupies in Sunni theory, and restricts consensus to the agreement that discloses the position of the imam.

The office as it was filled after the Prophet is refused, the Twelver position being that it was held by those who had no title to it.

Twelver doctrine holds that authority after the Prophet passed by express designation to Ali and his descendants, so the caliphate as it was actually constituted is refused rather than reinterpreted.

Twelver jurists hold that supererogatory prayer is not performed in congregation, and treat the nightly Ramadan cycle kept in Sunni mosques as a later institution rather than a practice of the Prophet.

Adl underwrites Jafari theology's account of free will, since a just God cannot compel human sin and then punish it.

Hadith are affirmed as a source of law in the Jafari school, transmitted through Imami chains and gathered chiefly in the Four Books, which the atlas does not yet catalogue as separate scripture text entries.

Consensus binds in Jafari jurisprudence only where it discloses the position of the infallible Imam, so its authority is derivative rather than independent.

Jafari jurisprudence holds ijtihad to be continuously open and requires every believer who is not a jurist to follow a living authority, which is why emulation lapses when that authority dies.

The Jafari school's legal authority derives from the teaching of the Twelver Imams, making the imamate doctrinally inseparable from Jafari jurisprudence itself.

Jafari law takes the sayings and acts of the twelve Imams as binding alongside the Prophet's, which follows directly from holding them protected from error.

Nahj al-Balagha is revered scripture in the Jafari school, the legal tradition of Twelver Shia Islam.

Jafari theology holds neither compulsion nor total delegation, but a matter between the two, amr bayn al-amrayn, the formula attributed to Ja'far al-Sadiq himself.

Sharia, elaborated through Jafari jurisprudence from the teaching of the sixth Imam, Ja'far al-Sadiq, is the legal school of Twelver Shia Islam.

The Quran, held to be the literal and uncreated word of God revealed to Muhammad, is canonical scripture across every branch of Islam, including this tradition.

Jafari legal theory refuses juristic preference along with analogy, on the same ground: a jurist who prefers on his own judgement has supplied a ruling the sources did not give him.

The forbidden category is affirmed in Jafari law as the strongest of the five rulings.

The poll tax and the protected status it buys are treated in Jafari law on the same Quranic basis as in the Sunni schools.

The division into grave and lesser sins is affirmed in Jafari law, which enumerates the grave sins more explicitly than the Sunni schools do.

Kaffara is affirmed in Jafari law as a defined expiation discharging a particular liability.

The Jafari school, the law of Twelver Shia Islam, which adds the teaching of the imams to the sources and admits reason in place of analogy.

Taqiyya is a working doctrine of Jafari law and not only a theological one, with rules governing when concealment is permitted, when it is required and when it is forbidden.

The five rulings are the classification of acts in Jafari jurisprudence as in the Sunni schools.