Creating a Hidden Communication Network Was Imam al-Hadi's Strategy of Struggle

After the Messenger of God (s) answered the call of truth and revelation ceased, the community did not obey the Prophet's command concerning the guides who would come one after another. Instead, they resolved to oppose them and agreed to distance them from the seat of caliphate.

The arrows of the unjust community drowned the wounded hearts of the Household in blood; their spears drank water from the noble throats of those purified ones; and their swords became greedy for the blood of the family of God. The children of adultery quenched the thirst of their sin, unbelief, and hypocrisy with the blood of the Prophet's near kin.

Although the calamities that befell the Household (a) were great and heart-rending, the sorrow and pain of the Shi'a Imams were not limited to these acts of oppression. One of the constant problems and afflictions with which the Household (a) struggled was the ignorance of people. How many hardships and calamities befell the Shi'a Imams because of the ignorance of the people of their time; and this ignorance sometimes came from lovers, and cost the lives of some of the pure Imams.

Musa ibn Ja'far (a) said: “God, the Mighty and Majestic, became angry with the Shi'a and gave me the choice that either I or they be sacrificed. By God, I protected them by giving my own life.” (Usul al-Kafi, vol. 1, p. 386)

The period of Imam al-Hadi's life was filled with an ignorance even greater than the ignorance of the time of the Noble Messenger. Denying the attribution of Imam al-Jawad (a) to his noble father is itself a living document of the intense estrangement and oppression of the later Shi'a Imams. In that age, people preferred the statement of a physiognomist over the word of the eighth Imam and treated it as proof against themselves. The tenth Imam of the Shi'a lived among such people, immersed in the depth of darkness and foremost in doubt.

Imam al-Hadi (a) was compelled to struggle on several fronts: first, fighting the ignorance of the people; second, resisting the plots of rulers and the Pharaohs of the age, who fought him for two motives. On one side, they had hatred and rancor toward the family of the Household; on the other, they considered the Shi'a Imams the most important rival and most dangerous threat to their usurped rule. This was especially true in Imam al-Hadi's time, when the Alids carried out important and notable uprisings. Perhaps for this reason the caliphs contemporary with him seriously pursued a policy of destroying the Shi'a, while the Imam, through his instructions to the Shi'a, thwarted the dangerous plans of the usurpers.

We recall only part of the pressures and conspiracies of the Abbasid caliphs.

Al-Mutawakkil arrested Imam al-Hadi and transferred him from Medina to Samarra so that, through spies, that great man would remain under constant and painful surveillance.

Isa ibn Ja'far, one of Imam al-Hadi's companions, was lashed three hundred times until he was martyred under the blows. Ibn Band was beaten with an iron rod until he died in oppression. History contains painful reports about these stories and about the massacre of Alid sayyids.

If anyone in that time spoke of the virtues or merits of the Household, or interpreted and explained Qur'anic verses through the hadiths of Muhammad and the family of Muhammad (s), his fate was nothing but house arrest, torture, and imprisonment.

Visiting the Master of Martyrs and Najaf is among the important signs of the Shi'a. To erase Shi'ism completely, the enemies banned visiting Imam Husayn (a) and Imam Ali (a), and destroyed Karbala. Al-Mutawakkil ordered that the land of Karbala be leveled and cultivated so that the traces of the grave would be completely erased.

Despite the Imam's presence in the Askar region, a place resembling a prison, al-Mutawakkil ordered that he be imprisoned for a period. He then ordered his killing, but the order was not carried out, and al-Mutawakkil himself was killed.

No one had the right to trade, socialize, or maintain contact with them, nor to offer them help and assistance. Even if someone gave a little food to the Prophet's descendants who lived in poverty and material deprivation, he would be fined and punished.

For this reason, their living conditions became so constrained and pressured that even their women did not have suitable garments and shirts for prayer with which they could cover their whole bodies during prayer. They therefore prayed in turns with a single garment.

No property was to be given to any Alid, nor were they to be granted permission to ride horses or move from Fustat to other cities.

No Alid was to be granted permission to have more than one slave.

If a dispute occurred between an Alid and a non-Alid, the judge would first listen to the non-Alid's statement and then accept it without discussion with the Alid.

Although the situation was not ready for the tenth Imam to rise, he took measures to guide and awaken the community toward struggle against oppressive rulers. These were as follows:

1. Challenging the legitimacy of the government: The Imam used every opportunity to challenge the legitimacy of the Abbasid government and warned Muslims against any form of cooperation with them. In response to a letter from Muhammad Ali ibn Isa, who was an employee of the Abbasid state and had asked about cooperating with them, he said:

“That amount of cooperation which is performed by coercion and force has no problem, and God accepts excuses; but other than that is unlawful and blameworthy.”

2. Struggling against court jurists: One of the Abbasid caliphs' tricks for deceiving people was using court jurists to attract public trust and display Islamism. Imam al-Hadi (a) rose against this goal and, by confronting them, challenged the legitimacy of the government in another way.

3. Creating a hidden communication network, the agency organization: As mentioned earlier, the Imam established the agency communication network by selecting his agents in different regions in order to prepare people for the age of occultation.

On the other hand, by creating this network the Imam could remain connected with people in various regions, making it possible to collect Islamic taxes, answer people's legal and doctrinal problems, and ultimately supervise and guide the Islamic community. To organize the agency network, the Imam divided the Islamic lands into four regions.

The first region: Baghdad, Mada'in, and Kufa.
The second region: centered on Basra and Ahvaz.
The third region: centered on Qom and Hamadan.
The fourth region: centered on Hijaz, Yemen, and Egypt.

The practical achievements of this coordinated organization became more visible after his exile to Samarra. With direct contact with the Imam no longer possible, the constructive role of this organization increased. The agents of Imam al-Hadi (a) included Ayyub ibn Nuh Darraj al-Nakha'i, Abu Ali ibn Rashid, Ali ibn Ja'far, and Ibrahim ibn Muhammad al-Hamadani.

The Imam's letters appointing agents or giving them reminders have been recorded in history. Of course, the Imam's activities in other dimensions can also be mentioned, including training outstanding students, transmitting pure Shi'a teachings, and confronting deviant currents such as Sufism; but those matters do not fit within this brief treatment.

One of the Imam's most important measures was the agency network, through which people became accustomed to indirect contact with the Imam. This prepared the Shi'a to understand and absorb the era of the occultation of the final Imam; therefore, during his occultation, Shi'ism did not collapse.

1. al-Irshad by Shaykh al-Mufid
2. Muruj al-Dhahab, vol. 2
3. Translation of Maqatil al-Talibiyyin
4. Bihar al-Anwar, vol. 50
5. Wasa'il al-Shi'a, vol. 12