Hasan al-Askari

Hasan al-Askari (Arabic: الحَسَن بْن عَلِيّ ٱلْعَسْكَرِيّ, romanized: al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī al-ʿAskarī; c. 844–874) was a descendant of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. He is regarded as the eleventh of the Twelve Imams, succeeding his father, Ali al-Hadi. Hasan Al-Askari was born in Medina in 844 and brought with his father to the garrison town of Samarra in 848, where the Abbasid caliphs held them under close surveillance until their deaths, even though neither were politically active. After the death of al-Hadi in 868, the majority of his following acknowledged his son, al-Askari, as their next Imam. Al-Askari's contact with the Shia population was restricted by the caliphs and instead, he communicated with his followers through a network of representatives. He died in Samarra in 873–874 at the age of about twenty-eight and was buried in the family home next to his father, which later developed into al-Askari shrine, a major center for Shia pilgrimage. Shia sources commonly hold the Abbasids responsible for the death of al-Askari and his father. A well-known early Shia commentary of the Quran is attributed to al-Askari.

Al-Askari died without leaving an obvious heir, which created widespread confusion and fragmented the Shia community into several sects, all of which disappeared within a few decades except the Twelver Shia. The Twelvers hold that al-Askari had a son, commonly known as Muhammad al-Mahdi (lit. 'the rightly guided'), who was kept hidden from the public out of the fear of Abbasid persecution. Al-Mahdi succeeded to the imamate after the death of his father and entered a state of occultation. His life is said to be miraculously prolonged until the day he manifests himself again by God's permission to fill the earth with justice. Though in occultation, the Imam still remains responsible in Twelver belief for the spiritual guidance of humankind and the Shia accounts of his occasional encounters with the pious are numerous and popular.