Hisham’s death marked the beginning of a downhill spiral that led to the destruction of the Umayyad caliphate. This period of turmoil lasted about seven years, and was the ideal opportunity for the Imam to expand his scientific contributions without any significant pressure from the Umayyads. Imam Sadiq took full advantage of this opportunity to accelerate the propagation of the Islamic sciences to their peak. None of the other Imams ever had such an opportunity in their lifetime. The number of narrations recorded from Imam Sadiq is the highest amongst all of the Shia Imams. The Imam would always recommend that his students document his narrations for the future, when they would not have access to him. Similar to tradesmen who would load their animals with trading articles to sell in other cities, the scholars would load their animals with the books from Imam Sadiq’s teachings, and spread the Imam’s knowledge all around the Islamic territory. One of these cities was Kufa, which was the center of Shi’ism since the short government of Imam Ali. Close to 900 scholars are recorded to have narrated sayings of Imam Sadiq in the Mosque of Kufa. This shows the extent of the spread of Imam’s knowledge in this city. Thousands of narrations from the Imam have survived throughout history until today. These narrations encompass various subjects of the Islamic sciences. The Imam’s teachings established Shi’ism as a prominent school of thought among the sects of Islam. As a result, similar to other schools of thought, like Hanafi and Maliki that were named after their founders, the Shia school of thought was also named Ja’fari, after Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq. This name was used not only by the Imam’s followers, but also by other Muslims to refer to the Imam’s teachings ever since his time.
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