Fatima bint Musa
Fatima bint Musa (Arabic: فَاطِمَة بِنْت مُوسَىٰ, romanized: Fāṭima bint Mūsā), circa 790–816 CE, commonly known as Fatima al-Ma'suma (Arabic: فَاطِمَة ٱلْمَعْصُومَة, romanized: Fāṭima al-Maʿṣūma, lit. 'Fatima, the immaculate'), was the daughter of Musa al-Kazim (d. 799) and sister of Ali al-Rida (d. 818), the seventh and eighth Imams in Twelver Shia. A young Fatima left her hometown of Medina in about 816 to visit her brother al-Rida in Merv, but fell ill along the way and died in Qom, located in modern-day Iran. She is revered for her piety in Twelver Shia and her shrine in Qom is a major destination for pilgrimage.
al-Ma'suma
(lit. 'the immaculate')
c. 790 CE
816 or 817
- Musa al-Kazim (father)
- Najma (or Tuktam) (mother)
Ali al-Rida (brother)
Biography[edit]
Fatima was born circa 790 CE in Medina to Musa al-Kazim, the seventh Imam in Twelver Shia.[1] When Musa died in 799 in the prison of the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid (r. 786–809), possibly poisoned,[2] a significant group of his followers accepted the imamate of his son Ali al-Rida, brother of Fatima.[3] In 816, al-Rida was summoned to Khorasan by the Abbasid caliph al-Ma'mun (r. 813–833), who designated him as the heir apparent in 817, possibly to mitigate the frequent Shia revolts.[4] Fatima then set out to join his brother in Merv but fell ill along the way in the Sunni town of Saveh. There she asked to be taken to the nearby Shia town of Qom, where she died a few days later,[1] possibly after seventeen days.[5] Another account states that a local Shia figure by the name of Musa ibn Khazraj al-Ash'ari brought Fatima to Qom and hosted her during her final days.[5] There are also some reports that Fatima was poisoned,[5][6] though they are not mentioned in Tarikh-e Qom, a history of Qom written in 988 by Hasan ibn Muhammad Qomi.[5] Fatima thus died in 816,[1][5] or in 817.[7] Her age at the time is not known with certainty but she must have been at least twenty-one years old, considering that her father Musa was last imprisoned in 795 until his death in 799.[5]
Place in Twelver Shia[edit]
Fatima is known by the title al-Ma'suma (Arabic: ٱلْمَعْصُومَة, lit. 'the immaculate, the infallible').[1] It is uncertain when and how she received this title but she was already referred to as such in an order issued by Jahan Shah (r. c. 1438 – 1467), the fifteenth-century king of Iran.[5] Fatima is revered as the "embodiment of the feminine virtues" in Twelver Shia,[8] where she is recognized for piety and religious scholarship, and often compared to Fatima bint Muhammad (d. 632), daughter of the Islamic prophet Muhammad (d. 632). She is revered by Twelvers as a saint who would intercede on the Judgement Day and performs miracles, such as healing those with incurable diseases. [1]