My 2¢ on this inscription by a certain Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad. Is he the famous Abū ʿAbdallah Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq revered by Sunnis and Shiʿah alike? …
Beyond the name, there are certainly arguments in favor of its attribution to Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq.
•The date 110/728 fits (27 lunar yrs old at the time)
•The person was clearly highly literate
•The location fits (Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq resided in the Ḥijāz)
•The date 110/728 fits (27 lunar yrs old at the time)
•The person was clearly highly literate
•The location fits (Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq resided in the Ḥijāz)
[illustration depicting Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq meeting the Abbasid caliph Abū Jaʿfar al-Manṣūr, from Rawżat al-Ṣafā by Mīr-khwānd (d. 1498, Herat)]
artsandculture.google.com/asset/folio-fr…
artsandculture.google.com/asset/folio-fr…
Yet, on the other hand, the name is *common*. To give you an idea of how common, check out all of these figures named Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad from al-Dhahabī’s biographical dictionary of prominent men and women: Siyar aʿlām al-nubalāʾ ...
it continues to list over 40 people ...
Of course, many could be eliminated because they lived in the wrong century. This is *an early* inscription and that limits the candidate pool; however, it is also an inscription near Mecca, a pilgrimage site, which means the Ja'far of the inscription might not be a local.
Also, not everyone who was alive at the time had their name recorded for posterity by some historian or scholar. Only the tiniest fraction of people had that honor. So in sum, there's decent evidence that it could be Jaʿfar al-Ṣadiq’s inscription, but no definitive evidence.
