Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Usman

Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Usman (304 A.H.- 305 A.H.) He was

designated by the written will of his father to succeed him as the

representative of Imam Mahdi. He had a vast collection of books on

Law which he had inherited from his father, and which his father had

received from Imams.

During the period that he served as the chief deputy, he took an

oath that the Master of the Age was present among the pilgrims of

Mecca every year and he sees them although they fail to see him.

As a sign of Abu Ja'far's supernatural intuition it is related that one

of his friends found him inscribing a verse of the Quran on a slab of

a stone, and in the margins he was cutting the names of the

Imams. His friends asked him what he was doing. "It is for my

grave", he said, and then he told this man when he expected to

die. To others he expressed the same opinion, and the traditions

that his prediction proved to be true. After he had served the

Imams for about fifty years, he died in the year 305 A.H. He was

buried near the grave of his mother, on the roadside at the Kufa

Gate, at the place where his house stood.