Zayd ibn Ali

Zayd ibn Ali ibn al-Husayn (75–122 AH / 695–740 CE) was the grandson of Husayn ibn Ali and great-grandson of the Prophet ﷺ, a scholar, jurist, and revolutionary who led a major revolt against the Umayyad Caliph Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik in Kufa and was killed in that uprising. He is the eponymous founder of the Zaydi branch of Shia Islam, the school considered closest to Sunni practice among the Shia traditions.

He was a student of his father Ali ibn al-Husayn Zayn al-Abidin and his brother Muhammad al-Baqir, and also studied under Companion-era scholars in Medina. He was recognized by Sunni hadith scholars as a reliable transmitter and a man of learning. His theological position — that the Imam must be a descendant of Ali and Fatima who actively calls people to himself and is willing to fight for justice — distinguished Zaydism from Twelver Shia who followed a line of quietist Imams.

He traveled to Kufa in 122 AH in response to pledges of support from the Kufans for an uprising against Umayyad rule. When the Kufan supporters abandoned him — repeating the pattern that had destroyed his grandfather Husayn — he fought with a small band and was killed. His head was sent to the Caliph in Damascus.

The fiqh attributed to him, collected in the Majmu al-Fiqh, is one of the earliest surviving Islamic legal compilations. Zaydi communities, found today primarily in Yemen, trace their legal and theological tradition directly to his teachings. Among Sunni scholars he is respected as a martyr who stood against tyranny, even as they disagreed with his political theology.