Imam Hasan al-Mujtaba (a.s.): The Life of the Second Imam

"Hasan and Husayn are the masters of the youth of Paradise." — The Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ)

Imam Hasan ibn Ali ibn Abi Talib (a.s.) — known by the honorific al-Mujtaba, "the Chosen One" — was the eldest grandson of the Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ), the first child of Imam Ali (a.s.) and Fatima al-Zahra (a.s.), and the second of the Twelve Imams in Shia Islam. He is remembered as a man of immense generosity, unshakeable forbearance, deep knowledge, and quiet courage. His life spanned the final years of Prophethood, the turbulent age of the early caliphate, a brief reign of his own, and a peace treaty that would shape the course of Islamic history. This is his story in full.

Lineage and Birth

Imam Hasan (a.s.) was born in Medina, most commonly dated to the 15th of Ramadan in the 3rd year after the Hijra (around 625 CE). His father was Ali ibn Abi Talib (a.s.), the cousin of the Prophet, the first male to accept Islam, and the husband of the Prophet's daughter. His mother was Fatima al-Zahra (a.s.), the beloved daughter of the Prophet and "the leader of the women of the worlds." Through this union, Hasan stood at the very heart of the Prophet's household — the Ahl al-Bayt, the People of the House.

When he was born, the Prophet (ﷺ) himself came to take the newborn in his arms. According to tradition, Imam Ali had considered naming the child, but deferred to the Prophet, who chose for him the name Hasan — a name meaning "the good" or "the beautiful," one not previously used among the Arabs of the age. The Prophet performed the aqiqah, sacrificing a ram in thanksgiving, shaved the infant's head, and gave in charity an amount of silver equal to the weight of the hair.

Over his lifetime he would carry many noble titles: al-Mujtaba (the Chosen), al-Zaki (the Pure), al-Taqi (the God-fearing), al-Sibt (the Grandson), and Rayhanat Rasul Allah — "the fragrant flower of the Messenger of God."

1. Childhood in the Shadow of Prophethood

Hasan's earliest years were spent in the most blessed household in Islam, raised between the Prophet, his father Ali, and his mother Fatima. The love the Prophet showed him and his younger brother Husayn was extraordinary and openly displayed.

The Prophet would carry Hasan on his shoulders through the streets of Medina, saying, "O God, I love him, so love him." He would interrupt his sermons to descend from the pulpit and gather the boy when he saw him stumble. In a famous report, the Prophet prolonged a prostration during prayer because Hasan (or Husayn) had climbed onto his back, and he would not rise until the child had finished. He repeatedly declared that the two boys were "the masters of the youth of Paradise." It was also said that Hasan resembled the Prophet in appearance more than any other person, particularly in the upper part of his body.

Three events from his childhood carry special weight in the memory of the Muslim community:

The Verse of Purification (Ayat al-Tathir). When the Prophet gathered Ali, Fatima, Hasan, and Husayn beneath his cloak — an event known as Hadith al-Kisa, the Tradition of the Cloak — the revelation came: "Indeed, God desires only to remove all impurity from you, O People of the House, and to purify you with a thorough purification" (Qur'an 33:33). The young Hasan was thus enfolded in a divine declaration of the purity of the Prophet's household.

The Event of Mubahala. When a Christian delegation from Najran disputed with the Prophet about Jesus, God commanded a mutual invocation (mubahala) to call down truth (Qur'an 3:61). The Prophet came forward not with his army or companions, but with his family: Ali as "himself," Fatima as "our women," and Hasan and Husayn as "our sons." That the Prophet presented these two small children as witnesses to truth before a hostile delegation speaks to their place in the faith.

The Loss of His Grandfather and Mother. Hasan was about seven years old when the Prophet (ﷺ) passed away in the year 11 AH. Only about six months later, his mother Fatima al-Zahra (a.s.) also died. These twin losses marked the end of his childhood and placed him, alongside his brother, ever more closely under the guidance and care of their father, Imam Ali.

2. Years of Trial and the Battles

Hasan grew into manhood during the caliphates of Abu Bakr, Umar, and Uthman, living largely in Medina as a respected member of the Prophet's family, devoted to worship and learning. The great public chapter of his early adulthood, however, opened when his father Ali (a.s.) assumed the caliphate in 35 AH, in the aftermath of the killing of the caliph Uthman. Ali's leadership was immediately contested, and the young Hasan stood at his father's side through the civil strife — the first fitna — that followed.

Mobilizing Kufa. As conflict loomed, Imam Ali sent Hasan, together with the venerable companion Ammar ibn Yasir, to the city of Kufa to rally its people to the cause. Hasan addressed the Kufans with an eloquence that recalled his grandfather, and many answered the call.

The Battle of the Camel (Jamal), 36 AH. Near Basra, Ali's forces met an army that had risen against him. Hasan fought in this battle, his first major military engagement, in which the rebellion was defeated.

The Battle of Siffin, 37 AH. The longest and most consequential war of Ali's reign was fought on the plain of Siffin against Mu'awiya ibn Abi Sufyan, the governor of Syria, who refused to recognize Ali's authority. Hasan was present and active in the fighting. It is reported that Imam Ali, fearing for the life of the Prophet's grandson and the survival of his lineage, gave orders to restrain Hasan from rushing too deeply into the danger of battle, saying that he wished to protect the line of the Prophet from being cut off.

The Battle of Nahrawan, 38 AH. When a faction known as the Kharijites — former supporters of Ali who turned against him over the arbitration that ended Siffin — took up arms, Hasan again stood with his father in the campaign that confronted them.

Through these years, Hasan witnessed firsthand the deep fractures within the Muslim community and the cost of internal war — lessons that would weigh heavily on him when leadership passed to his own hands.

3. After Imam Ali: The Six-Month Caliphate

In the month of Ramadan in the year 40 AH (661 CE), Imam Ali (a.s.) was struck down in the mosque of Kufa by the sword of the Kharijite assassin Ibn Muljam, and died two days later from the wound. The Muslim community of Iraq turned at once to his eldest son.

Hasan (a.s.), then around thirty-seven years of age, received the oath of allegiance (bay'ah) from the people of Kufa as the new caliph. The historical accounts describe a man fully worthy of the office: he addressed the people with a sermon of remarkable eloquence, reminding them of the standing of the Ahl al-Bayt and the duties of leadership. His brief reign would last only about six to seven months — yet it was a period of profound significance.

From the outset, Hasan inherited an impossible situation. The Muslim world was split. In Syria, Mu'awiya commanded a disciplined, well-financed, and unified army, and he had no intention of submitting to Hasan any more than he had to Ali. The community in Iraq, by contrast, was exhausted by years of civil war and riven by competing factions: sincere supporters of the Ahl al-Bayt, war-weary tribesmen, lingering Kharijites who opposed everyone, and opportunists who could be bought. Hasan led a caliphate that was, in practice, a coalition on the verge of collapse.

4. The Confrontation with Mu'awiya and the Peace Treaty

When Mu'awiya marched his Syrian forces toward Iraq, Hasan moved to meet the threat. He dispatched a vanguard and made his own camp at Mada'in (near the old Persian capital, south of modern Baghdad). What followed exposed the fatal weakness of his position.

The army crumbles. Mu'awiya, a master of political maneuver, worked to dissolve Hasan's army from within without a decisive battle. He sent agents to spread rumours and offered enormous bribes to Hasan's commanders. The commander of the vanguard, Ubaydullah ibn Abbas, abandoned his post and defected to Mu'awiya for a vast sum of money, taking part of the army with him. Disinformation swept the camp — false reports that the war was over, or that other commanders had been killed — and discipline shattered.

Hasan is wounded. At Mada'in, amid the chaos, a Kharijite assailant stabbed Imam Hasan in the thigh, wounding him seriously. He was carried away to recover, while elements of his own camp turned to looting his tent. It became unmistakably clear that he commanded an army that could neither be trusted nor relied upon to fight.

The decision for peace. Faced with these realities — an unreliable and disintegrating army, a powerful and unified enemy, and the certainty that continued war would mean the slaughter of countless Muslims for no realistic prospect of victory — Imam Hasan made the gravest decision of his life. He accepted Mu'awiya's repeated offers of negotiation and concluded a peace treaty (sulh) in the year 41 AH (661 CE).

The terms of the treaty, as reported in the histories (with some variation across sources), included the following principal conditions:

1. That Mu'awiya would govern according to the Book of God, the Sunnah of His Messenger, and the conduct of the righteous caliphs.
2. That Mu'awiya would not name a successor after himself; rather, the question of leadership would be returned to the community, and after Mu'awiya the matter would revert to Hasan (or to a council of Muslims). The caliphate, in other words, was not to become a hereditary dynasty.
3. That the followers of Ali (a.s.) and the people of Iraq would be granted security and amnesty for their lives, their property, and their families, wherever they were.
4. That the public cursing and reviling of Imam Ali (a.s.) from the pulpits would cease.

Mu'awiya agreed — and then, once his power was secure, violated several of these conditions. Most consequentially, he later forced the appointment of his son Yazid as his successor, founding the hereditary Umayyad dynasty in direct breach of the treaty, and the cursing of Ali from the pulpits continued in many quarters for decades.

The Year of Unity. The year 41 AH became known in history as 'Aam al-Jama'ah — "the Year of Unity" or "the Year of the Community" — because for the first time since the killing of Uthman, the entire Muslim world stood, at least outwardly, under a single ruler, and the open civil war came to an end.

The meaning of the peace. In the understanding of the Shia tradition, and in the judgment of many later scholars across the Muslim world, Imam Hasan's treaty was not surrender or weakness, but a deliberate and costly act of wisdom. By laying down arms, he spared the community a catastrophic bloodletting, preserved the lives of the faithful, and protected the very fabric of the young Muslim ummah from tearing itself apart. The decision is often compared to the Prophet's own Treaty of Hudaybiyya — an apparent concession that proved, in time, to be a strategic victory. By keeping his terms in the open and obliging Mu'awiya to bind himself to written conditions, Hasan also laid bare for history who would honour their word and who would not. In a deeper sense, his peace preserved the moral standing of the Ahl al-Bayt and set the stage for the very different stand that his brother Husayn (a.s.) would later take at Karbala, when the conditions of the community had changed and silence was no longer possible.

Life in Medina and His Noble Character

After the treaty, Imam Hasan (a.s.) withdrew from public political life and returned to Medina, the city of his grandfather, where he lived for roughly a decade. These were years devoted to worship, teaching, and an almost legendary generosity.

He was famed as one of the most open-handed men of his age. It is reported that he gave away his entire wealth in charity two or three times in his life, and that on several occasions he divided his possessions equally between himself and the poor — giving away even one of a pair of shoes or sandals. He performed the pilgrimage to Mecca many times on foot, out of humility before God, leading his fine mounts beside him riderless.

His forbearance (hilm) became proverbial. The most famous example tells of a man from Syria who, encountering Hasan in Medina and not knowing him, began to insult and curse him at length. Hasan listened calmly, and when the man had finished, responded not with anger but with gentleness — offering him welcome, hospitality, help with any need, and provisions. So overwhelmed was the man by this response that he wept and declared he had not known a more noble person, repenting of his words. In this, Hasan embodied the Qur'anic command to "repel evil with that which is better."

Alongside his generosity and patience, Hasan was a teacher of the religion, an eloquent orator in the manner of his father and grandfather, and a man of profound piety and asceticism in his personal life, despite the wealth that passed through his hands.

5. Martyrdom and Burial

Imam Hasan (a.s.) passed away in Medina in the year 50 AH (670 CE), at around the age of forty-six or forty-seven. His death is commemorated, in the most widely observed tradition, on the 28th of the month of Safar.

According to the account preserved in the Shia tradition and reported in many of the early histories, Hasan did not die of natural causes but was poisoned. The widely transmitted narrative holds that the poisoning was instigated by Mu'awiya, who sought to remove the one figure standing between his rule and his plan to install his son Yazid as heir, in violation of the treaty. The poison is said to have been administered through Hasan's wife, Ja'da bint al-Ash'ath, who was reportedly promised wealth and marriage to Yazid — a promise that, the histories note, was never fulfilled. The Imam suffered greatly in his final illness, and is reported to have foretold what had been done to him. (Some modern historians have questioned the certainty of attributing the act to Mu'awiya, but the poisoning itself is the traditional and widely accepted account of his death.)

As he lay dying, Hasan expressed the wish to be buried beside his grandfather, the Prophet (ﷺ). When his brother Husayn (a.s.) sought to carry out this wish, the Umayyad authorities in Medina — led by Marwan ibn al-Hakam — refused to permit it, fearing the political symbolism of such a burial. Mindful of his brother's own dying instruction that no blood should be shed over his grave, Husayn relented rather than provoke conflict. Imam Hasan was therefore laid to rest in the cemetery of Jannat al-Baqi in Medina, near the resting place of his great-grandmother and other members of the Prophet's family.

For centuries his grave was honoured with a shrine; that structure, along with the other shrines of al-Baqi, was demolished in 1925–26. The site remains a place of deep reverence and pilgrimage for Muslims to this day.

Legacy

Imam Hasan al-Mujtaba (a.s.) left a legacy that flows through both blood and spirit. Several of his sons — among them the youth Qasim ibn al-Hasan — were martyred at Karbala in 61 AH alongside their uncle Husayn (a.s.), giving their lives in the stand that has defined Islamic conscience ever since. His surviving line, descending notably through Hasan al-Muthanna, became the great family of the Hasani sayyids and sharifs, from whom many of the noble houses of the Muslim world — including the Sharifs of Mecca and royal lineages that endure today — trace their descent.

But his deepest legacy is moral. In an age torn by ambition and the sword, Hasan chose, at the height of a war he might have prolonged, to value the lives and unity of the Muslim community above his own power. He is remembered as al-Mujtaba, the Chosen — a leader whose patience was a form of strength, whose generosity knew no limit, and whose forbearance turned enemies into admirers. Together with his brother Husayn, he stands in the memory of the faithful as a master of the youth of Paradise: two grandsons of the Prophet who, between them, taught the world both how to make peace and how to stand for truth.

Peace be upon Hasan, the day he was born, the day he passed away, and the day he shall be raised again.

A Note on Sources

This account draws on the shared biographical tradition concerning the Ahl al-Bayt as preserved in early Islamic histories and hadith. On certain points — exact dates, the precise terms of the peace treaty, and the details surrounding his death — the sources vary, and the narrative above reflects the most widely transmitted reports while noting where significant differences exist.