Abū al-Jārūd was an important politico-religious figure of the first half of the 2nd/8th century, who has been described as one of the companions of the Shiʿi imams Muḥammad al-Bāqir and Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq and the founder of the Jārūdiyya sect. Out of the unusually large volume of sources that contain references to him, only a handful can be considered useful, as evidence of his personality or providing an account of his life, and the confusion of him with other individuals has only served to further obscure his persona.

In the majority of sources, his name ap-pears as Ziyād b. Mundhi…