Edmund Hayes is researcher at Radboud University, Nijmegen. He has authored numerous articles at the intersection between the intellectual, religious, and social history of early Islam, including on the institutions of the Shi¿i Imamate, Islamic revenues, charity and taxation, excommunication, ethnicity and gender and sexuality.

Introduction; 1. The rise of the agents in the late Imamate (830-874 CE); 2. The crisis before the crisis. The feud between Imamic contenders and the power of the agents; 3. Crisis! The mother, the brother, the concubine and the politics of inheritance; 4. The agents of the N¿¿iya in the era of perplexity; 5. The creation of an envoy: The rise of Ab¿ Jäfar al-¿Amr¿; 6. Rise and fall: Ibn Raw¿, Shalmagh¿n¿, and rise and collapse of the envoyship; Conclusion.

Offers fascinating insights into the careers of the first leaders of Twelver Shiʿism: agents who claimed to speak for the 'hidden Imam'.