Ja'far al-Sadiq is believed to be the sixth infallible Imam, or spiritual leader, and successor to the Islamic prophet Muhammad. He is the founder of Shia fiqh, known as Ja'fari jurisprudence. He was an astronomer, an alchemist, an Islamic scholar and theologian, a writer, a philosopher, a physician, and a physicist. Farhana Mayer studied Arabic and Islamic studies, specialising in Qur'anic hermeneutics, at the University of Oxford, where she received her bachelor's and master's degrees. In addition to her independent research on interpretations of the Qur'an, she has worked for the Islamic Texts Society, Cambridge, and is currently with the Institute of Ismaili Studies, London, where she is a researcher and editor in the Qur'anic Studies Unit. She is co-volume editor of volume one of the IIS/OUP Anthology of Qur'anic Commentaries series: On the Nature of God (2008).