The Imamate is not a Shia version of sainthood. Twelvers hold the Imams to be sinless, divinely instructed, and necessary — the earth is never without one — and the twelfth is held to be alive since 874, in ghayba, with the world awaiting his return alongside Isa. That belief has a very practical consequence: because the Imam is absent, someone must act for him, and the doctrine of wilayat al-faqih developed by Khomeini in the 1970s made that a claim to political rule. Many senior Shia jurists, including the quietist school associated with Najaf, reject it. The tombs of the Imams are among the largest religious complexes on earth: Imam Reza in Mashhad receives tens of millions of visitors a year. Sunnis honour all of these men — Ja'far al-Sadiq is a teacher in Abu Hanifa's and Malik's chains — while rejecting the theology built on them.