SAFINEH
Year:2008 | Volume:5 | Issue:20 (SPECIAL ISSUE ON AL-KAFI)|Papers Count:11

The great scholar Ayatullah shaikh Muhammad Reza Jafari prepared an English translation from Osul al Kafi of which several parts have been published. He, besides translating the religious text, wrote some commentaries for them which out of the diversity of included subjects, attract the scholar’s attentions. In this study, the commentaries on 11 chapters of the first part of ketab al-hujjah has been translated into Persian.

This article includes 8 hadiths of 5 chapters of Osul al-Kafi from unpublished book "Asas ma’aref al-Quran" written by Ayatullah Esfahani. This ahadith and their commentaries about gnosis of God, His great Names, and His Attributes and "Beda". According to the commentaries, God the Almighty, reminds of His gnosis to His creatures; the mankind’s definition of God is short and incomprehensive. His Names and Attributes illustrate His differences from His creatures and "Beda" is a revealed appearance of His Might and Kingdom.

Far from all praises and affirmation of al-Kafi, there are some views among the recent scholars which bring the authenticity of some hadiths under questions. This article through scrutinizing the documents of hadiths of 3 chapters of Ketab al-Hujjah, besides reminding of several, important hadith about Ahlul bayt, have asserted the documents of quite a few number of these Ahadith. These Ahadith are compared with the great scholar Allameh Majlesi in the book "Merat al Oghol".

Recognizing the figures of speech in understanding religious texts is of great importance. The infallibles are the great lecturers who expressed their views and beliefs through this channel, i.e., using figures of speech. if these figures of speech be violated or do not fully understand, misunderstanding of the sayings of infallibles will be happened.In this essay, the role of figures of speech in understanding the sayings of infallibles are reviewed and some examples especially from al-Kafi are given.

"Crisis and Consolidation ..." has been written to two aims: 1. Introducing the history of Shia to westerners and non-Muslims. 2. Recognizing the process of forming and completing Shia belief in the first centuries of Islam. The first chapter "Rights and Responsibilities" is a brief look on the Shia history up to the early of the short occultation time. In this essay, a main part of this chapter has been reviewed.

Author of this article-Muhammad Hossein ebn Gharyaghdi-is one of the Shia Imamia Scolars in 11th century. This essay is adopted from his book al-Baza’at al-Mazjah which is an explanation on "Rouza". Since hadiths of "Rouza" lacks the order of subjects, therefore Ghayaghdi divided the ahadith into different subjects. It is strongly believed that these divisions of ahadith of "Rouza" are only mentioned here.

Shaikh Baha al-Din Ameli and Shaikh Harfavashi-the great scholars of 11th century-wrote some commentaries for the 6 chapters of Ketab al-Touhid which are published here for the first time. Some of these commentaries are very short such as short definition or explanation of a sentence or word and some are pretty long explaining various issues of Touhid. The author of this essay, besides correcting and searching about these commentaries added a short introduction about the biography of the two scholars.

Imamia scholars talked about basis of affirming the authenticity of ahadith mentioned in Shia books of ahadith. Quite a few number of them agree that the only criterion in scrutinizing the authenticity of ahadith is not scrutinizing their documents per.se. In this essay, the view points of Shia scholars-from 4th century up to now, such as Shaikh Mortaza Ansari, Mola Muhammad Baqir Vahid Behbahani, Mola Muhammad Taghi Majlesi, Allameh Muhammad Baqir Majlesi, ... have been mentioned.