NAQD VA NAZAR
Year:2012 | Volume:17 | Issue:3 (67)|Papers Count:7

The Hadith collection of Mohammad Ibn Ya’qub Kolaini, called Kafi, is one of the most important Hadith collections of Twelve-Imam Shiites. Some Orientalists have studied the differences of this work from two other Shiite Hadith collections-Mahasin and Basa’irad-Darajat-and concluded that Kafi is, in respect to the content, similar to the other works which represent the exaggeration (Qolow) in Qom, but since it has addressed the rationalist Shiites of Baghdad, it is moderate in its choice of hadiths and their arrangement. This paper seeks to examine this thesis and challenges the idea that Baghdad Shiites do not credit narrations, due to their radical rationalism. I believe that in his valuable work, Kolaini sought to collect the narrative heritage of Shiites in a traditional way, and he has carried out this task in Ray, not in Baghdad.

Shiite Murji’ah is a movement in the second century of Kufah. Having distinguished themselves from official Shiites after the rise of some political-social events in Kufah and basically as a way of solving the troubles before Shiite community, they adopted an idea concerning Imamat-which is the most central foundation of Shiite thought-which was a kind of retreatment from this foundation. Those who adopted this idea were deciples of Imam Baqir (a.s.) and Imam Sadeq (a.s.), but were rejected by Shiite community because of this idea and they indeed tended to a movement which years later supported Zaid ibn Ali; a sect which is usually called “Butriah” or “Batariah”. Though Shiite Murji’aj was present before the movement of Zaid, but years after him, they prepared the best theoretical background for the acceptance of the Imamat of the less competent. This paper tries to present a historical reading of this movement and introduce the main lines of their thoughts and seeks to examine the backgrounds of the rise of some theories of Imamat, and this way it tries to prepare the ground for understanding some Shiite hadiths.

Ibn Qibah Razi is one of the most-known Imamieh theologians of the second half of the 3rd century a.h.; he has significant views concerning Imamat and thus has a special place among Imamieh theologicans. In his book Shiism in the Process of Evolution, Seyyed Hussein Mudarresi Tabataba’i-a comtemporary scholar of Shiism-tries to analyse the historical developments of Imamieh thought in its political-social background, by appeals to the works of Ibn Qibah and an examination of his treatises. This paper seeks to examine and criticize the claims of Mudarresi Tabataba’i and his interpretations of the works of Ibn Qibah.

In the 3rd century a.h. some narrators of hadiths were dismissed from Qom by Ahmad ibn ‘Isa Ash’ari. Since most of these narrators were accused of exaggeration abouth the place of Imams (Ghulow), it is held that the reason for their dismissal is exaggeration and deviation in belief and then a generalization is made to the effect that Qomis used to dismiss the narrators with a small sign of exaggeration. However, it seems that the only reason for their dismissal was not deviatin in beliefs, rather they were particular social activists whose presence in Qom was dangerous for the survival of Shiite community in Qom. Moreover, the dismissal of narrators (even if it is based on deviation in beliefs) was merely the approach of Ahmad Ash’ari and not all of the masters of Qom, and thus it should not be taken as the approach of the school of Qom.

In Muslim communities of the first and the second centuries, the idea of Irja’ emerged in two political and theological levels, in both of which inheres the notion of leaving an affair to the Dooms Day or to God. The term ‘Murji’ah’ has been used in narrations attributed to the Prophet and Imam Ali (p.b.u.h.) and with overlooking the weakly attributed ones, we can claim that in their narrations, the term has usually been used to mean the “people of tradition (sunnah) and community (jama’ah)” or the “people of narrations (hadith)”; which is different from the well-known use of the term. Since Imam Baqer’s time, most of the narrations quoted about Murhi’ah or the idea of Irja’ have used the terms to refer to the people of tradition and community or the people of narrations, and other available narrations have pointed to other meanings of Irja’ by help of verbal evidence. In this paper, we examine the meanings of the term “Murji’ah” or “Irja” with a more investigation about the narrations attributed to Ahl Al-Bait.

In a paper titled “Saffar Qomi and Basa’ir al-Darajat”, Mohammad Ali Amirmo’ezzi-a contemporary schor of Shiism-has examined the career of Muhammad ibn Hassan Saffar (Shiite muhadith of third century) and his book Basa’ir al-Darajat. According to him, after the demise of Saffar, some Shiite scholars were doubtful of him and took his book to contain exaggerations about Imams. This arises from the transformation of the concept of reason for late scholars in comparison with early scholars. Reason for the late scholars is a instrument for the discovery of logical propositions and thus many hadiths which contained super-logical propositions and were taken by the early scholars to be correct, were in doubt by the transformation in the concept of reason. This paper elaborates the concept of divine reason and examines Amirmoezzi’s claim about the doubts of Shiite scholars about Saffar’s book. Also we have considered Amirmoezzi’s view about the meaning of “knowledge” in the hadiths narrated in Basa’ir al-Darajat.

The most famous Imamieh theologians in Baghdad during the minor absence (gheybati șoghra) were Abu Sahl Isma’il ibn Ali and Abu Mohammad Hassan ibn Musa Nobakhti who had a significant role in the transfer of the Imamieh theological heritage to later theologians like Mufid and Sayyid Murtada. Since there are differences between the Imamieh thoughts during Mufid and Sayyid Murtada on the one hand and the views of the theologians during the presence (hudur) of Imams, such as Hishamain and Mumin al-Taq and the former was rather close to Mutazilite views, some scholars hold that the Nobakhtis had a major role in the development of Imamieh theology and its colvergence with Mutazilite theology, and in fact, the Nobakhtis have propagated the Mutazilite rationalism among Imamieh theologians. This paper tries to reject this accusation and investifate the influence of the Nobakhtis on Imamieh scholars by way of the comparison between the views of the two groups.