ULUM-I-HADITH
Year:2008 | Volume:12 | Issue:3-4 (45-46)|Papers Count:18

Is there a single and unique moral rule that can be applied to every ethical situation and guide our moral life? This paper tries to deal with this question and assess the Golden Rule and evaluate its importance and application in different religions and moral systems, specially Islamic ethics. To achieve this goal, this paper is divided into seven sections. The introductory section explores the ancient search for this rule of conduct and introduces two forms of Golden Rule, i.e., its positive form, that says: "do to others what you would like them to do to you." And the negative form that teaches us: "never 00 to others what you would not like them to do to you." the second section traces the golden rule in different Eastern and Western religions and moral schools to show its worldwide acceptability. The next section presents some Hadiths on Golden Rule and analyses them to show its broad applications in Islamic moral teachings. The fourth section assesses this rule of conduct in Islamic ethics. The next sections deal with the task of this rule of conduct in moral imagination and report critically some misunderstandings on this rule. At the end the writer concludes that this rule can be very helpful in avoiding moral behaviors and judgments.

Hadiths concerning Qatilul Abarat, narrated from five infallible Imams, peace be upon them, in ten versions and thirteen Isnads is beyond any doubt. But some vagueness concerning the content and grammar of the phrase and other similar compounds used in these texts (especially the phrase itself) demand that these groups of hadiths are considered as difficult hadiths. This paper has been divided into two general categones: a) an investigation of the sources and types of the related texts; b) a survey of the content of Qatilul Abarat.

Qaf Mountam is a familiar name which has emerged in myths and literary works of nations a long time ago and has an important status in non-Islamic texts. In the world of Islam, this idea has gone beyond the borders of poetry and mysticism and has found its way into the hadith and tafsir texts. Taking into consideration the history of belief in the existence of Qaf Mountain in myths and other religion texts, it is concluded that probably this has roots in the non-Islamic religions and cultures has come into the Islamic texts. Analysis and criticism of tafsir and hadith text forms the base of this research.

One of the important questions in the discussion of prophet hood is that why, among all men, only special persons are chosen as prophet and are given the status of infallibility? If it is for their merits how did they obtain these merits? As Shia believes that they were infallible from the very beginning, and some of them were chosen as prophet in the very childhood, if it is a gift bestowed upon by Allah why Allah deprives others of this gift and in this case, how is Allah's wisdom and justice is justified? Utilizing hadith and principles of theology, the author of the present paper tries to answer the above mentioned questions.

Religious texts, in Spite of their special language structure, contain pure psychological teachings that should be studied and classified by experts. In fact, the appearance of the Quranic verse and hadith are based on human rules and realities that their discovery wi11 leads to certain views in the field of psychology. The way of deducing a scientific discussion from religious texts, is the main concern of this section. It seems that the existing methods have little efficiency in this regard. Therefore, these types of studies demand their own specific methods. Hadith can be used as a scientific source by psychologists from three perspectives: Information, Concept, and System of Concepts. This method of analysis will lead the researchers to lower layers of meaning and prepare the ground for all kinds of Ideas and hypothesis.

The question of whether utilizing the tahlil marriage is lawful or unlawful is one of the important issues in the field of Islamic jurisprudence and social issues. The Imamite jurisprudents have different answers to this question and are classified in to two groups: those who are against the tahlil and those who are for. Hadith of Cursing the Muhalil is the main evidence which help jurisprudents to give a good judgment. Therefore, it is necessary to determine the erea of indication and also compatibility and incompatibility of the verdict with the purpose of canonical law concerning unlawfulness of getting married with your ex-wife, after you divorced her for the third time. After giving a brief definition of tahlil marriage and speaking about its philosophy, the author of this paper utilizes the Prophetic hadith and explains about the types of tahlil marriage.

In Shiite hadith collections such as the Four Books and Wasail al-Shia and the Sunni hadith collections like the Mulim and Bukhari Authentic Books, seeing the new moon is the decisive factor for the start of month. Seeing the new moon with modem tools sucl1 as telescope and alike and starting the new month according to it, is one of the modem issues which has caused dispute among researchers and divided them into two groups: those who are against and those who are for.

Without doubt many religious statements, especially the Quranic verses are eternal and everlasting, but there are some statements which are specific to a period or some certain periods and they are expired when they are out of that period or periods due to changes in subject and conditions and they are used as an example or the history of the event. A survey of jurisprudential hadith and speeches of hadith and fiqh scholars will lead us to some criteria for evaluating hadith.

After the seventh century (AH) when Hadith division into four groups (viz. Sahih, Hasan, Muwathaq, and Daeef) was accepted by The Shiite scholars and faqihs, some of them began evaluating the hadith collections. In spite of accepting the reliability of al-Kafi's hadiths, Allama Majlisi had tried to evaluate the chain of documents of al-Kafi's hadiths, one by one, and often used brief but various expressions in this regard.In addition to statistical presentation of Kafi's hadiths, the author of the present paper tries to classify these various expressions so that the advantages of studying these expressions would be based on the Allama Majlisi's principles, those advantages which can be useful for researchers in the field of hadith, diraya, and rijal.

The hypothesis of the birth of the hidden Imam in the wonder period" is aiming at not only the destruction of Madiism, but also the whole system of Imamte. The Shia's wonder after the martyrdom of Imam Askari, peace be upon him, in spite of enemies' claim is due to neither the lack of child of Imam nor ambiguity and indefiniteness of the lmam's occultation. This wonder is the outcome of the Shia's apathy towards hadiths which have been issued during the first and third century and have been transmitted in a lot of usul and hadith books generation by generation, studying the hadiths of the tenth chapter that contains more than one fifth of Numani's al-Ghayba we can demonstrate the spiritual occurrence of the Imam's occultation. Therefore ambiguity and indefiniteness of the Imam's occultation, after the martyrdom of the eleventh Imam, has no scientific base.

In the present paper, the author analyses and verifies the Allama Shooshtari's views in criticism of fabricated hadiths (in the second chapter of al-Akhbar al-Dakhila) and classifies the principles and methods of criticism of fabricated hadiths which have been presented by Allama Shooshtari and cites an example for every one of them. Of course the author has made his best to choose the best and most clarified examples and avoid mentioning the repeated ones as far as possible. While reviewing a hadith, Allama Shooshtari used to view them from different perspectives and utilize various criteria for criticism of fabricated hadiths.

Isnad is one of the outstanding features of Arabic texts and also the most important element of hadith. In this text, first you find the words of Muslim scholars about the importance of Isnad and then a survey of views presented by some western scholars in this regard. The origin and development of Isnad is another issue which is dealt with in this paper. Criticism of views presented by some orientalists especially those of Schacht on Isnad are the main topics of this paper. Some examples of Ibn Ishaq are displayed to show the method of presenting the old Isnads among the later generation of hadith scholars.

The present text is a survey of writing Barnamaj as the famous method for writing biographies in the west of the Islamic world. Writing Barnamaj is the outcome of Muslim's concentration on hearing as a general method of leaming used in Islamic civilization. Aiming at documenting their hadiths, they tried to record the name of their teachers and methods of receiving hadith and also chain of documents in books often titled as Barnamaj or Fehreseh. After a brief review of Barnamaj books, the author reviews the Wadi Ashi's al-Barnamaj and while explaining the methods of compiling Barnamaj books, he concludes that in the light of these works, the history of Islamic education and syllabus and the most important of all, the history of transmitting sciences from one part to other parts of the world of Islam is recognized exactly.

A remarkable portion of our hadith heritage is formed by manaqib and virtues of the infallible lmams. This group of hadith speaks of superiority of an individual or a group over other individuals or groups. Common sense and man's pure instinct always confirms the superionty of afzal over mafzul. Therefore from the early Islam, they have tried to present the virtues and manaqib of the infallible lmams, peace be upon them. Since the issue of manaqib and virtues prepared a suitable ground for forgers to forge hadiths. This unpleasant phenomenon has polluted a fraction of hadith heritage in this regard. In the history of Islam, many authors have written and compiled books on the merits of the infallible lmams and the bad behaviors of their enemies. As a result, there are various and different views in writing of manaqibs as there are in other fields. In this paper we discuss the above mentioned issues.

A couple of days ago, the Half-day Symposium for the Translation of Religious Texts, Purposes, Impairments, and Necessities held by the Research Center of Hadith Sciences and Teachings. In this symposium, experts of this field spoke of the meaning of translation, translation pathology, standard method of translation, problems of the existing translations, and types of translation in the field of religious texts. They also presented some suggestions such as compilation of reference books concerning the translation of religious texts, translation workshops, and preparation of technical principles for translation of religious texts. The present paper is a content-wise report of the above mentioned symposium.