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The Knowledge of the Unseen And the Knowledge of the Book 2 - Al-Shia The Scientific and Cultural Website of Shia belief The Knowledge of the Unseen And the Knowledge of the Book 2 2023-02-14 2156 Views Knowledge In this part of the article titled “The Knowledge of the Unseen And the Knowledge of the Book” we shall continue with the discussion on other hadith on the superiority of Imam Ali in terms of his knowledge.

Contents Side Comments Concluding Remarks Side Comments A contributor mentioned that there exists another version of the tradition of “The City of Knowledge” where the Prophet (pbuhh) states: “I am the city of knowledge and Ali is its gate, and Abu Bakr is its foundation, Umar its walls and Uthman its roof.” (14) To answer this, I would like to first mention this weak tradition is not reported in any of the six sound collections of the Sunnis, whereas the correct version of the tradition provided in our article is, in fact, in the Sihah Sittah of the Sunnis.

Adding the words to the genuine traditions of the Prophet, was another trick which the falsifiers of tradition narrators resorted to during the time of the Umayyad. When they found that a tradition was so widespread amongst the people that there was no way to deny or refute it, they decided to add a paragraph or words or to change some phrases so as to dampen the impact of the tradition or to make it lose its intended meaning.

This trick is not hidden from the objective researchers who refute these additions which, most of the time, indicate the lack of intelligence of the falsifiers and their lack of wisdom in contrast to the light of the Prophetic traditions. Even some well-known Sunni scholars were aware of such forgeries and have rated many of such traditions as forged or weak due to the discrepancy in the Isnad as well as the contents.

For instance, in the above-forged tradition, we can observe the saying “Abu Bakr is its foundation” means the knowledge of the Prophet (PBUHH) is derived from the knowledge of Abu Bakr and this is disbelief (Kufr). Likewise, the statement “Umar is its walls” means Umar prevents people from entering the city, i.e., prevents them from getting to the knowledge. Also, the saying that “Uthman is its roof” is undoubtedly absurd since no city has a roof!!!