During the years Shīʿa scholars have unanimously agreed...

During the years Shīʿa scholars have unanimously agreed, without denial, that the Ṣaḥīfa traces its roots back to Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn, the different opinions may be due to the different collections of prayers the scholars have collected.97 However, according to Chittick’s translation, the arrangement of the text allows to draw a certain distinction between the fifty-four supplications, which make the main body of the text, and the additional supplications which make up the fourteen addenda (including the prayers for the days of the week) and the fifteen munajāt or ‘whispered prayers’.

He maintains that the original fifty-four supplications show an undeniable freshness and unity of theme and style, while the latter, especially the munajāt, add a certain orderliness and self-conscious artistry which may suggest the hand of an editor.98 The addenda are said to have been collected and added to the text by Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad b.

Makkī, known as al-Shaḥīd al-Awwal (the ‘first martyr’), the famous author of Al-Lumʿat al-Dimishqīyya in jurisprudence (fiqh) who was killed in Aleppo in 786/1384. The fifteen munajāt have been added to several modern editions of the Ṣaḥīfa and seem to have been brought to the attention of the main body of the Shī‛a by ‛Allāma Muḥammad Bāqir Majlisī (d. 1109/1698), author of the monumental compilation of Shī‛ī ḥadīth, Biḥar al-Anwār.

Over the years many scholars have written about the Ṣaḥīfa and numerous commentaries have been written, Buzurg Ṭihrānī lists them in the Dharīʿa to be close to seventy, with one of the earlier commentators being ʿAllāmah al-Ḥīllī (d.726/1325)and Muḥammad Bāqir al-Majlisī (d. 1109/1698).

2.1 Authenticity of Text As with any classical document or text not being free from and exempted from the critique and analysis concerning its historical reliability, particularly in light of modern scholarship, a study of the authenticity of the Ṣaḥīfa is inescapable.

Questions concerning the authenticity of the text, which have also been put to the body of early Arabic poetry, started early, and in ʿUmayyad times at the latest and have continued since.99 To undertake a serious study and analysis of the relative historical reliability of the individual supplications found in all the versions of the Ṣaḥīfa, would be a study of great proportions, an undertaking which would certainly fall outside the scope of this study, as it alone may equal independent research in itself.