329/940)...

329/940), Man la yahduruhu al-faqih ( For him not in the Presence of Jurisprudent ) of Shaykh al-Saduq Muhammad ibn Babuyah al-Qummi (d. 381/991), Tahdhib al-ahkam ( Rectification of the Statutes ) by Shaykh al-Ta'ifah Muhammad al-Tusi (d. 460/ 1068) and al-Istibsar fi ma ukhtulif fihi min al-akhbar ( Reflection upon the Disputed Traditions ) also by al-Tusi.

The Present Collection The sermons, sayings, prayers and writings translated here present a cross section of Shi'ite religious thought with an emphasis upon that which is most basic for the religion itself and most universal and hence understandable in the eyes of non-Muslims.

As 'Allamah Tabataba'i points out in his foreword, in making these selections his aim was to emphasize the three basic dimensions of the Shi'ite tradition: The profession of Unity ( altawhid ), or the metaphysical and theological principles of the faith The political, social and moral teachings. The inward, spiritual and devotional life of the community.

Hence the selections stress the principles and fundamentals ( usul ) of Islam, while they tend to ignore the branches and secondary aspects ( furu ). In other words, little is said about the concrete ramifications of the principles in terms of the details of the application of the Divine Law ( al-Shari'ah ) to everyday life. Nevertheless, the secondary aspects are clearly reflected in 'Ali's "Instructions to Malik al-Ashtar" and to a lesser degree in the prayers.

Although it is well known that the first "pillar of Islam" is the profession of faith, which begins with a statement of the Divine Unity, Western scholars have tended to explain the Islamic belief in God's Oneness as a relativity simple-minded affirmation of the existence of only one God.

Perhaps one reason the Nahj albalaghah and the Shi'ite hadith literature in general have been neglected or simply branded as spurious is that their very existence flatly contradicts the commonly accepted idea of a simple bedouin faith with few philosophical or metaphysical overtones.

In these writings we see that already in the first centuries of Islam the Divine Unity was affirmed in terms reminiscent of the subtlety of later "theosophical" Sufism, but still completely steeped in the peculiar spiritual aroma of the revelation itself. The Sources In making the selections 'Allamah Tabataba'i utilized four works: the Nahj al-balaghah , al-Sahifat al-sajjadiyyah , Bihar al-anwar and Mafatih al-jinan .