ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books The Quran: Its Protection from Alteration The Shi'a Attitude Now we should see how the Shi'as have solved the problem of such ahadith . The Shi'as do not believe in the immunity of any writer, commentator or narrator from mistakes, and, therefore, they do not take any collection of hadith to be completely valid and correct. The only book which is completely immune from any mistake is the Qur'an.

There are four early collections of Shi'a ahadith which are together called " al-Kutub al-Arb'ah " (the four books): al-Kafi of Kulayni, Man la Yahdhuruhu' l-Faqih of Saduq, Tahdhibu 'l-Ahkam and al-Istibsar of Tusi. Although these books are held in great esteem, the Shi'as have never called them " sihah ". Consequently, they are not fettered by any hadith written there simply because it is in one of the four books.

Instead, they subject all ahadith in all these books to strict tests, as to their narrators ( asnad ) and dirayah , and examine whether a given hadith conforms with the Qur'an, the accepted sayings of the Ma'sumin and the known facts. If a hadith passes these tough test, then it is accepted. If not, then it is re-interpreted in an acceptable way, failing which it is rejected outright.

It should be mentioned here that an overwhelming part of traditions concerning tahrif is defective and weak as far as their chains of narrators are concerned. Even then, some of those traditions maybe taken to denote that there has occurred misinterpretation in some verses, giving them wrong meaning. Another group of traditions may easily be construed to mention marginal explanatory notes of the reciters. But there still remain many traditions which cannot be explained in either way.

And our scholars unhesitatingly have rejected them because they go against the Qur'an and the sunnah, and are contrary to the ijma' of the ummah that there has never been any addition in or omission from the Qur'an.

Muhaqqiq al-Kalbasi has said, "All these reports which speak of tahrif are against the ijma' of the ummah (with exception of a few insignificant persons)."[^1] The commentator of al-Wafiyah , Muhaqqiq al-Baghdadi has clearly stated, by quoting from Muhaqqiq al-Karaki (who has written a complete tract on the subject) that: "The traditions which speak of omission must either be reinterpreted or rejected.