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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books As-Sahifa Al-Kamilah Al-Sajjadiyya Treatise On Rights (Risalat al-Huquq) Translator’s Introduction Imam Zayn al-'Abidin's `Treatise on Rights' is the only work attributed to him other than supplications or relatively short sayings and letters. The fact that it was a written document from the first may support the suggestion that at least some of the supplications were originally written compositions.

The `Treatise on Rights' elaborates on a well-known saying of the Prophet, which has been transmitted in a rather large number of versions, no doubt because he repeated it in many different contexts. A typical version can be rendered as follows: `Surely your Lord has a right against you, your self has a right against you, and your wife has a right against you.' Other versions of the hadith add guest, body, eye, and friend to those who have rights.

In some of the versions, another clause is added: ‘So give to everyone who possesses a right ( kull dhi haqq ) his right’.[^1] Another hadith tells us that `God has given to everyone who possesses a right his right.'[^2] Shi'ite sources provide many relevant hadith .

For example, the Prophet said: God has made seven rights incumbent upon the person of faith ( al-mu'min ) toward the person of faith: To respect him in his person, love him in his breast, share with him in his property, consider backbiting against him unlawful, visit him in his illness, escort his coffin, and say nothing but good about him after his death.[^3] Zayn al-'Abidin's `Treatise on Rights' seems to have been written at the request of a disciple, since, in one of its two versions, it is prefaced by the words: `This is the treatise of 'Ali ibn al-Husayn to one of his companions.' In it the Imam explains in more or less exhaustive fashion what is meant by `everyone who possesses a right' as mentioned in the above hadith .

Throughout he provides specific examples, basing himself upon the Qur'an, the sunna , and the actions and sayings of the earlier Imams. Though in the present context the word haqq translates best as `right', it has a number of closely related meanings which should be kept in mind, such as suitableness, justice, truth, reality, correctness, properness, appropriateness, necessity, incumbency, obligation, due, and duty.