An Introduction to Shaykh Tusi's Method and Its Functional Role

Fihrist of Najjashi and Fihrist of Shaykh Tusi are the precious treasuries which provide us with valuable information about Shiite hadith collections and asls. The current method used by hadith scholars while transmitting hadiths from these books is to join their sanads to the chain of authorities of the related hadiths in these books. That is way Najjashi and Shaykh Tusi have cited their tariqs and sanads (chain of transmitters) up to books and works of hadith transmitters. Knowing these tariqs and sanads will yield many scientific benefits. Among them، the Fihrist of Shaykh Tusi is of more importance because Shaykh Tusi contrary to Najjashi has authored two important hadith books: Tahdhib al-Ahkam and Al- Istibsar fima Khtalafa min al-Akhbar. To make the long sanads (chain of transmitters) short، Shaykh Tusi has cut the first common part of sand and pasted at the end of the book in Mashikha section which called tariq. Here we face with two problems: weakness of tariq (insome cases) and lack of tariq regarding some hadith reporters. To solve these problems، the author of the present paper suggests the utilization of Shaykh's tariq in his book Al-Fihrist.