A Deliberation on the Hadith “Man akhlaṣa li Allāh…” from the Two Sects’ Perspectives

The hadith, “Whoever dedicates himself to Allah for forty days, will find springs of wisdom sprout out of his heart and flow on his tongue”, which has been related by various phrasings in the hadith sources of both Shi’a and Sunni, is among the hadiths that the scholars of the two sects (farīqayn) have viewed in in different ways. Due to its weakness of sanad and being mursal (having no chain of transmitters or with an incomplete one), this hadith has been generally considered among the Sunnis as fabricated by the Sufis and thus counted as a forged hadith, in such a way that it can be found in all their books of fabricated hadiths. This same hadith, however, has been related in some valid Shi’a sources and, while approving it, the hadith commentators have undertaken the exposition of its content. Organized by the descriptive-analytic method, the present paper has emphasized on the “non-literal transmission” of the above-mentioned hadith and rescinded its being fabricated.