Statistical Analysis of the Chains of Transmission of Historical Traditions in al-Kafi

In al-Kāfī, Sheikh Kulaynī has dedicated only one section, with a total of 257 traditions, to ‘Chapters on History’, which we have evaluated in five respects: the method of transmission, connection of the chains of transmission, the direct and indirect teachers of Kulaynī, and the narrators [who transmitted them] from the Imam (a). Kulaynī has taken most of his historical narrations from his Qummī teachers, most of whom have been deemed reliable and sound in creed according to the existing works on Rijāl. As for the few whose beliefs have not been recorded, it is only due to lack of information about them, not because of their unreliability or the soundness of their beliefs. Kufi narrators have the greatest share in narrating these traditions and from this it can be deduced that [on the whole,] most of the narrations of al-Kāfī from Qummī teachers have been transmitted by Kufi narrators.