The Life Story of the Twelve Imams (A.S.) in Jāmī's Shawāhid al-Nabuwwa

Shawāhid al-Nabuwwa of ‘Abd al-Raḥmān Jāmī (d. 898/1492) is among the books written by one of the Sunnī scholars who has authored it with a Sufi taste. In this book, Jāmī has addressed the life of the Prophet (S.A.W.), the twelve Imams (A.S.), and the companions (ṣaḥāba) with a miracle-oriented approach and has presented precisely the same reports about the Imams (A.S.) that are found in Shī‘ī sources. The approach of this book is “approximate” and has widely narrated the Imams’ miraculous acts and supernatural feats. The trend of the Imams’ hagiography, started since fourth/tenth century in early Sufi books, was perfected in ninth/fifteenth century by the compilation of such books as Shawāhid al-Nabuwwa, in a way that a similarity is noticed in the data concerning the life story of the Imams in both Sunnī and Shī‘ī sources. Examining the part of life story and miraculous acts of the twelve Imams (A.S.) in Shawāhid al -Nabuwwa and comparing it with the contents of Kashf al-Ghumma of ‘Alī b. ‘Īsā Irbalī (d. 692/1106), the seventh/thirteenth century Shī‘a scholar, the present article is intended to show the conformity and similarity of the Sunnī and Shī‘ī sources concerning their reports on the life story of the Imams (A.S.).