A Study on Traditions of Distortion in Ayyāshi Exegesis

The so called the traditions of distortion, the ambiguity in the history of codification of the Holy Qurān, the traditions likening the major events in the Islamic nation to the events of past nations and also the fact that the names of the infallible Imams are not mentioned in the Holy Qurān are the most important reasons which lead in the claim that Qurān might be distorted. Out of these reasons, the traditions which apparently indicate the distortion in the Holy Qurān are mostly required to be studied. In this regard, more than thousand traditions are narrated in the different books and ascribed to Shia Imams. Among those books, Ayyāshi exegesis is principally significant. Regardless of the previous documental studies, the present paper attempts to study traditions of distortion in Ayyāshi exegesis from the textual point of view. At the first step all those traditions extracted from the book are almost 90 traditions. Then the areas of conflict in the traditions are elaborated on. Finally after exact investigation of all extracted traditions, the ultimate categorizations of them are presented. The content evidences, the context of traditions, the outer text evidences and the sayings of Islamic scholars are focused in this research. The results indicate that in the Ayyāshi exegesis from the 90 traditions which were claimed to be the traditions of distortion only two traditions implied the distortion in the Qurān. Thus the accusation against Ayyāshi is rejected.