Views of Ghaza iri and Ibn Ghaza iri concerning Stations of the Imams (A.S) A Critical

Imamate as well as perfections and virtues of the Imams (A.S) are among most important ideological issues and have created many encounters in the course of Shi’i history. To get familiar with views of earlier Shi’i scholars and muhaddithun in historical analysis of Shi’is’ ideas is of paramount importance. Ghaza’iri and his son were among great scholars of biographies of scholars of religion (science of rijal). They were familiar with writings of their contemporary Shi’is. For this reason, their views about stations of the Imams (A.S) and the limits of extremism are of importance. Because of the ideas of some of our contemporaries who are of the opinion that most earlier scholars- and in particular Ibn Ghaza’iri- have provided a non-Divine reading of the position of Imamate, this view assumes much more importance. In the present article, relying upon historical evidence, hadiths narrated by Ghaza’iri and the book al-Du‘afa which is ascribed to Ibn Ghaza’iri, the author has shown that Ghaza’iri and Ibn Ghaza’iri believe that Imam is appointed by God and Imams (A.S) enjoy perfections such as infallibility, God-given knowledge, knowledge of the hidden, and extraordinary capabilities. Since no independent work written by them has been handed down to us, perfections such as knowledge of the hidden and the like can be accurately judged; however, they confirmed such perfections and did not consider [belief in] them as extremism.