A Study of the Question of the Agents of the Imam and the General Reliability of the Transmitters of Hadith

This article is a library and a descriptive-analytic research to answer the question whether one can establish the reliability of the narrator from the title “the agent of the Imam”. Agent by definition means a trustworthy person and technically he is a person who on behalf of the Imam has the mission to accomplish a task. Some of the experts of hadith have claimed the general reliability of the agents of the Imams. However، some other scholars on the basis that some of the agents are deemed to be unreliable in the books of the transmitters of hadith have rejected the general reliability of the agents. This article besides offering intellectual and narrative demonstrations offered by the Shii scholars of the transmitters of hadith، on the basis of narrative-intellectual argument proves that the trust of the Imam in a person is a sufficient reason for the latter’s reliability، and to deny the reliability of the Imam’s agent would depend on an assessment of the truth and falsehood of his reports، which would lead to circular reasoning or regress. Therefore، the general rule is to accept the general reliability of the agents of the Imam and only for particular reasons certain individuals would be excluded from this rule.