A Consideration and Critique of Pseudo-Narrations and Unique Propositions in Kashifi’s Rawdat al-Shuhada’

Mullā Ḥusayn Kāshifī’s Rawḍat al-Shuhadā’ [Garden of the Martyrs] is an influential book as a narration of the Event of Karbala. The book was, however, under attack because it contained unreliable hadiths as well. In this paper, our focus is on his unique narrations—the ones that first appeared in this book and were later cited in other sources. The book’s story of al-Husayn’s martyrdom is sometimes incompatible with the tradition, reason, and commonsense as well as other historical accounts or indubitable events. Moreover, there are cases where the book undermines the status of the Infallible Imam or his family such that its straightforwardness makes the work baseless. It is important to deal with this book because it became a foundation for narrations of Shiite scholars in the five centuries following its writing. Furthermore, it influenced certain Shiite beliefs. In this paper, we deploy an analytical-critical approach to appraise remarkable distortions in the book.