Validity Assessment of Narrative Attributions Authenticity in Misbah Al-Shari’ah: A Reflection on ‘Deceit and Forgery’ in it

Misbah Al-Shariah and Miftah Al-Haghighah was first introduced by Seyyed Ibn Tawus (also Tavoos) in the 7th century (AH). The author of this book and his time of life have never been known; yet since all of the book chapters begin with the phrase “Al-Sadiq said”, it is considered as one of the works attributed to Imam Sadiq. Whether or not this attribution is correct has always been under discussion. Various quotations have been made about the author of the book too. Quantitative and qualitative content analyses on this book reveals that most of the statements which are read in this book as hadiths or narrations from people other than the infallible Imams, does not have any roots in other books and Misbah is the only source in quoting them. In addition, many of such statements mentioned in Misbah and other books have a different source of attribution. Few studies have investigated why this has occurred. Therefore, the present study has adopted a documentary method along with quantitative and qualitative content analyses covering historical, interpretive, hadith-related, and mystical sources of both Shiite and Sunni to prove this hypothesis that all the chapters of Misbah Al-Shariah may have been written or transcribed by a Sufi whom has then added the phrase “Al-Sadiq said” to the beginning of all these narratives to attribute them to Imam Sadiq: a similar event which has occurred to works such as Solami’s ‘Haghigh Al-Tafsir’.