The Hadith “Whoever Knows Himself Knows his God:” An Authentication

Despite its prominent position in scriptural propositions and despite its importance in “Shia jurisprudential mysticism,” the idea of “self-knowledge” is the subject of various disputes, including a dispute over its most significant scriptural proof which is the hadith “whoever knows himself knows his God.” Yet it is crucial to know that not only the claim over the invalidity of the hadith is unacceptable, but overlooking all scriptural verifications for this hadith and focusing on justifications like “Quranic confirmations,” “semantic frequency,” or “the rule of the consolidation of weak hadiths” are worthy of consideration. For though the aforesaid hadith is at first sight a weak (Morsal) hadith and is not reliable, but it is possible to prove its validity by relying on “the consolidation of conjectures” and by an aggregation of a collection of “documentary and significative postulations” like: “the credibility of sources”; “inclusion in the credible collection of One Hundred Words”; “excellency of letter and spirit”; “semantic or schematic frequency”; “scriptural reputation”; “acceptance by the erudite” and “support by Quranic, argumentative, and intuitive confirmations,” and in doing so, reinforce one of the most important principles of mysticism and methodically found an “Islamic pedagogical system” upon it.