Analysis of the Status and Rijālī Personality of Abū Ja'far al-Husseini al-ʿAlawī al-Marʿashī, the Main Narrator of the Book Tafsīr Attributed to Imam Hassan Askari (as)

Among the Shiite scholars, especially the later scholars, the books al-Iḥtijāj and Tafsīr of Imam Hassan Askari (as) are controversial. These disputes are multidimensional and consist of several layers such as: date of authorship, attribution of the book to the author, documents and content of the books. In the meantime, it is noteworthy that the whole book of Tafsīr Askari (as) and also a significant part of the book al-Iḥtijāj, according to a narrator, is called "Abū Ja'far al-Marʿashī". Therefore, it is important to identify and translate the narrator's status. An analysis of Abū Ja'far's situation in earlier sources may shed light on these two books in terms of the rijālī identity of the narrators and authors; also, it may be able to methodize the history of transfers of these books, and even to resolve some of the controversies surrounding these two books. Based on the present research, which has been done by the library method, it became clear that in the early and later Shiite sources, there is no information, more than one text line, about Abū Ja'far Marʿashī and his student Tabarsi; and apart from the fact that his fame is one of the latest made. However, there is little translation of Abū Ja'far by Samʿānī, and he has called him an "exaggerated Shiite."