نشریه مطالعات اعتبار سنجی حدیث
پیاپی 1 (بهار و تابستان 1398)

The book, “Fehrest-e-Asma’e mosannefi al-Shi’a” written by Abu al-Abbas Ahmad ibn Ali al-Najashi, also known as the “Rijal-e-Najashi” is the most important bio-bibliographical book of Shi’a.  Despite the importance and reputation of this book, there is little information about its author Abu al-Abbas Ahmad ibn Ali Najashi, who was one of the greatest scholars of Shi’a, in the first half of the 5th century AH, in comparison to other Shi’a scholars of that age such as Sayyid Murtaḑa and Shaykh Tusi. Issues like his cognomen, the place of residence and the date of his death are also a matter of dispute. In this article, the information about the cases of dispute and also other issues of Najashi’s personal life such as his parentage, ancestors and relatives are presented, based on the available sources. Besides, in cases of dispute, considering the latest discussions about Najashi, one of the opposing opinions has been selected by providing evidence and opposing views have been answered. This article confirms Najashi’s death in 450 AH and does not accept some researchers’ opinion about his survival until 463. Also, this article replies to the claim that Najashi's book was written by his son, Ali ibn Ahmad, and not by he himself.

Paying attention to the reasons why biobibliographers deem a tradition narrator trustworthy and reliable or untrustworthy and unreliable is amongst the starting discussions of the common dialectic books of the late age.  From the very past, evaluating the sayings of the biobibliographers about the narrators was of importance in order to find out which traditions are trustworthy. Therefore, there are a lot of basic approaches regarding the reliability of the viewpoints of great biobibliographers like Najāshī, Shaikh al-Tūsi and Ibn al-Ghazāeri about the status of the narrators.  ‘Reliability of the individual narration’ and ‘trust’ are two famous approaches that have received different criticisms and reasons.  Testimony approach, also, was once used by some scholars like Muhaqqiq al-Hillī, Shaykh Hassan Ameli and the writer of Muntaqa al-Joman. In this paper, we have used the descriptive analytical librarian method to analyze the eight basic approaches in accepting the viewpoints of the bio-bibliographers about narrators.

Undoubtedly the Fathieh are one of the most active Shi’a groups in the Narration cycle. Amongst Fathieh, two households of Banu-Faḑḑal (Specially Hasan ibn Ali ibn Faḑḑal and Ali ibn Hasan ibn Faḑḑal) are of great importance. High respect of the bio-bibliographers towards these households and the trust they put in their narrations proves this. In this paper, we have tried to explain their cultural activity in terms of Shi’a Hadith narration after talking about their backgrounds. Considering the books written by Banu-Faḑḑal and also the references made by the other authors of bio-bibliographies and their solid presence in the references of Al-Kafī, the cultural activities of Banu-Faḑḑal has been offered in a descriptive analytical method.

Fehrest of shaykh Tusī is one of the bio-bibliography books that has reached our hands completely. Due to the high scientific status of Shaykh and also the importance of these books, many versions of this books have been written-copied. However, they vary from each other and have some errors. It was due to this fact that many scholars like Elvis Sprenger, Seyyed Muhammad sadiq Bahr ol-olum, Shaykh Jawad Qayumi and Seyyed Abdul-Aziz Tabātabāī tried to present an edited version of this book. In this article, we studied some theories in order to reach the reason of these shortcomings and the factors which had impact on them and by doing so we were able to evaluate the success rate of the editors in editing out those errors. Also by checking the most correct and accurate edit of this book (The edit of Seyyed Tabātabāī) we were able to study the errors left in the book and to edit them to be correct. Although considering the volume of Fehrest, the amount of these mistakes is not that much, but even this few mistakes also can have significant effect on the bio-bibliography researches. Considering all this, in this paper, we have extracted 25 mistakes and corrected them using the Citation-analytical method and also by referring to the other bio-bibliography books.

This paper studies the trips of Ibn Qūlawayh, great and famous Shi’a tradition narrator, to the different places of the Islamic world of his time and the results of these trips. The main questions in this regard are that, based on the historical and bio-bibliographical information, which cities were visited? In each city from which scholars he heard traditions? and what was the effect of these hearings in the writing of Kāmil al-zīyārāt? According to the researches done, we realized that Ibn Qūlawayh visited three regions of Rey, Askar Mokram and Egypt. In Rey, he heard the hadith legacy of Hussain ibn Ali al-Za’farāni and in Askar Mokram, he received the permission to narrate the hadith legacy of Ali ibn mahzīār al-Ahvāzi from Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Hussain al-Askari. Ibn Qūlawayh also had a trip to Egypt, during which he heard hadith from Muhammed ibn Ahmad ibn Ibrahim ibn Suleiman al-Faḑl al-je'fi al-Kufi, known as al-Sabuni, Abū Iṣa Obeid Allah bin al-Faḑl al-ta'ī al-Nābhānī, 'Abu Ali' Ahmad ibn Ali ibn Mahdi al-Raggi al-Ansari and Abul-Hussain Ahmad bin Abdullah bin Ali bin eshaq al-Naqed. Ibn Qūlawayh used the things he heard in this trip as the sources to write the book Kāmil al-zīyārāt.

Bio-bibliography is a knowledge that contains the recognition of the Hadith narrators’ status in order to decide if the narrations of a narrator will be accepted or not. One of the revered narrators of the third century that besides narrating traditions from different scholars, has had an important impact on preserving and spreading the books and also narrations of the great Twelver Shi’a scholar Faḑl ibn Shazan Neyshaburi, is his student, Ali ibn Muhammad ibn Qatiba. Credibility and reliability of this character is very important since it affects accepting or rejecting many narrations that can be used in jurisprudence, bio-bibliography and the study of beliefs. In this research, besides introducing this character, we have analyzed the methods by which we can prove his credibility and reliability and also, we have introduced two new methods that can be used in this regard.