Hadith collections / Al-Kafi

Al-Kafi · Hadith 2

The Book about people with Divine Authority · Only an Imam has the Authority to Wash the Body of an Imam for Burial · Volume 1, book 4, chapter 92, Hadith 2

Original Arabic text

2ـ وَعَنْهُ عَنْ مُعَلَّى بْنِ مُحَمَّدٍ عَنْ مُحَمَّدِ بْنِ جُمْهُورٍ عَنْ يُونُسَ عَنْ طَلْحَةَ قَالَ قُلْتُ لِلرِّضَا (عَلَيْهِ السَّلام) إِنَّ الامَامَ لا يَغْسِلُهُ إِلا الامَامُ فَقَالَ أَ مَا تَدْرُونَ مَنْ حَضَرَ لِغُسْلِهِ قَدْ حَضَرَهُ خَيْرٌ مِمَّنْ غَابَ عَنْهُ الَّذِينَ حَضَرُوا يُوسُفَ فِي الْجُبِّ حِينَ غَابَ عَنْهُ أَبَوَاهُ وَأَهْلُ بَيْتِهِ.

Published English translation

2. It is narrated from him from Mu‘alla ibn Muhammad from Muhammad ibn Jumhur from Yunus from Talha who has said the following. “Once I said to al-Rida (a.s.), ‘Is it true that only an Imam has the authority to wash the body of an Imam for burial?” The Imam (a.s.) said, “Do you know who comes to wash his body for burial? One who is better than the one who is absence from his presence comes to wash. Those who came to Joseph in the well to help when his parents and family were absent from him.”

Narrator and transmission

See the transmission information preserved in the original source text.

Attributed scholarly assessments

Allamah Baqir al-Majlisi: ضعيف

Mirʾāt al-ʿUqūl fī Sharḥ Akhbār Āl al-Rasūl (4/257)

Assessment transcribed from the source's named scholar and reference. No new grading or consensus is asserted; differing entries remain separate.

Shaykh Baqir al-Behbudi: Catalogue non-inclusion note (not an authenticity grade)

Ṣaḥīḥ al-Kāfī

Source records non-inclusion in this scholar's selection; this is not itself a weak or authentic grade.

Source, rights, and attribution

dataset Name
Thaqalayn public library, via ThaqalaynAPI snapshot
source Url
https://thaqalayn.com/hadith/1/4/92/2
license
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
edition
Al-Kafi, volume 1, Thaqalayn digital edition / Muhammad Sarwar translation
imported At
2026-10-18T21:36:12.871Z
license Url
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
rights Statement Url
https://thaqalayn.com/terms
attribution
Source: Thaqalayn (Stichting Thaqalayn). Compiler: Shaykh Muḥammad b. Yaʿqūb al-Kulaynī. Translation: Muhammad Sarwar. Data transport: MohammedArab1/ThaqalaynAPI. No endorsement implied.
translator
Muhammad Sarwar
source Revision
becbad600b693ce23735d7403c4126ce7c896d34
content Hash
6baa2f6421a070823af1b57cd55891a044a78daa998889e16ff189e1c848f412
source File Hash
30bc491c96eb3860f3d3dfe97f46353a88858d7cb9e06d662ebdd04252ac5a3e
original Source Url
https://thaqalayn.net/hadith/1/4/92/2
changes
Arabic and English texts preserved verbatim from pinned snapshot. Compiler introduction excluded where present; references mapped to fields; assessment whitespace trimmed; source-supplied English sanad retained separately. Search normalization is not applied to displayed text.
verification Note
Publisher content rights, translator attribution and structural checks, with independent publisher-page spot checks—not scholarly authentication or printed-edition collation. Historical text and scholarly reference strings may contain source errors; they are not silently corrected. No full commentary prose or inferred narrator identity is added. Muʿjam coverage, where present, is only the supplied excerpt, not the complete work.