Hadith collections / Al-Kafi

Al-Kafi · Hadith 78

The Book about people with Divine Authority · Enlightening Points Deduced from the Holy Quran about Leadership with Divine Authority) · Volume 1, book 4, chapter 108, Hadith 78

Original Arabic text

78ـ عِدَّةٌ مِنْ أَصْحَابِنَا عَنْ أَحْمَدَ بْنِ مُحَمَّدٍ عَنْ عَلِيِّ بْنِ سَيْفٍ عَنْ أَبِيهِ عَنْ عَمْرِو بْنِ حُرَيْثٍ قَالَ سَأَلْتُ أَبَا عَبْدِ الله (عَلَيْهِ السَّلام) عَنْ قَوْلِ الله كَشَجَرَةٍ طَيِّبَةٍ أَصْلُها ثابِتٌ وَفَرْعُها فِي السَّماءِ قَالَ فَقَالَ رَسُولُ الله (صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَآلِه) أَصْلُهَا وَأَمِيرُ الْمُؤْمِنِينَ (عَلَيْهِ السَّلام) فَرْعُهَا وَالائِمَّةُ مِنْ ذُرِّيَّتِهِمَا أَغْصَانُهَا وَعِلْمُ الائِمَّةِ ثَمَرَتُهَا وَشِيعَتُهُمُ الْمُؤْمِنُونَ وَرَقُهَا هَلْ فِيهَا فَضْلٌ قَالَ قُلْتُ لا وَالله قَالَ وَالله إِنَّ الْمُؤْمِنَ لَيُولَدُ فَتُورَقُ وَرَقَةٌ فِيهَا وَإِنَّ الْمُؤْمِنَ لَيَمُوتُ فَتَسْقُطُ وَرَقَةٌ مِنْهَا.

Published English translation

78. A number of our people has narrated from Ahmad ibn Muhammad from Ali ibn Sayf from his father from ‘Amr ibn Harith who has said the following. “I asked abu ‘Abdallah (a.s.) about the words of Allah. “. . a blessed tree which has firm roots and branches rising up into the sky.” (14:24) The Imam (a.s.) said that the The Holy Prophet (s.a) said, “The root is Amir al-Mu’minin Ali (a.s.) and the branches are the Imams from their (Amir al-Mu’minin (a.s.) and The Holy Prophet (s.a) descendants and the knowledge of Imams stand for the fruits. Their faithful followers represent the leaves of such tree.” The Imam (a.s.) asked, “Is there anything else in the tree?” I said, “No, there is nothing else there. The Imam (a.s.) then said, “By Allah, when a faithful is given a child a leave grows in the tree and when a faithful dies a leave falls off the tree.”

Narrator and transmission

See the transmission information preserved in the original source text.

Attributed scholarly assessments

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/1/4/108/78
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
15217c96786147b75a73431cab21940f39c19d6c78f6a50316d39d41007da5c1
source File Hash
30bc491c96eb3860f3d3dfe97f46353a88858d7cb9e06d662ebdd04252ac5a3e
original Source Url
https://thaqalayn.net/hadith/1/4/108/78
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.