Al-Kafi · Hadith 3

The Book on Virtue of Knowledge · Chapter on the Need for the Existence of a Divine Authority in the World and the Seriousness of this Matter · Volume 1, book 2, chapter 15, Hadith 3

Original Arabic text

3ـ عَلِيُّ بْنُ إِبْرَاهِيمَ عَنْ أَبِيهِ وَمُحَمَّدُ بْنُ إِسْمَاعِيلَ عَنِ الْفَضْلِ بْنِ شَاذَانَ جَمِيعاً عَنِ ابْنِ أَبِي عُمَيْرٍ عَنْ جَمِيلِ بْنِ دَرَّاجٍ قَالَ سَمِعْتُ أَبَا عَبْدِ الله (عَلَيْهِ السَّلام) يَقُولُ إِذَا بَلَغَتِ النَّفْسُ هَاهُنَا وَأَشَارَ بِيَدِهِ إِلَى حَلْقِهِ لَمْ يَكُنْ لِلْعَالِمِ تَوْبَةٌ ثُمَّ قَرَأَ إِنَّمَا التَّوْبَةُ عَلَى الله لِلَّذِينَ يَعْمَلُونَ السُّوءَ بِجَهالَةٍ.

Published English translation

3. Ali ibn Ibrahim has narrated from his father and Muhammad ibn ’Isma‘il from al-Fadl ibn Shadhan, both from Ibn Abi ‘Umayr from Jamil ibn Darraj who has said the following. “(Imam) abu ‘Abdallah (a.s.) has said, “When the soul reaches here, pointing to his throat, there will be no chance for learned persons to repent. He recited this verse; “God will only accept the repentance of those who commit evil in ignorance, if they repent immediately. God is All-knowing and All-wise (4:17)”

Narrator and transmission

See the transmission information preserved in the original source text.

Attributed scholarly assessments

Allamah Baqir al-Majlisi: حسن كالصحيح

Mirʾāt al-ʿUqūl fī Sharḥ Akhbār Āl al-Rasūl (1/152)

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/1/2/15/3
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: de31487a33ea830b031849e9757d1c429de315ad960f71c10e4b4d854e3a95e1
source File Hash: 30bc491c96eb3860f3d3dfe97f46353a88858d7cb9e06d662ebdd04252ac5a3e
original Source Url: https://thaqalayn.net/hadith/1/2/15/3
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.