Hadith collections / Al-Kafi

Al-Kafi · Hadith 27

The Book of Intelligence and Ignorance · The Book of Intelligence and Ignorance · Volume 1, book 1, chapter 0, Hadith 27

Original Arabic text

27ـ عِدَّةٌ مِنْ أَصْحَابِنَا عَنْ أَحْمَدَ بْنِ مُحَمَّدٍ عَنِ الْهَيْثَمِ بْنِ أَبِي مَسْرُوقٍ النَّهْدِيِّ عَنِ الْحُسَيْنِ بْنِ خَالِدٍ عَنْ إِسْحَاقَ بْنِ عَمَّارٍ قَالَ قُلْتُ لابِي عَبْدِ الله (عَلَيْهِ السَّلام) الرَّجُلُ آتِيهِ وَأُكَلِّمُهُ بِبَعْضِ كَلامِي فَيَعْرِفُهُ كُلَّهُ وَمِنْهُمْ مَنْ آتِيهِ فَأُكَلِّمُهُ بِالْكَلامِ فَيَسْتَوْفِي كَلامِي كُلَّهُ ثُمَّ يَرُدُّهُ عَلَيَّ كَمَا كَلَّمْتُهُ وَمِنْهُمْ مَنْ آتِيهِ فَأُكَلِّمُهُ فَيَقُولُ أَعِدْ عَلَيَّ فَقَالَ يَا إِسْحَاقُ وَمَا تَدْرِي لِمَ هَذَا قُلْتُ لا قَالَ الَّذِي تُكَلِّمُهُ بِبَعْضِ كَلامِكَ فَيَعْرِفُهُ كُلَّهُ فَذَاكَ مَنْ عُجِنَتْ نُطْفَتُهُ بِعَقْلِهِ وَأَمَّا الَّذِي تُكَلِّمُهُ فَيَسْتَوْفِي كَلامَكَ ثُمَّ يُجِيبُكَ عَلَى كَلامِكَ فَذَاكَ الَّذِي رُكِّبَ عَقْلُهُ فِيهِ فِي بَطْنِ أُمِّهِ وَأَمَّا الَّذِي تُكَلِّمُهُ بِالْكَلامِ فَيَقُولُ أَعِدْ عَلَيَّ فَذَاكَ الَّذِي رُكِّبَ عَقْلُهُ فِيهِ بَعْدَ مَا كَبِرَ فَهُوَ يَقُولُ لَكَ أَعِدْ عَلَيَّ.

Published English translation

27. A number of our people has narrated from Ahmad ibn Muhammad from al-Haytham ibn abu Masruq al-Nahdi from al-Husayn ibn Khalid from Ishaq ibn ‘Ammar who has said the following. “I said to abu ‘Abdallah (a.s), “A man comes to me and as soon as I speak to him only a part of what I want to say he understands it all. There are also people who come to me and I speak to them all that I want to speak and only then they understand all of my statements. And explain to me what I meant. There are still others to whom I speak at length but they ask me to repeat to them what I have already expressed to them.” The Imam (a.s) then said, “O Ishaq, do you know why is this?” I replied, “ No, I do not know.” The Imam then said the following, “Those to whom you speak only some of what you want say and they understand the rest are those whose intelligence is mixed to take shape with his nature (Nutfa). Those who understand you only when you complete your speech are those whose intelligence is mixed with them in the womb of their mothers. Those who ask you to repeat what you already said are those, whose intelligence is combined with them when they grow up. It is such people who ask you to repeat your statement.”

Narrator and transmission

See the transmission information preserved in the original source text.

Attributed scholarly assessments

Allamah Baqir al-Majlisi: مجهول

Mirʾāt al-ʿUqūl fī Sharḥ Akhbār Āl al-Rasūl (1/84)

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: صحيح

Ṣaḥīḥ al-Kāfī, vol. 1, p. 2

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

Source, rights, and attribution

dataset Name
Thaqalayn public library, via ThaqalaynAPI snapshot
source Url
https://thaqalayn.com/hadith/1/1/0/27
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
d4e2b1e424ecb7e02eb6706cd70da6a10ddbf866dc79dc50fbed085fafa50093
source File Hash
30bc491c96eb3860f3d3dfe97f46353a88858d7cb9e06d662ebdd04252ac5a3e
original Source Url
https://thaqalayn.net/hadith/1/1/0/27
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.