Hadith collections / Al-Kafi

Al-Kafi · Hadith 7

The Book on Oneness of Allah (God) · Predestination, Fate and the Middle Road in Between · Volume 1, book 3, chapter 30, Hadith 7

Original Arabic text

عِدَّةٌ مِنْ أَصْحَابِنَا عَنْ أَحْمَدَ بْنِ أَبِي عَبْدِ الله عَنْ عُثْمَانَ بْنِ عِيسَى عَنْ إِسْمَاعِيلَ بْنِ جَابِرٍ قَالَ كَانَ فِي مَسْجِدِ الْمَدِينَةِ رَجُلٌ يَتَكَلَّمُ فِي الْقَدَرِ وَالنَّاسُ مُجْتَمِعُونَ قَالَ فَقُلْتُ يَا هَذَا أَسْأَلُكَ قَالَ سَلْ قُلْتُ يَكُونُ فِي مُلْكِ الله تَبَارَكَ وَتَعَالَى مَا لا يُرِيدُ قَالَ فَأَطْرَقَ طَوِيلاً ثُمَّ رَفَعَ رَأْسَهُ إِلَيَّ فَقَالَ لِي يَا هَذَا لَئِنْ قُلْتُ إِنَّهُ يَكُونُ فِي مُلْكِهِ مَا لا يُرِيدُ إِنَّهُ لَمَقْهُورٌ وَلَئِنْ قُلْتُ لا يَكُونُ فِي مُلْكِهِ إِلا مَا يُرِيدُ أَقْرَرْتُ لَكَ بِالْمَعَاصِي قَالَ فَقُلْتُ لابِي عَبْدِ الله (عَلَيْهِ السَّلام) سَأَلْتُ هَذَا الْقَدَرِيَّ فَكَانَ مِنْ جَوَابِهِ كَذَا وَكَذَا فَقَالَ لِنَفْسِهِ نَظَرَ أَمَا لَوْ قَالَ غَيْرَ مَا قَالَ لَهَلَكَ.

Published English translation

A number of persons of our people have narrated from Ahmad ibn abu ‘Abd Allah from ‘Uthman ibn ‘Isa from Isma‘il ibn Jabir who has said the following: “In the mosque of Madina there was a person who spoke of the issue of predetermination and people had gathered around him. I said to him, ‘O you, can I ask you a question?’ He said, ‘Yes, you may do so.’ I then said, ‘Can there be a thing in the kingdom of Allah the Majestic, the Glorious, that He may not want?’ He remained thinking for a while and then said to me, ‘O you, if I said that there can be something in His kingdom He does not want it means that He is defeated. If I say that there is nothing in His kingdom that He may not want I am giving you permission to commit sin. “I then told the story of that determinist to abu ‘Abd Allah (a.s.), who said, ‘He (the determinist man) looked for his own interest. Had he said something else he would have been destroyed.’”

Narrator and transmission

See the transmission information preserved in the original source text.

Attributed scholarly assessments

Allamah Baqir al-Majlisi: مرسل

Mirʾāt al-ʿUqūl fī Sharḥ Akhbār Āl al-Rasūl (2/189)

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/1/3/30/7
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
222a4ff10a7f6c12f7d8440358421cba5cc350f21f671f64ed26bc21aedd23d3
source File Hash
30bc491c96eb3860f3d3dfe97f46353a88858d7cb9e06d662ebdd04252ac5a3e
original Source Url
https://thaqalayn.net/hadith/1/3/30/7
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.