Hadith collections / Al-Kafi

Al-Kafi · Hadith 1

The Book on Virtue of Knowledge · Chapter on the quality of knowledge its virtue and the virtue of the scholars · Volume 1, book 2, chapter 2, Hadith 1

Original Arabic text

1ـ مُحَمَّدُ بْنُ الْحَسَنِ وَعَلِيُّ بْنُ مُحَمَّدٍ عَنْ سَهْلِ بْنِ زِيَادٍ عَنْ مُحَمَّدِ بْنِ عِيسَى عَنْ عُبَيْدِ الله بْنِ عَبْدِ الله الدِّهْقَانِ عَنْ دُرُسْتَ الْوَاسِطِيِّ عَنْ إِبْرَاهِيمَ بْنِ عَبْدِ الْحَمِيدِ عَنْ أَبِي الْحَسَنِ مُوسَى (عَلَيْهِ السَّلام) قَالَ دَخَلَ رَسُولُ الله (صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَآلِه) الْمَسْجِدَ فَإِذَا جَمَاعَةٌ قَدْ أَطَافُوا بِرَجُلٍ فَقَالَ مَا هَذَا فَقِيلَ عَلامَةٌ فَقَالَ وَمَا الْعَلامَةُ فَقَالُوا لَهُ أَعْلَمُ النَّاسِ بِأَنْسَابِ الْعَرَبِ وَوَقَائِعِهَا وَأَيَّامِ الْجَاهِلِيَّةِ وَالاشْعَارِ الْعَرَبِيَّةِ قَالَ فَقَالَ النَّبِيُّ (صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَآلِه) ذَاكَ عِلْمٌ لا يَضُرُّ مَنْ جَهِلَهُ وَلا يَنْفَعُ مَنْ عَلِمَهُ ثُمَّ قَالَ النَّبِيُّ (صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَآلِه) إِنَّمَا الْعِلْمُ ثَلاثَةٌ آيَةٌ مُحْكَمَةٌ أَوْ فَرِيضَةٌ عَادِلَةٌ أَوْ سُنَّةٌ قَائِمَةٌ وَمَا خَلاهُنَّ فَهُوَ فَضْلٌ.

Published English translation

1. Muhammad b. al-Hasan has narrated from Ali b. Muhammad from Sahl b. Ziyad from Muhammad b. ‘Isa from Ubaydullah al-Dihqan from Durust al-Wasiti from Ibrahim b. Abdul Hamid from Abul Hasan Musa (as) who has said: “Once Rasulullah (sw) entered the Mosque and found a group of people gathered around a man. He asked, 'Who is he?'. It was said that he was a Allamah. He then asked them, 'What is that?'. They replied that he is the most learned man about the genealogy, the chronology, and the history of the pre-Islamic days of darkness and the poetry of Arabs. He (a.s) said, so the Prophet (sw) then stated that ‘such knowledge doesn't harm the one who is ignorant of it or benefit the one who knows it.' Then he (sw) added: ‘Knowledge consists of three kinds: A clear verse (of the Qur'an), a just obligation (i.e. a legal ruling) or an established sunnah (i.e. a hadith). Anything else is of the extra achievements.”’

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 (1/102)

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/1/2/2/1
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
6a6f8c03e8ad6a23cd51dba2c76f3845e55179a0e57504ffc61da98f5068efa1
source File Hash
30bc491c96eb3860f3d3dfe97f46353a88858d7cb9e06d662ebdd04252ac5a3e
original Source Url
https://thaqalayn.net/hadith/1/2/2/1
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.