Al-Kafi · Hadith 11

The Book about people with Divine Authority · The obligation to obey the Imams (a.s.) · Volume 1, book 4, chapter 8, Hadith 11

Original Arabic text

11ـ عَلِيُّ بْنُ إِبْرَاهِيمَ عَنْ صَالِحِ بْنِ السِّنْدِيِّ عَنْ جَعْفَرِ بْنِ بَشِيرٍ عَنْ أَبِي سَلَمَةَ عَنْ أَبِي عَبْدِ الله (عَلَيْهِ السَّلام) قَالَ سَمِعْتُهُ يَقُولُ نَحْنُ الَّذِينَ فَرَضَ الله طَاعَتَنَا لا يَسَعُ النَّاسَ إِلا مَعْرِفَتُنَا وَلا يُعْذَرُ النَّاسُ بِجَهَالَتِنَا مَنْ عَرَفَنَا كَانَ مُؤْمِناً وَمَنْ أَنْكَرَنَا كَانَ كَافِراً وَمَنْ لَمْ يَعْرِفْنَا وَلَمْ يُنْكِرْنَا كَانَ ضَالاً حَتَّى يَرْجِعَ إِلَى الْهُدَى الَّذِي افْتَرَضَ الله عَلَيْهِ مِنْ طَاعَتِنَا الْوَاجِبَةِ فَإِنْ يَمُتْ عَلَى ضَلالَتِهِ يَفْعَلِ الله بِهِ مَا يَشَاءُ.

Published English translation

11. Ali ibn Ibrahim has narrated from Salih ibn al-Sindi from Ja’far ibn Bashir from abu Salma who has said that I heard Imam abu ‘Abdallah say the following. “We are the ones obedience to whom is obligatory by the commands of Allah. People have no other choice except to know us and they will not be excused for not knowing us. Those who know us are the true believers and those who would refuse to acknowledge our Divine authority are unbelievers. Those who would not know us and would not acknowledge us are straying and lost until they return to guidance and affirm the fact that Allah has made obedience to us obligatory. But if they would die in their straying condition Allah will deal with the way He would will.”

Narrator and transmission

See the transmission information preserved in the original source text.

Attributed scholarly assessments

Allamah Baqir al-Majlisi: لم يحقق

Mirʾāt al-ʿUqūl fī Sharḥ Akhbār Āl al-Rasūl (2/332)

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/1/4/8/11
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: 2f9d4d0ab1ec8a638f2440dd53661b2168b9d36398a535b65f62ca39fc021965
source File Hash: 30bc491c96eb3860f3d3dfe97f46353a88858d7cb9e06d662ebdd04252ac5a3e
original Source Url: https://thaqalayn.net/hadith/1/4/8/11
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.