Hadith collections / Al-Kafi

Al-Kafi · Hadith 3

The Book on Virtue of Knowledge · Chapter on the Qualities of the Scholars · Volume 1, book 2, chapter 5, Hadith 3

Original Arabic text

3ـ عِدَّةٌ مِنْ أَصْحَابِنَا عَنْ أَحْمَدَ بْنِ مُحَمَّدٍ الْبَرْقِيِّ عَنْ إِسْمَاعِيلَ بْنِ مِهْرَانَ عَنْ أَبِي سَعِيدٍ الْقَمَّاطِ عَنِ الْحَلَبِيِّ عَنْ أَبِي عَبْدِ الله (عَلَيْهِ السَّلام) قَالَ قَالَ أَمِيرُ الْمُؤْمِنِينَ (عَلَيْهِ السَّلام) أَ لا أُخْبِرُكُمْ بِالْفَقِيهِ حَقِّ الْفَقِيهِ مَنْ لَمْ يُقَنِّطِ النَّاسَ مِنْ رَحْمَةِ الله وَلَمْ يُؤْمِنْهُمْ مِنْ عَذَابِ الله وَلَمْ يُرَخِّصْ لَهُمْ فِي مَعَاصِي الله وَلَمْ يَتْرُكِ الْقُرْآنَ رَغْبَةً عَنْهُ إِلَى غَيْرِهِ أَلا لا خَيْرَ فِي عِلْمٍ لَيْسَ فِيهِ تَفَهُّمٌ أَلا لا خَيْرَ فِي قِرَاءَةٍ لَيْسَ فِيهَا تَدَبُّرٌ أَلا لا خَيْرَ فِي عِبَادَةٍ لَيْسَ فِيهَا تَفَكُّرٌ وَفِي رِوَايَةٍ أُخْرَى أَلا لا خَيْرَ فِي عِلْمٍ لَيْسَ فِيهِ تَفَهُّمٌ أَلا لا خَيْرَ فِي قِرَاءَةٍ لَيْسَ فِيهَا تَدَبُّرٌ أَلا لا خَيْرَ فِي عِبَادَةٍ لا فِقْهَ فِيهَا أَلا لا خَيْرَ فِي نُسُكٍ لا وَرَعَ فِيهِ.

Published English translation

3. A number of our people has narrated from Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Barqi from ’Isma’il ibn Mihran from abu Sa‘id al-Qammat from al-Halabi from abu ‘Abdallah (a.s.) who has said the following. “Imam Ali (a.s.) said, ‘Do you want me to describe to you the true Faqih, person who truly has a good understanding of religion? A true Faqih is one who does not cause people to despair from the mercy of Allah and does not make them to be unconcerned about the punishment of Allah, who does not allow them to consider disobedience to Allah as permissible and who do not abandon the holy Quran because of being attracted towards other matters. You must know that there is no goodness in knowledge without good understand (Fiqh). You must know that there is nothing good in a recitation without thinking about it. You must know that there is nothing good in worship without thoughtfulness. In another Hadith it says, “ You must know that there is nothing good in a knowledge without good understanding. You must know that there is nothing good in a recitation without thinking about it. You must know that there is nothing good in worship without having a good understanding of religion. You must know that there is nothing good in performing the acts of Hajj etc. without piety.’”

Narrator and transmission

See the transmission information preserved in the original source text.

Attributed scholarly assessments

Allamah Baqir al-Majlisi: صحيح

Mirʾāt al-ʿUqūl fī Sharḥ Akhbār Āl al-Rasūl (1/119)

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/1/2/5/3
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
ee14704376aacd46eb1658841c2548396baa4c2592219448ebfaf29d044bf8a7
source File Hash
30bc491c96eb3860f3d3dfe97f46353a88858d7cb9e06d662ebdd04252ac5a3e
original Source Url
https://thaqalayn.net/hadith/1/2/5/3
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.