Hadith collections / Al-Kafi

Al-Kafi · Hadith 1

The Book on Virtue of Knowledge · Chapter on the Rights of the scholars · Volume 1, book 2, chapter 6, Hadith 1

Original Arabic text

1ـ عَلِيُّ بْنُ مُحَمَّدِ بْنِ عَبْدِ الله عَنْ أَحْمَدَ بْنِ مُحَمَّدٍ عَنْ مُحَمَّدِ بْنِ خَالِدٍ عَنْ سُلَيْمَانَ بْنِ جَعْفَرٍ الْجَعْفَرِيِّ عَمَّنْ ذَكَرَهُ عَنْ أَبِي عَبْدِ الله (عَلَيْهِ السَّلام) قَالَ كَانَ أَمِيرُ الْمُؤْمِنِينَ (عَلَيْهِ السَّلام) يَقُولُ إِنَّ مِنْ حَقِّ الْعَالِمِ أَنْ لا تُكْثِرَ عَلَيْهِ السُّؤَالَ وَلا تَأْخُذَ بِثَوْبِهِ وَإِذَا دَخَلْتَ عَلَيْهِ وَعِنْدَهُ قَوْمٌ فَسَلِّمْ عَلَيْهِمْ جَمِيعاً وَخُصَّهُ بِالتَّحِيَّةِ دُونَهُمْ وَاجْلِسْ بَيْنَ يَدَيْهِ وَلا تَجْلِسْ خَلْفَهُ وَلا تَغْمِزْ بِعَيْنِكَ وَلا تُشِرْ بِيَدِكَ وَلا تُكْثِرْ مِنَ الْقَوْلِ قَالَ فُلانٌ وَقَالَ فُلانٌ خِلافاً لِقَوْلِهِ وَلا تَضْجَرْ بِطُولِ صُحْبَتِهِ فَإِنَّمَا مَثَلُ الْعَالِمِ مَثَلُ النَّخْلَةِ تَنْتَظِرُهَا حَتَّى يَسْقُطَ عَلَيْكَ مِنْهَا شَيْ‏ءٌ وَالْعَالِمُ أَعْظَمُ أَجْراً مِنَ الصَّائِمِ الْقَائِمِ الْغَازِي فِي سَبِيلِ الله.

Published English translation

1. Ali ibn Muhammad ibn ‘Abdallah has narrated from Ahmad ibn Muhammad from Muhammad ibn Khalid from Sulayman ibn Ja’far al-Ja’fari from a person he mentioned from Abu ‘Abdillah (al-Sadiq) (as) that Amir al-Mu'minin (as) used to say, "Among the rights of a scholar is that one must not overburden him with many questions nor should one pull on his garment (question excessively). When one would enter in his presence while other people are there one should offer general salutation to all of them and a special greeting directed towards the scholar only. One must sit before him and not behind him. One must not wink with his eyes nor make signal with one's hands and one must not excessively cite others by saying, "So-and-so said this" and "So-and-so said that" in contradiction to his words. One must not become impatient with the length of his companionship. For the scholar is like a date palm-you must wait patiently until something falls from it for you. And the scholar has a greater reward than one who fasts, prays, and fights in the way of Allah."

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 (1/123)

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/1/2/6/1
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
7ba0710b2eeaf72008812dd68dd85edc7806fa567d0b61f9e1b13bd989d4dc48
source File Hash
30bc491c96eb3860f3d3dfe97f46353a88858d7cb9e06d662ebdd04252ac5a3e
original Source Url
https://thaqalayn.net/hadith/1/2/6/1
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.