Original Arabic text
Published English translation
1. Muhammad ibn Yahya has narrated from Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn ‘Isa from al-Hassan ibn Mahbub from Husayn ibn Nu’aym al-Sahhaf who has said the following: “Once I asked Abu ‘Abdillah (a.s.) ‘Why is it that a man is a believer before Allah and belief is established for him, then Allah transfers him from belief to disbelief?’ The narrator has said that the Imam said, ‘Allah, the Most Majestic, the Most Holy, is just. He has called the servants to believe in Him, not to disbelief and does not call anyone to disbelieve Him. Whoever believes in Allah and belief is then established for him before Allah, Allah, the Most Majestic, the Most Holy, does not transfer him thereafter from belief to disbelief.’ I said, ‘If a man is an unbeliever whose disbelief is established before Allah, will He transfer him from disbelief to belief?’ The Imam said, ‘Allah, the Most Majestic, the Most Holy, has created people - all of them - with the nature upon which He has fashioned them. They do not know belief in a way of life and a system of laws (is necessary) or that disbelief is denial (of something). Allah sent the Messengers who called people to believe in Him. Certain people are those whom Allah has guided (to the right path) and also among them are those whom He has not guided (to the right path).”’
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 (1/235)
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: صحيح
Ṣaḥīḥ al-Kāfī, vol. 1, pp. 127, 128
Assessment transcribed from the source's named scholar and reference. No new grading or consensus is asserted; differing entries remain separate.
Source, rights, and attribution
- dataset Name
- Thaqalayn public library, via ThaqalaynAPI snapshot
- source Url
- https://thaqalayn.com/hadith/2/1/181/1
- license
- Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
- edition
- Al-Kafi, volume 2, 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
- e3b795bdf73bad6258444dd724143b070e56fdf744adf3b3953dc6716da2652e
- source File Hash
- d538c07d5f74e5fbc26b065897c076eab247d4d7c09e633fbb6184de9f37ee78
- original Source Url
- https://thaqalayn.net/hadith/1/1/181/1
- 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. Snapshot URL's erroneous volume 1 segment corrected to volume 2 using the reviewed file/book/volume metadata and publisher chapter structure; original URL retained for audit.
- 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.