Al-Kafi · Hadith 1

The Book of Supplication · Secrecy in Prayer · Volume 2, book 2, chapter 12, Hadith 1

Original Arabic text

1ـ مُحَمَّدُ بْنُ يَحْيَى عَنْ أَحْمَدَ بْنِ مُحَمَّدِ بْنِ عِيسَى عَنْ أَبِي هَمَّامٍ إِسْمَاعِيلَ بْنِ هَمَّامٍ عَنْ أَبِي الْحَسَنِ الرِّضَا (عَلَيهِ السَّلام) قَالَ دَعْوَةُ الْعَبْدِ سِرّاً دَعْوَةً وَاحِدَةً تَعْدِلُ سَبْعِينَ دَعْوَةً عَلانِيَةً. وَفِي رِوَايَةٍ أُخْرَى دَعْوَةٌ تُخْفِيهَا أَفْضَلُ عِنْدَ الله مِنْ سَبْعِينَ دَعْوَةً تُظْهِرُهَا.

Published English translation

1. Muhammad ibn Yahya has narrated from Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn ‘Isa from abu Hammam Isma’Il ibn Hammam from abu al-Hassan al-Rida (a.s.) who has said the following: “A servant’s praying and pleading before Allah for help, privately once, is equal to seventy such prayers in public.’ In another Hadith it is said: ‘A prayer that you (hide from people) is better before Allah than seventy prayers made in public.’”

Narrator and transmission

See the transmission information preserved in the original source text.

Attributed scholarly assessments

Allamah Baqir al-Majlisi: صحيح وآخره مرسل

Mirʾāt al-ʿUqūl fī Sharḥ Akhbār Āl al-Rasūl (12/33)

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, p. 138

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/2/2/12/1
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: cc94a28c2696d87ec6ab079bd333957a000bceb665f3d6bdf16b462b68fcbedb
source File Hash: d538c07d5f74e5fbc26b065897c076eab247d4d7c09e633fbb6184de9f37ee78
original Source Url: https://thaqalayn.net/hadith/1/2/12/1
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.