Hadith collections / Al-Kafi

Al-Kafi · Hadith 4

The Book of Belief and Disbelief · To Profess One ’s Shortcomings · Volume 2, book 1, chapter 35, Hadith 4

Original Arabic text

4ـ أَبُو عَلِيٍّ الأشْعَرِيُّ عَنْ عِيسَى بْنِ أَيُّوبَ عَنْ عَلِيِّ بْنِ مَهْزِيَارَ عَنِ الْفَضْلِ بْنِ يُونُسَ عَنْ أَبِي الْحَسَنِ (عَلَيهِ السَّلام) قَالَ قَالَ أَكْثِرْ مِنْ أَنْ تَقُولَ اللهمَّ لا تَجْعَلْنِي مِنَ الْمُعَارِينَ وَلا تُخْرِجْنِي مِنَ التَّقْصِيرِ قَالَ قُلْتُ أَمَّا الْمُعَارُونَ فَقَدْ عَرَفْتُ أَنَّ الرَّجُلَ يُعَارُ الدِّينَ ثُمَّ يَخْرُجُ مِنْهُ فَمَا مَعْنَى لا تُخْرِجْنِي مِنَ التَّقْصِيرِ فَقَالَ كُلُّ عَمَلٍ تُرِيدُ بِهِ الله عَزَّ وَجَلَّ فَكُنْ فِيهِ مُقَصِّراً عِنْدَ نَفْسِكَ فَإِنَّ النَّاسَ كُلَّهُمْ فِي أَعْمَالِهِمْ فِيمَا بَيْنَهُمْ وَبَيْنَ الله مُقَصِّرُونَ إِلا مَنْ عَصَمَهُ الله عَزَّ وَجَلَّ.

Published English translation

4. Abu Ali al-Ash’ari has narrated from ‘Isa ibn Ayyub from Ali ibn Mahziyar from al-Fadl ibn Yunus from abu al-Hassan (a.s.) who has said the following: “You should say very often, ‘O Lord, do not include me among those whose beliefs are temporary and do not make me feel free of shortcomings.’ I (the narrator) then asked, ‘I know the meaning of people whose beliefs are temporary. They come into a religion and then abandon it. What is the meaning of, “Do not make me feel free of shortcomings?”’ The Imam said, ‘It is when after all the worship of Allah, the Most Majestic, the Most Holy, that you may do, you still think that you are falling far short of doing true worship. All people fall far short in their worshipping Allah truly except those to whom Allah, the Most Majestic, the Most Holy, has granted protection.’”

Narrator and transmission

See the transmission information preserved in the original source text.

Attributed scholarly assessments

Allamah Baqir al-Majlisi: مجهول

Mirʾāt al-ʿUqūl fī Sharḥ Akhbār Āl al-Rasūl (8/47)

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/2/1/35/4
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
a65de61cc40be149924fac373fc6de2b5ea4b36d9126323f5c68540f27d2b30d
source File Hash
d538c07d5f74e5fbc26b065897c076eab247d4d7c09e633fbb6184de9f37ee78
original Source Url
https://thaqalayn.net/hadith/1/1/35/4
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.