Hadith collections / Al-Kafi

Al-Kafi · Hadith 7

The Book of Belief and Disbelief · Obedience and Piety · Volume 2, book 1, chapter 36, Hadith 7

Original Arabic text

7ـ عِدَّةٌ مِنْ أَصْحَابِنَا عَنْ أَحْمَدَ بْنِ مُحَمَّدِ بْنِ خَالِدٍ عَنْ عُثْمَانَ بْنِ عِيسَى عَنْ مُفَضَّلِ بْنِ عُمَرَ قَالَ كُنْتُ عِنْدَ أَبِي عَبْدِ الله (عَلَيهِ السَّلام) فَذَكَرْنَا الأعْمَالَ فَقُلْتُ أَنَا مَا أَضْعَفَ عَمَلِي فَقَالَ مَهْ اسْتَغْفِرِ الله ثُمَّ قَالَ لِي إِنَّ قَلِيلَ الْعَمَلِ مَعَ التَّقْوَى خَيْرٌ مِنْ كَثِيرِ الْعَمَلِ بِلا تَقْوَى قُلْتُ كَيْفَ يَكُونُ كَثِيرٌ بِلا تَقْوَى قَالَ نَعَمْ مِثْلُ الرَّجُلِ يُطْعِمُ طَعَامَهُ وَيَرْفُقُ جِيرَانَهُ وَيُوَطِّئُ رَحْلَهُ فَإِذَا ارْتَفَعَ لَهُ الْبَابُ مِنَ الْحَرَامِ دَخَلَ فِيهِ فَهَذَا الْعَمَلُ بِلا تَقْوَى وَيَكُونُ الآخَرُ لَيْسَ عِنْدَهُ فَإِذَا ارْتَفَعَ لَهُ الْبَابُ مِنَ الْحَرَامِ لَمْ يَدْخُلْ فِيهِ.

Published English translation

7. A number of our people have narrated from Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Khalid from ‘Uthman ibn ‘Isa from Mufaddal ibn ‘Umar who has said the following: “Once I was in the presence of abu ‘Abd Allah (a.s.). We spoke about deeds and I said, ‘My deeds are the weakest.’ The Imam said, ‘Calm down. Ask forgiveness from Allah.’ Then the Imam said to me, ‘A little deed with piety is better than a great deal of deeds without piety.’ I then asked, ‘Can there be a great deal of deeds without piety?’ The Imam said, ‘Yes, it is true. It is like a man who feeds people, who is kind to his neighbors and entertains people at his home, but when a door to unlawful matters opens he enters such a door. Such are deeds without piety. There can be another person who does not have such deeds but when a door to unlawful matters opens he does not enter into such doors.’”

Narrator and transmission

See the transmission information preserved in the original source text.

Attributed scholarly assessments

Allamah Baqir al-Majlisi: ضعيف على المشهور معتب ر

Mirʾāt al-ʿUqūl fī Sharḥ Akhbār Āl al-Rasūl (8/56)

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/2/1/36/7
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
3c768548c2733c5fee15b622ebf2ade998c0531508d887584bcbb86b26f6c762
source File Hash
d538c07d5f74e5fbc26b065897c076eab247d4d7c09e633fbb6184de9f37ee78
original Source Url
https://thaqalayn.net/hadith/1/1/36/7
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.