Hadith collections / Al-Kafi

Al-Kafi · Hadith 15

The Book of Belief and Disbelief · The Fundamentals of Islam · Volume 2, book 1, chapter 13, Hadith 15

Original Arabic text

15ـ مُحَمَّدُ بْنُ يَحْيَى عَنْ أَحْمَدَ بْنِ مُحَمَّدٍ عَنْ عَلِيِّ بْنِ النُّعْمَانِ عَنِ ابْنِ مُسْكَانَ عَنْ سُلَيْمَانَ بْنِ خَالِدٍ عَنْ أَبِي جَعْفَرٍ (عَلَيهِ السَّلام) قَالَ أَ لا أُخْبِرُكَ بِالإسْلامِ أَصْلِهِ وَفَرْعِهِ وَذِرْوَةِ سَنَامِهِ قُلْتُ بَلَى جُعِلْتُ فِدَاكَ قَالَ أَمَّا أَصْلُهُ فَالصَّلاةُ وَفَرْعُهُ الزَّكَاةُ وَذِرْوَةُ سَنَامِهِ الْجِهَادُ ثُمَّ قَالَ إِنْ شِئْتَ أَخْبَرْتُكَ بِأَبْوَابِ الْخَيْرِ قُلْتُ نَعَمْ جُعِلْتُ فِدَاكَ قَالَ الصَّوْمُ جُنَّةٌ مِنَ النَّارِ وَالصَّدَقَةُ تَذْهَبُ بِالْخَطِيئَةِ وَقِيَامُ الرَّجُلِ فِي جَوْفِ اللَّيْلِ بِذِكْرِ الله ثُمَّ قَرَأَ (عَلَيهِ السَّلام) تَتَجافى‏ جُنُوبُهُمْ عَنِ الْمَضاجِعِ.

Published English translation

15. Muhammad ibn Yahya has narrated from Ahmad ibn Muhammad from Ali ibn al-Ni’man from ibn Maskan from Sulayman ibn Khalid from abu Ja’far recipient of divine supreme covenant, who has said the following: “Do you want me to teach you the root of Islam, its branch and its peak? I said, ‘Yes, may Allah take my soul in service for your cause.’ The Imam said, ‘Its root is prayer, its branch is al-Zakat (charity) and its peak is Jihad (the hard work in defense and preaching of the belief).’ The Imam then said, ‘If you want 1 can teach you about the gates to all good.’ I said, ‘Yes, please, May Allah keep my soul in service for your cause, do so.’ “The Imam said, ‘Fasting is a shield against fire, charity removes sins and of the gates to good is to stand up (for worship) during the night to speak of Allah.’ He then read (the words of Allah) ‘They do not allow their sides to rest in bed (but they stand up at night to pray to Allah).”’ (32:16)

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 (7/119)

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. 68

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/2/1/13/15
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
cb8f4c7e269c392a40a3ba5d9c068b8cae34becd67e39e35a9c27aca32178a33
source File Hash
d538c07d5f74e5fbc26b065897c076eab247d4d7c09e633fbb6184de9f37ee78
original Source Url
https://thaqalayn.net/hadith/1/1/13/15
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.