Hadith collections / Al-Kafi

Al-Kafi · Hadith 18

The Book of Belief and Disbelief · Kindness to Parents · Volume 2, book 1, chapter 69, Hadith 18

Original Arabic text

18ـ الْوَشَّاءُ عَنْ أَحْمَدَ بْنِ عَائِذٍ عَنْ أَبِي خَدِيجَةَ عَنْ أَبِي عَبْدِ الله (عَلَيهِ السَّلام) قَالَ جَاءَ رَجُلٌ إِلَى النَّبِيِّ (صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وآلِه) فَقَالَ إِنِّي قَدْ وَلَدْتُ بِنْتاً وَرَبَّيْتُهَا حَتَّى إِذَا بَلَغَتْ فَأَلْبَسْتُهَا وَحَلَّيْتُهَا ثُمَّ جِئْتُ بِهَا إِلَى قَلِيبٍ فَدَفَعْتُهَا فِي جَوْفِهِ وَكَانَ آخِرُ مَا سَمِعْتُ مِنْهَا وَهِيَ تَقُولُ يَا أَبَتَاهْ فَمَا كَفَّارَةُ ذَلِكَ قَالَ أَ لَكَ أُمٌّ حَيَّةٌ قَالَ لا قَالَ فَلَكَ خَالَةٌ حَيَّةٌ قَالَ نَعَمْ قَالَ فَابْرَرْهَا فَإِنَّهَا بِمَنْزِلَةِ الأمِّ يُكَفِّرْ عَنْكَ مَا صَنَعْتَ قَالَ أَبُو خَدِيجَةَ فَقُلْتُ لأبِي عَبْدِ الله (عَلَيهِ السَّلام) مَتَى كَانَ هَذَا فَقَالَ كَانَ فِي الْجَاهِلِيَّةِ وَكَانُوا يَقْتُلُونَ الْبَنَاتِ مَخَافَةَ أَنْ يُسْبَيْنَ فَيَلِدْنَ فِي قَوْمٍ آخَرِينَ.

Published English translation

18. Al-Washsha’ has narrated from Ahmad ibn ‘Ai’z from abu Khadijah from Abu ‘Abdillah (a.s.) who has said the following: “Once a man came to the Holy Prophet and said, ‘I had a daughter and I brought her up until she became an adult. I then dressed her up in beautiful clothes, took her to the well and threw her therein to her death and the last thing I heard from her was; O father! What is the expiation for it?’ The Messenger of Allah asked, ‘Do you have a living mother?’ He said, ‘No, I do not.’ The Messenger of Allah asked, ‘Do you have a living maternal aunt?’ He said, ‘Yes, I do.’ The Messenger of Allah said, ‘Be kind to her; she is like a mother, this will serve as expiation for what you have done.’ Abu Khadijah has said, ‘I asked Abu ‘Abdillah (a.s.) ‘When was this?’ The Imam said, ‘It was in the time of Jahiliyah (age of darkness). They would kill the girls for fear of being taken captive and giving birth to other people.’”

Narrator and transmission

See the transmission information preserved in the original source text.

Attributed scholarly assessments

Allamah Baqir al-Majlisi: ضعيف

Mirʾāt al-ʿUqūl fī Sharḥ Akhbār Āl al-Rasūl (8/429)

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/2/1/69/18
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
8211b20df13bb36cb3ed7f224c376f11d5a0bc974301ecd981f8a2b23938bf3c
source File Hash
d538c07d5f74e5fbc26b065897c076eab247d4d7c09e633fbb6184de9f37ee78
original Source Url
https://thaqalayn.net/hadith/1/1/69/18
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.