Hadith collections / Al-Kafi

Al-Kafi · Hadith 21

The Book of Belief and Disbelief · Al-Taqiyyah, Guarding and Cautiousness · Volume 2, book 1, chapter 97, Hadith 21

Original Arabic text

21ـ مُحَمَّدُ بْنُ يَحْيَى عَنْ أَحْمَدَ بْنِ مُحَمَّدِ بْنِ عِيسَى عَنْ زَكَرِيَّا الْمُؤْمِنِ عَنْ عَبْدِ الله بْنِ أَسَدٍ عَنْ عَبْدِ الله بْنِ عَطَاءٍ قَالَ قُلْتُ لأبِي جَعْفَرٍ (عَلَيهِ السَّلام) رَجُلانِ مِنْ أَهْلِ الْكُوفَةِ أُخِذَا فَقِيلَ لَهُمَا ابْرَأَا مِنْ أَمِيرِ الْمُؤْمِنِينَ فَبَرِئَ وَاحِدٌ مِنْهُمَا وَأَبَى الآخَرُ فَخُلِّيَ سَبِيلُ الَّذِي بَرِئَ وَقُتِلَ الآخَرُ فَقَالَ أَمَّا الَّذِي بَرِئَ فَرَجُلٌ فَقِيهٌ فِي دِينِهِ وَأَمَّا الَّذِي لَمْ يَبْرَأْ فَرَجُلٌ تَعَجَّلَ إِلَى الْجَنَّةِ.

Published English translation

21. Muhammad ibn Yahya has narrated from Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn ‘Isa from Zakariya al-Mu’min from ‘Abd Allah ibn Asad from ‘Abd Allah ibn ‘Ata’ who has said the following: “Once I said to abu la’ far (a.s.) ‘Two of the people of Kufah were held and it was said to them, “Denounce Amir al-Mu’minin (Ali ibn abu Talib) (a.s.). One of them did and the other did not denounce. The one who denounced was released and the other was killed.’ The Imam said, ‘The one who denounced was an expert of law of his religion and the one who did not denounce was in a hurry to go to paradise.’”

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 (9/184)

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, pp. 98, 99

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/2/1/97/21
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
b4dcd82451e65ad9da562c9af2101b72229780be996ebddcaeb4802fd13e42ee
source File Hash
d538c07d5f74e5fbc26b065897c076eab247d4d7c09e633fbb6184de9f37ee78
original Source Url
https://thaqalayn.net/hadith/1/1/97/21
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.