Sayyid Murtada and the Criteria for the Approval of the Traditions

Considering the rationalistic tendency among Sheiks of Baghdad, a review of Sayyid Murtada’s viewpoints, as one of the most important representative of the Baghdad school of thought in the evaluation and acceptance of traditions, unveils the hidden aspects of this school in interacting with the traditions. Due to his belief in the view that isolated traditions do not result in certainty, he considers them unreliable and states that their disapproval among the Shiites is based on consensus. Sayyid Murtada does not consider acting in accordance to an isolated tradition as illogical; however, he believes that such act of worship has not been recognized in the religion. In his view, wisdom has a special role in the validation of the text of hadith; meanwhile, the traditions that appear contradictory to the belief principles and rational arguments should not be rejected and denied, immediately. Among the Shiite scholars, Sayyid Murtada can be the first to be considered to have raised the issue of justice in evaluation of the narrators of hadith. His strict criteria of justice, which were accompanied with theological issues, have caused a lot of narrators to be considered as unjust. Sayyid Murtada believed that the only way for the approval of hadiths is face to face discussion for the present audience and availability of wide transmissions for the others not current to the narrators. In this paper, the report of the author of Ma’alim has been presented and criticized based on Sayyid Murtada and the evidences for its rejection or confirmation have been studied. In this report, the author of Ma’alim has claimed that Sayyid Murtada has confirmed most of the Shiite works due to wide transmissions or coupling with evidences.

Keywords: Sayyid Murtada, wide transmission, isolated tradition

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* Faculty member of the Institute of Howzah and University