According to the Imāmiyya Shī’ah, hadīth is the words, deeds and actions of the Prophet and the twelve Imams, whom they regard as innocent like him, and there is no difference between them. This is because the “spirit” that came to the Messenger of Allah passed on to the imams after his death (al-Qulaynī, I, 273-274). Regarding this understanding, it is narrated that the sixth imam, Ja’far al-Sa’iq, said: “My word is the word of my father, the word of my father is the word of my grandfather, the word of my grandfather is the word of Husayn, the word of Husayn is the word of Hasan, the word of Hasan is the word of Amīr al-muminīn (Hazrat Ali), his word is the word of the Messenger of Allah, and the word of the Messenger of Allah is the word of Allah” (ibid., I, 53). As a result, the word of the imams (M. Husayn Āl al-Kāshifi al-Ghitā, p. 58), who have a position similar to that of the prophets and are appointed by God like them, is the word of God because they know everything that the angels and prophets know and they have the opportunity to receive the information they want to learn directly from God (al-Qulaynī, I, 255-258). In addition, the seventy zirâ long “Jāmi’a”, which the Messenger of Allah dictated to Hazrat Ali, contains everything that people need, every event that will take place until the Day of Judgement, all the lawful and unlawful things, and even the names of the people in paradise; this book, which cannot decay or wear out, was handed down to the imams through Hazrat Ali. There is also this kind of information in a book called “Dîwânü’sh-Shî’a”, which was given to the Prophet on the night of Mi’raj and passed on from him to Hazrat Ali and the imams. A book called “al-Jifr al-abyaz”, which was in the possession of Ja’far al-Sa’far al-Sadiq, contains the Zabûr, the Torah, the Injil, the books given to Abraham and the mushaf of Hazrat Fatimah (Majlisî, XXVI, 18-67, 121-125). According to Ahl al-Sunnah sources, the Prophet ‘Ali replied to those who asked him whether he had anything other than the Qurʾān that was given to him by the Messenger of Allah, that he had nothing with him except a small book containing three or five hadīths about some rulings, and that those who made such a claim were liars (Muslim, “ʿItḳ”, 20; al-Nasāʾī, “Ḳasāma”, 9, 13).

According to Shīʿa, the Prophet never forbade the writing down of his sayings; for this reason, some of the Companions, especially the Prophet ‘Ali and Ibn ‘Abbas, wrote hadiths during the Prophet’s lifetime, and the Shīʿites began to collect hadiths as early as the time of the Hulefā-yi Rāshidīn. The Sahīfa (Kitāb al-ʿAlī, Kitāb al-ʿAlī in some sources, cf. Hasan al-Sadr, Teʾsīṣīṣ al-Shīʿa, p. 279) was a voluminous work that contained all halāl and haram matters. Abū Rāfiʿ al-Kibtī, a companion of the Messenger of Allah and one of the prominent Shiʿites of his time, is said to have collected and edited the hadīths for the first time in his Kitāb al-Sunān wa’l-aḥkām wa’l-ḳaḍāyā. According to them, Salmān al-Fārisī, one of the Shiʿite Companions and the author of Kitāb al-Ḥadīs̱i Jās̱īlīḳ (Jās̱īlīḳ), and Abū Zar al-Ghifārī, the author of Kitāb al-Ḫuṭba (Kitāb al-Ḫuṭba), which contains information about events after the Prophet’s death, as well as the Prophet ʿAli and Ammār b. Yūmār. Among the first compilers were Asbagh b. Nubāṭa, who narrated from ʿAli and Ammār b. Yāṣir and was known as an extreme Shiʿite (al-Zaḥabī, Mīzān al-iʿtidāl, I, 271), Ubayd ʿAbdullah b. Abū Rāfiʿ, the scribe of Ḥasan ʿAlī, and Zayn al-ʿAbidīn, later known as al-Sajjād. Although the members of the Ahl al-Sunnah abstained from writing hadiths and began to collect them only from the second (VIIIth) century onwards, the Shi’a groups, who took Hazrat Ali as their model, never neglected to write hadiths. From the Prophet ‘Ali to the eleventh imam, Hasan b. ‘Ali al-‘Asqari (d. 260/874), Shīʿa wrote more than 6600 works on hadīth (Hasan al-Sadr, al-Shīʿa wa funūn al-Islam, p. 36), each of the 400 books (al-usūl al-arbaa mie) is regarded as “original” and it is accepted that they were written directly by hearing directly from the holy imams without the benefit of any other book, but the author of only sixty or seventy of them can be mentioned (Ibn Shahrāshūb, p. 2; Hasan al-Amīn, [1401/1981], II, 33-46). The following four books (qutub al-arbaa), which are composed of these works and are the most respected after the Qur’ân al-kerîm, have the importance of the Sunnites’ Qutub al-Sitta: 1. al-Qāfī of al-Qulaynī (d. 329/940) (Tabriz 1281; Tehran 1311; I-VIII, Tehran 1375-1378, 1961). This most valuable hadith book of the Imāmiyya, which the author is said to have compiled in thirty (or twenty) years, contains 16,099 hadiths and consists of three sections: “usul”, “fürū”, and “rawḍa”. Most of the narrations in the work consist of the sayings of Ja’far al-Sa’far al-Sa’iq and the other innocent imams, and very few of them belong to the Prophet. 2. Ibn Bābawayh al-Qummī’s (d. 381/991) Men lā yaḥḍḍuruh al-faḳīh (I-IV, Leknaw 1306-1307; I-IV, Najaf 1377; Beirut 1401/1981). 5963 (9044: Hasan al-Sadr, Teʾsī al-Shīʿa, p. 288) hadiths. Ibn Bābawayh omitted the senedahs in order not to lengthen his work too much and said that he selected the hadiths from the books of some Shiʿite authors who were reliable in his opinion (Men lā yaḥḍḍuruh al-faḳīh, I, 3). 3. The Tehẕīb al-aḥkām of Abū Jaʿfar al-Ṭūsī (d. 460/1067), known as Shaykh al-ṭāifa (I-II, Tehran 1316-1318; I-IX, Najaf 1377-1382; Beirut 1401/1981). Consisting of 393 chapters, the work contains 13,590 hadiths, especially on ethics. 4. Al-Istibṣār by Abū Ja’far al-Tūsī (I-III, Leknaw, ts.; I-IV, Najaf 1375-1376). Consisting of 920 (915 or 925) chapters, it is an abridgement of Tehẕīb al-aḥkām and contains 5511 ahkām hadīths (ibid., pp. 288-289; Aʿyān al-shīʿa, I, 144). Abū Jaʿfar al-Ṭūsī largely selected the hadīths in these two works from al-Kāfī, and the isnād of all narrations is not muttasıl (for more information on these works, on which many commentaries, glosses, and taʿlīqs have been written, cf. KÜTÜB-i ERBAA).

There are three other books that immediately follow the four books in terms of importance. The first of these is Feyz al-Kāshānī’s (d. 1090/1679) al-Wāfī (I-II, Tehran 1310-1314; I-III, Tehran 1322-1324; I-III, Qom 1404/1984), which contains usul, fürū, sunān and ahkām. The author later edited this work under the title of al-Shāfī. The second book is Wasaʾil al-Shīʿa ilā taḥṣīli masāʾili al-sharīʿa (I-III, Tehran 1269-1271, 1283-1288, 1313-1314, 1323-1324; Tabriz 1313; nşr. Abdurrahim Rabbānī Shīrāzī, I-XX, Tehran-Kum 1376-1389 and the offset edition of this edition: Beirut 1412/1991). In order to make the work easier to use, the author removed the isnads of the hadīths and condensed his book under the title Hidāyat al-umma ilā aḥkāmi al-eʾimme. Mirzā Ḥosayn b. Moḥammad Taqī al-Nūrī al-Tabersī collected a total of 23,000 narrations in his al-Mustadreq al-Wasāʾil (I-III, Tehran 1318-1321), including hadiths not included in Ḥur al-ʿĀmilī’s work, and Āyatollah Āgā Ḥosayn Burūjirdī corrected some of the errors of al-Wasāʾil in his Tehẕīb al-Wasāʾil. The third work is Moḥammad Baʿqir al-Majlisī’s (d. 1110/1698 [?]) Biḥār al-anwār (I-CX, Tehran 1376-1394; Beirut 1403/1983), which collects Shiʿite-Imāmī narrations from some 400 works by Shiʿite authors.

Shiʿite scholars, unlike Ahl al-Sunnah, were not conservative about their hadīth books, did not consider all the hadīths in these books as suitable for evidence, and therefore criticised them when necessary, However, Ahl al-Sunnah’s claim that almost all the hadīths in the books of the Qutub al-Sitta, especially Ṣaḥīḥayn, are considered infallible and that they do not allow criticism of them (Dāʾirat al-maʿārifi al-Islamiyyat al-Shīʿiyya, III, 118, 120) does not reflect the truth. Muhaddiths such as Abū Dāwūd and al-Tirmidhī have stated that there are weak hadiths in their books, which are included in the Qutub al-Sitta, and the imams of Sunnī sects have also criticised some of the hadiths in these books and did not find it right to use them as evidence (see Qutub al-Sitta).

According to Shi’a, hadiths are categorised in two main sections: mutawâtir and âhâd. Ahād hadiths are divided into four categories: sahih, hasan, muwassak and weak, and these are further divided into about thirty types. In order for a hadith to be sahih, it must be narrated by a righteous narrator from the Imāmiyyah with a consonant senad from a righteous and Imāmiyyah narrator at each level until it reaches the Prophet, who is innocent, or the Imam. The fact that a hadīth is shāz does not prevent it from being sahih (Shahīd-i Sānī, pp. 77-80). Muwasaq hadith is the hadith narrated by other Muslims who are not Shi’ites, in other words, who are accepted by the Shi’ites as reliable in terms of transmission, even though they are not Shi’ites. It is also called “kavî” (ibid., pp. 84-85). The narration of a praised narrator who is not known to be righteous is considered hasan, and narrations that do not meet the conditions of sahih, hasan, and muwasaqa hadith are considered weak. It is said that it was Abū al-Fazāʿil Sayyid Jamāl al-Dīn Aḥmad b. Ṭāwūs (d. 673/1274) who developed a new terminology for the Imāmiyya and divided the hadīths into four categories: sahih, hasan, muwāsak, and weak (Hasan al-Sadr, al-Shīʿa wa funūn al-Islām, p. 40), or that Ibn al-Mutahhar al-Khillī (d. 726/1325) made this distinction. The allegations that the Sunnites did not accept any hadith narrated by the Shīʿites on the grounds that they were liars and fabricated hadiths (Ḥāshim Maʿrūf al-Hasanī, al-Mawżūʿāt fi’l-ās̱ār wa’l-aḫbār, p. 53), while the Shīʿite scholars accepted the narrations of Sunnī narrators whom they considered reliable, do not fully reflect the reality. Indeed, it is known that al-Bukhārī included in his eṣ-Ṣaḥīḥ the hadīths narrated by reliable Shīʿites, provided that they were not daʿīths. The most important reason why the Shīʿa do not accept the hadīths in the Sunnī hadīth books as reliable is that most of these hadīths were narrated by people and Companions whom they do not regard as righteous. According to them, in order for a hadith to be considered reliable, it must come from the son to the father through Ja’far al-Sādiq – Muhammad al-Baqir – Zayn al-Abidīn – Hz. Husayn – Hz. Ali – Rasūlullah. The narrations coming from the Companions who are not from Ahl al-Bayt, such as Abu Hurayrah, Samurah b. Junaid, Amr b. ‘As, have no value (M. Husayn Āl al-Kāshifi al-Ghita, p. 79). Generally, the Shiites are of the opinion that the hadiths of the Qutub al-Sitta cannot be trusted because they contain the narrations of the Companions whom they regard as liars, even apostates, disbelievers, heretics and hypocrites (Bakan, pp. 72, 74). It is not easy to understand the Shīʿa’s acceptance of only certain companions such as Salmān al-Fārisī, Abū Zar al-Ghifārī, Miqdād b. al-Aswad, and Ammār b. Yāṣir as reliable (Hasan al-Sadr, al-Shīʿa wa funūn al-Islam, p. 31), despite the fact that one of the innocent imams, Jaʿfar al-Sādiq, stated that the companions spoke the truth about the Prophet (al-Qulaynī, I, 65).

Shiʿite scholars regard Ḥākim al-Nīsābūrī (d. 405/1014), who was known for his love for the Prophet ʿAlī and the Ahl al-Bayt, as an Imāmī Shiʿite and consider his Maʿrifat al-ʿulūm al-ḥadīs̱, which is also accepted by the Ahl al-Sunnah, to be the first work written in the field of hadīth, contrary to popular belief. Zayn al-Dīn b. ʿAlī al-ʿAmilī’s al-Bidāyah fī ʿilmi al-dirāyah, also known as al-Shahīd al-Sānī, is one of the most important books on hadīth in Shīʿa. The book was commented by the author under the title al-Riʿāya fī ʿilmi al-dirāya (ed. ʿAbd al-Husayn Moḥammad ʿAli Baqqāl, Qom 1408/1987). In addition, Ḥosayn b. ʿAbd al-ʿAbd al-Ḥārisī’s Dirāyat al-ḥadīs̱ (Tehran 1306) and his son Bahā al-Dīn al-ʿĀmilī’s Dirāyat al-ḥadīs̱, also called al-Risālat al-Wajīze (Suleymaniye Ktp., Çelebi Abdullah Efendi, nr. 39, vr. 5-8; see also. Brockelmann, GAL Suppl., II, 597; Āgā Buzürg al-Tahrānī states that it was printed many times in Iran: ẕ-Ẕarīʿa, XXV, 51) is a noteworthy work.

Regarding the rijāl of ḥadīth, the Shīʿa consider four books to be the main ones (Abū Jaʿfar al-Tūsī, p. 4), on which later works are based. The first of these is Maʿrifat al-nāḳilīn (Maʿrifat al-nāḳilīn) by Abū ʿAmr Moḥammad b. ʿUmar al-Kashshī (d. 340/951), which includes Sunnī and Shīʿite narrators; Abū Jaʿfar al-Ṭūsī excluded Sunnīs from it and created a new work, Iḫtiyāru Maʿrifat al-ricāl, which includes Shīʿite narrators (see bibl.). The second and third works are also by Abū Jaʿfar al-Ṭūsī, and in Ricāl al-Ṭūsī (ed. Muhammad Sāʿīq ʿĀl al-Bahr al-Ṭūsī, Najaf 1381/1961), he presents the companions of the Prophet and ten or twelve of his companions. In Fihris al-Ṭūsī (Calcutta 1873; ed. Muhammad Sāqīq Āl al-Bahrulūm, Najaf 1961; Beirut 1983), the companions of the Prophet and the relatives of the twelve imams are discussed in chronological order, and in Fihris al-Ṭūsī (Calcutta 1873; ed. Muhammad Sāqīq Āl al-Bahrulūm, Najaf 1961; Beirut 1983), the works of those whose works are essential according to Shīʿa and other authors are examined. The fourth work is Ahmad b. ‘Ali al-Najāshī’s Kitāb al-Rijāl (Ricāl al-Najāshī) (Bombay 1317; ed. Muḥammad Javād al-Nāʾīnī, I-II, Beirut 1408/1988).

This article was included in the 15th volume of the TDV Encyclopaedia of Islam, published in Istanbul in 1997, on pages 27-64.