Chapter 2: Hadith Among the Shi`ah: The Four-hundred Usul

As said above, the work of compilation of hadith among the Shi`ah started during the life of the Prophet (S). The texts which were compiled by the early Shi`ah scholars were called “Usul.” It should however be admitted that these texts were not without defect from the point of view of the art of writing and compilation; for, most of the authors of these texts were those who had heard the ahadith from one of the Imams, in particular, from Imam Muhammad al-Baqir and Imam Ja`far al-Sadiq (A), writing them down in notebooks. These notebooks composed by the Shi`ah scholars, containing the traditions heard from one of the Imams, or heard from someone who had heard the Imam, came to be called “Usul.” Out of these texts compiled from the era of `Ali (A) to the time of Imam Hasan al-`Askari, the eleventh Imam, the popular ones were four-hundred in number by different authors. Each of them contained a number of ahadith written without any attention being paid to the sequence or classification according to the subject. Most of these traditions exist in the al-Mahasin al-Barqi, al-Kafi, Man la Yahduruhu al-faqih. Some of them are found in Tahdhib. It appears that most of these notebooks existed in the Shahpur Karkh Library of Baghdad and were lost when Tughrul the Turk burnt the city on conquering it in the year 448/1056. Others which escaped this calamity, and other disasters, were preserved until the time of Ibn Idris and Ibn Ta’wus and were available to them. Some, more than two-hundred of them, have survived to our own times.²⁹ These notebooks usually go with the prefix “kitab” and often “nawadir”. Thirteen of them exist in the library of the Tehran University in the manuscript file number 962. Twelve of them are “kitab” and one is “nawadir”. These are:

1. Kitab Zayd al-Zad;
2. Kitab Ghasfari;
3. Kitab ibn Hamid al-Hannat;
4. Kitab Zayd al-Nirsi;
5. Kitab Ja`far al-Hadrami;
6. Kitab Muhammad al-Hadrami;
7. Kitab `Abd al-Malik ibn Hakim;
8. Kitab Muthanna ibn Walid al-Hannat;
9. Kitab Haddad al-Sindi;
10. Kitab Husayn ibn `Uthman;
11. Kitab Kahili;
12. Kitab Salam Khurasani;
13. Nawadir Abi al-Hasan `Ali ibn Asbat ibn Salim.³⁰