On the Knowledge of the Infallible Imam

In the Name of Allah, the All-beneficent, the All-merciful

And blessings and peace be upon the noblest of creation, our master Muhammad, and his good and pure family..

Among the axioms of the Imami creed is that the Prophet and his Household are the mine of knowledge and the treasurers of revelation, and they are the highest rank of those firmly grounded in knowledge, as has come in the hadith:

From ʿAbd al-Rahman ibn Kathir, from Abu ʿAbd Allah (a), who said: Those firmly grounded in knowledge are the Commander of the Faithful and the Imams after him. Al-Kafi, vol. 1, p. 213

Allah the Exalted has deposited knowledge in their breasts (a), as has come from Abu Basir, who said: I heard Abu Jaʿfar (a) say concerning this verse, “Indeed, it is [present as] manifest signs in the breasts of those who have been given knowledge” (Qurʾan 29:49)—and he pointed to his chest. (al-Kafi, 1/213

To know the sources of knowledge and how it flows with the Ahl al-Bayt (a), we can draw a map that brings understanding closer, defines the concepts found in numerous narrations and puts them in their proper places, so that the vision may be coherent, and the verses and reports may confirm one another.

1/ The source of knowledge is Allah Almighty, and He is the One who deposited it in the hearts of the Ahl al-Bayt (a), as we mentioned in the previous narrations.

2/ Allah the Exalted has made it flow in ways, the most important of which are:

a/ The knowledge of the Holy Qurʾan, in which there is a clarification of all things. From ʿAbd al-Aʿla, the client of the family of Sam, who said: I heard Abu ʿAbd Allah (a) say: By Allah, I know the Book of Allah from its beginning to its end as if it were in my palm; in it is the news of the heaven and the news of the earth, the news of what has been and the news of what will be. Allah Almighty has said: (In it is a clarification of all things). al-Kafi 1/229)

b/ The knowledge of the prophets and the heavenly scriptures, by way of inheritance from prophet to prophet until it reached them (a). From Zurara and al-Fudayl, from Abu Jaʿfar (a), who said: The knowledge that came down with Adam (a) has not been taken up, and knowledge is inherited. ʿAli (a) was the scholar of this community, and never has a scholar of ours perished but that he was succeeded by one of his family who knew the like of his knowledge, or whatever Allah willed. (al-Kafi 1/223)

From al-Fadl ibn ʿUmar, who said: Abu ʿAbd Allah (a) said: Solomon inherited from David, Muhammad inherited from Solomon, and we inherited from Muhammad; and with us is the knowledge of the Torah, the Gospel and the Psalms, and the clarification of what is in the Tablets. He said: I said: This indeed is knowledge. He said: This is not the knowledge; the knowledge is that which arises day after day and hour after hour. (al-Kafi 1/225)

c/ The newly arising knowledge of events and of what newly occurs in the life contemporary to the Imam. The Imam knows this knowledge through Allah's teaching him, by casting into hearts and tapping in the ears—by inspiration or through the angels—as has come from Abu al-Hasan the First (a).. As for what is newly arising—of knowledge—it is a casting into the hearts and a tapping in the ears). al-Kafi 1/264

That is why it has come in the hadith: from Abu ʿAbd Allah (a), who said: When the Imam wishes to know, he is taught. (al-Kafi 1/258)

From these sources of knowledge—and especially from the Holy Qurʾan and the inheritance of the prophets—several scholarly volumes were generated, containing detailed rulings and reports of events, which a number of noble narrations have mentioned. Among them are:

Al-Jamiʿa: It is a scroll dictated by the Messenger of Allah (s) and in the handwriting of Imam ʿAli (a), containing everything lawful and forbidden and everything that people need, even the compensation (arsh) for a scratch. Al-Jamiʿa is like the laws that regulate people's lives in their acts of worship and their transactions.

Al-Jafr: It is a vessel containing the knowledge of the past prophets and of the scholars of the Children of Israel who were connected with the heavenly messages.

The Book (Muṣḥaf) of Fatimah: It contains teachings three times the size of the Qurʾan, focused mostly on what will take place of future events, and in it there is [material] about rulers and political changes.

These blessed scholarly volumes pass from Infallible to Infallible. This is not exhaustive, but it is what is well known in the language of the narrations issued from the Ahl al-Bayt (a), and perhaps there are more scholarly volumes, as was (al-Sahifa al-Sajjadiyya), which is the Psalms of the family of Muhammad; Imam Zayn al-ʿAbidin (a) dictated it to his son Zayd (r), and the Imams after him inherited it.

The Infallible's drawing upon one of those volumes does not mean that he is unable to draw directly; rather, he relies on what came to him and what he inherited from the Infallible who preceded him. An example of this is when one of the Imams transmits one of the rulings and mentions a narration from the Messenger of Allah (s) or from the Infallible who preceded him: he is able to know the ruling directly from the Holy Qurʾan, but sometimes he brings a narration. This method has several reasons: among them are scholarly ones, such as making use of the detailed knowledge that is at hand, to avoid additional effort, for example; and among them is consideration of the surrounding circumstances..

From here we can know how the Ahl al-Bayt (a) know the knowledge of the Unseen that Allah the Exalted makes known to them through various means—especially if we define the Unseen (al-ghayb) as the opposite of the witnessed (al-shuhūd): every matter hidden from us, whether in bygone history, or in the present whose place we have not witnessed, or in the future whose time has not yet come, is unseen. Thus the Ahl al-Bayt know the Unseen; and there is an Unseen that Allah has reserved for Himself and has not disclosed to anyone, as the blessed verses on this matter have indicated.

And Allah knows best, and He is the Grantor of success

Mahmoud Al-Mosawi