The Genealogy of a Newly Discovered and Very Ancient Manuscript of Man Lā Yaḥḍuruhū al-Faqīh

Afi Khorasani, Mohammad

doi:10.22034/hsr.2025.51911.1076

The Genealogy of a Newly Discovered and Very Ancient Manuscript of Man Lā Yaḥḍuruhū al-Faqīh

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Mohammad Afi Khorasani

PhD Student in Qur’anic and Hadith Studies, Farabi Faculty, University of Tehran, Qom, Iran.

10.22034/hsr.2025.51911.1076

Abstract

The book Man Lā Yaḥḍuruhū al-Faqīh, authored by Shaykh Ṣadūq (d. 381 AH), is one of the most important Shi'ite hadith collections, yet no detailed research has been conducted on its manuscripts. Recently, a manuscript of this book with the date 579 AH was acquired by the National Library of Iran. After the manuscript in the Waziri Library of Yazd, dated 574 AH, it is the oldest identified manuscript of this book. This article is a codicological study of this newly discovered manuscript. By examining the similarities and differences between this manuscript and other manuscripts of the book, it attempts to uncover the relationship between this manuscript and the Yazd manuscript. It is revealed that the genealogy of these two manuscripts is very close, to the point that both were apparently copied from the same exemplar or with at most one intermediary. This finding changes our perspective on the variant readings common to these two manuscripts. It has also become clear that this manuscript has significant similarities with the text of al-Kāfī that cannot be the result of a scribe's error or personal interpretation, and other manuscripts of Faqīh do not possess this feature. Therefore, it might raise the possibility that this manuscript represents a different recension of the existing text of Faqīh. It also appears that Fayḍ Kāshānī, unlike Majlisī, likely had access to more manuscripts of Faqīh, some of which shared a genealogy with this manuscript.

Keywords

Main Subjects

Hadith

References

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