Statements of Abi Ali Al-Tusi about Criticism and Praise of Narrators: A Critical, Comparative Study

Abstract

Books of Biographies have great importance through which we can know the narrator’s
condition and status being either accepted or rejected. This judgment may lead to rejecting the
narration or upgrading it to be accepted. The books of biographies differ according to their
classifications and orders. Some have been written based on general biographies, and some
based on specific biographies such as the books which collected the narrator of the two sound
books or the narrators of the six books of Hadiths. In addition, some of these books have been
written based on deaths, books of trustworthy narrators, books of weak narrators, books of
Surnames, books of titles, .... Etc. What we want to verify in this research is to track and induct
these books and try to clarify the reasons of difference among surmount scholars who wrote
about narrators. I choose Abi Ali Al-Tusi and furnished the reason behind my choice which is
to find out the reality of his statements of criticizing and praising narrators and the extent to
which his statements agree with the statements of critics or the extent of disagreeing the
opponents, and to what group his sayings can be referred: resilient or extremist. The problem
of the research lies in not knowing the levels of his statements in criticism and praise, knowing
his position among the critics and to which group he was classified, and identifying his
disagreements in the issue of criticism and praise. Research problem is the perfect topic and
difficulty of knowing his level among critics and the final say for his judgments on narrators.
The purpose of the research is to arrive at the final statement about his condition and his
classification among critics. In addition, the research compares his statements with those of the
other Imams (leading scholars) in regard to the judgment and the consequences of his
statements in judging hadiths as correct and weak. The research methodology is to track his
statements in praising and criticism, and compare them to the judgements of the imams and the
synthesizing both of them through his judgment on the narrators and the statement of his
classification among the critics. The results of the research include that Abu Ali al-Tusi is one
of the scholars of the fourth century of Hijrah, and is classified in the layer of moderates, and
most of the statements that he agrees with is the group of moderates, and sometimes with the
group of extremists, and that Maghlatai is the most of the authors who mentioned him in his
book Al-Ikmal.