Building shrines of Imams(as): Recommended?
Wasail al shia
وعن علي بن إبراهيم، عن أبيه، عن ابن أبي عمير، عن حماد بن عثمان، عن أبي عبد الله (عليه السلام) قال: إن أبي قال لي ذات يوم في مرضه: إذ أنا مت فغسلني وكفني، وارفع قبري أربع أصابع، ورشه بالماء، الحديث
And from Ali b. Ibrahim, from his father, from ibn Abi Umayr, from Hammad b. Uthman, from Abi Abdullah(as) said: My father(as) said to me on a day of his illness: "When I die bathe me and shroud me, and raise my grave by four fingers, and sprinkle it with water."
Al Mahasin
عنه عن النوفلي عنالسكوني عن أبي عبد الله عن آبائه (ع) عن أمير المؤمنين (ع) قال بعثني رسول الله (ص) إلىالمدينة فقال لا تدع صورة إلا محوتها و لا قبرا إلا سويته ولا كلبا إلا قتلته
From him from al Nofali from al Sakuni from abi Abdullah from his forefathers (as) from Amirul momineen (as) who said: Rasool Allah (pbuh) sent me to al Madinah, so he (pbuh) said: "Do not leave an image/idol but erase/obliterate them and neither a grave but flatten it, and neither a dog but kill it."
عنه عن جعفر بن محمد الأشعري عن ابنالقداح عن أبي عبد الله عن آبائه (ع) عن علي (ع) قال أرسلني رسول الله (ص) في هدم القبورو كسر الصور
From him from Ja'far b. Muhammad al Ash'ari from ibn al Qadah from abi Abdullah from his forefathers (as) from Ali(as) who said: "Sent me Rasool Allah (pbuh) in (to) demolish/destroy the graves and break/smash the model (idol/statue)."
Assalaamu `Alaykum,
ReplyDeleteYou put the chain of narrators wrong in English. It isn't Abee BaSeer it is ابن أبي عمير (Ibn Abee `Umayr). Both are thiqah (trustworthy).
By the way this hadeeth is authentic.
@Nader: Walaykum assalam,
ReplyDeleteArghh...yeah, sorry about that. I'm lacking sleep.
Assalaam Alaikum,
ReplyDeleteCould you pleas provide some context as to why Imam Ali (as) was sent to destroy the graves? Were the people of Medina worshiping the graves?
Walaykummus salam,
DeleteHere is a relatively good article explaining the context (it is good in the beginning, but becomes pretty biased towards the end): http://www.alqatrah.net/question/?id=1186
In short, it seems that Imam Ali was sent to destroy the graves of the people of jahilliyyah, based on the factors that:
1- The ahadith talk about erasing and destroying any pictures or statues on the graves (which means they were graves of mushriks from jahilliyah, or perhaps ahlul kitab, who were worshipping graves and had put up pictures/statues as well on the graves)
2- The ahadith talk about destroying graves, eventhough (based on other ahadith, to get full picture), Islam doesn't call for destroying graves, it only calls for not raising the grave by more than 4 fingers. So this would again imply, that since the graves were to be destroyed, then they were of people of jahilliyah.
Overall, I think there can be 3 contexts to these ahadith which talk about destroying graves:
1: (The stronger option in my view): These are aami ahadith. It is common that even classical scholars would often give fatawa off aami ahadith (like Tusi in his al-khilaf, Saduq sometimes in Faqih etc). In fact, the first hadith in this article is narrated by al Sakuni who was from the aama. These ahadith are (ones about destroying graves) are also not found in our other books like the kutb al arba afaik. This does not mean though that the scholars who reported those ahadith, such as al Barqi in this case (author of Mahasin) didn't believe in those ahadith. They sometimes believed in them despite them being aami ahadith, in fact Tusi claims ijma of the taifa for accepting the ahadith of Sakuni who is from the aama.
2- In continuation of the above, the book Mahasin is a bit problematic. (As ayt Sistni points out) It had multiple versions of manuscripts floating around, and some manuscripts seem to have got things added to them (so maybe....these aami ahadith got added to the book...just maybe, there isn't any 100% proof to say that though).
3- The context is as the article I linked to explains i.e. that it were the graves of jahilliyah that Imam Ali had been instructed to destroy.
Anyhow, all in all, while the ahadith about detroying graves maybe from the aama or just for the graves of ppl of jahilliyah, but that said, overall all our ahadith call for not raising the grave by more than 4 fingers, and there is no justification for building shrines of Imams or prophet (pbuh) though.
wassalam
Salam brother. Many of these hadith are weak, narrated by people like Sahl bin Ziyad, and there is also an-Nawfali whom many scholars consider weak. However these verses all have context, and I responded to some of the ahadith brought forward by the Nasibi website gift2shias.com here https://findshiaislam.blogspot.ca/2017/10/the-imams-would-be-dismayed-to-see.html
ReplyDelete