The Role of Chain of Transmission in Evaluating Hadiths in the Light of Allamah Tabatabaii's View in Al-Mizan Commentary

The role of sanad (chain of transmission) in evaluating the infallible Imams’ hadiths has been the special concern of scholar. The present paper seeks to review and make explicit Allamah Tabatabaii’s view about “the role of chain of transmission in evaluating hadiths”. The research findings show that Allamah believes that the hadiths which contradict the Quran are rejected, and so examining their chain of transmission will be of no avail. A review of the chain of transmission of non-fiqh hadiths which do not contradict the Quran and which are accompanied by textual indicative signs can have a beneficial effect. A chain of transmission can be used as an independent indicative sign only with the hadiths concerned with the fiqhi questions. According to Allamah Tabatabaii’s thoughts the disciplines which are related with chain of transmission such as rijal (knowledge of biography) dirayah (intelligence) have no special place in the fields other than fiqh, particularly commentary of the Quran, due to the limited role of chain of transmission in evaluating hadiths, especially non-fiqhi hadiths.