An Evaluation of the Narrations Related to Women's Deficiency of Wisdom and Faith

The hadiths referring to women's deficiency of wisdom and faith have been mentioned in the first-hand resources of both Shiites and Sunnis. These narrations are attributed to the Prophet (p.b.u.h.) and Iman Ali (a.s.) and inspection of the documents of these hadiths reveal that their chain of transmitters is not complete and some of them have been transmitted without any document. Thus, there is not sufficient certainty that they have originated from the Infallibles. This issue has caused some scholars to declare them to be apocryphal. Due to their inclusion in such reliable books as al-Kafi and Nahj al-Balaghah, some other scholars have found no reason for their documentational inspection and have only dealt with their content and textual analysis and, hence, various views have been shaped in this field. The results of the analyses conducted on these views in this study reveal that if we ignore the documentational weakness of these narrations and if we are required to justify them, the best resolution is to accept that, in the segmentation process of the words of the Prophet (p.b.u.h.) and Iman Ali (a.s.), hadith collectors have cut and removed some parts of these narrations which may have had a decisive role in explaining the intention and purpose of the original Infallible.