The Transmission of Certainty Idealism from the Greek Philosophy to the Islamic Thought(Study of the Impact of Certainty Idealism on the Definition of Knowledge and the Reliability of Hadiths in Islamic Jurisprudence)

“Certainty idealism” is the view that only certainty counts as knowledge, and what is not certain is not valuable. The popularity of the view among Muslims, including Shi’as, had certain repercussions, such as the the reliability of a hadith transmitted only by one person being denied by the majority of Shiite jurists (fuqahā’</em>) until the 7th</sup>/13th</sup> century. Jurists adopted different methods to prove their jurisprudential evidence. However, it seems that, instead of trying to render certainty idealism ineffective, we need to revisit the acceptability of this view. This research has been done with an analytical historical method with reliance on library documents. We seek to unveil the course of the formation of certainty idealism and its introduction to the Islamic thought, and disclose the role of the certainty requirement for knowledge in assessing the validity of evidence for the inference of jurisprudential rulings. We argue that certainty idealism originates from the Greek philosophy, and was then introduced to Muslims, including Shi’as, influencing their views of certain types of evidence for the inference of jurisprudential rulings.