Jew's Annual Ma kala: An Investigation of a Commentarial hadith in Old Shi a and Sunni Sources

Investigating a hadith narrated from the fifth Shi‘a Imam (Abu Ja‘far Muhammad al-Baqir) in two Quranic commentaries of al-Tibyan and Majma‘al-Bayan, the present essay finds its origin in al-Masabih fi Tafsir al-Qur’an by Abu al-Qasim Wazir Maghribi (370-418 A.H.). Wazir Maghribi attributes that hadith to Abu Ja‘far in an ambiguous way. However, that hadith is neither narrated in Shiite books on hadith and Quranic commentary, including the first Shiite traditional commentaries, before Maghribi nor is recorded in the most significant Sunni sources of traditional commentary such as Abu Ja‘far Tabari and Ibn Abi Hatim Radi. The present essay attempts to discover traces of the said hadith, as well as similar traditions, in old sources of hadith and commentary and to indicate that Wazir Maghribi has narrated so many commentarial hadiths from Tafsir al-Kalbi (d. 146 A.H.) attributing them all to Abu Ja‘far, i.e., the Shiit’s firth Imam. Almost all of those hadiths are related to story narration, causes of descend, determination of ambiguous points, and Quranic figures and places. Method of this essay is not analyzing chains of transmission, but rather a synthesis of two methods of analysis of the text and analysis of sources.