Examining the element of Religion and its impact on Najāshī's Judgment about Wāqifī transmitters

Among later scholars’ requisite qualifications of transmitters for their hadith to be accepted, religion plays a central role which leads to four fold classification of hadith. Nonetheless the crucial question is whether “the religion of the transmitters is of such significance to be used as a basis for ranking the narratives?” The present study, thus, pursues to examine this issue in one of the early prominent Shiite experts on hadith transmitters (rijāl), Abolabbas Najāshī. Wāqifeh was one of Shiite sects to which various famous narrators adhered.
Studying the status of Wāqifī transmitters and the value- oriented terms applied to them in Najāshī’s book, this article attained that adherence to Wāqf was not considered as weakness in Najāshī’s viewpoint and that he actually judged this group of narrators by their truthfulness and exactitude. As a result, it is necessary to reconsider the school of Helleh ‘s classification of hadith which is based on religious differences, regardless of the early Shiite doctrine of authentic hadith , leading to the neglecting of a large amount of hadiths from non-Imami transmitters.