Premises and Principles of Understanding and Evaluation of Islamic Traditions from the Viewpoint of Imam Khomeini

Imam Khomeini is considered as one of the scholars effective on the Islamic movements in the present century. In addition to being the leader of the Revolution and founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, he has been a specialist in different Islamic sciences such as interpretation, jurisprudence, philosophy, ethics, mysticism, and Hadith. Although Imam Khomeini's political and jurisprudential character affected his personality to some extent, Islamic tradition and Fiqh al-Hadith (contextual study of traditions) is certainly one of his specialties that has appeared in his works, especially in his jurisprudential books and his expositions on some Islamic traditions. The article at hand has adopted a descriptive-analytical method to extract Imam Khomeini's premises and principles in understanding and evaluation of the Islamic traditions. The findings reveal that the premise of understanding and evaluation a tradition from the viewpoint of Imam Khomeini is the importance and brilliance of the traditions and authority of reason in understanding them. Besides, the principles of tradition evaluation in Imam Khomeini's view are the necessity of having confidence that the tradition has been issued by an Infallible and preference of the text over the chain of transmitters. The principles of tradition understanding in Imam Khomeini's stance include paying attention to the different ranks of the Infallibles, removing shakiness of the chain of transmitters of a tradition, drawing the tradition tree, paying attention to the comprehensiveness of the traditions, removing contradiction from contradictory traditions, and paying attention to the cause, time, and place of the tradition issuance. It is noteworthy that Imam Khomeini has had innovations in Fiqh al-Hadith, such as taking the "Lāzarar" tradition as governmental prohibiting order, which is not present in the previous scholar's words.