The Referent of Abu al-Jahm in the Famous Judgement Narration of Abi Khadijeh

The famous narration of Abi Khadijeh is among the most important evidence on welāyat-e-faqih and judgment, and many rulings in the field of judgement are based on this narration. The legitimacy of these rulings depends on the documentation authenticity of this narration and the attention the Islamic jurists have paid to it. The document of this narration includes a character with the kunyah Abu al-Jahm, which, according to rijāl sources, corresponds to only two characters, Thawir ibn Abu Fākhetah and Bokair ibn A'yan. The problem with this theory is the time interval between the narrator from Abu al-Jahm, i.e., Hussein ibn Sa’eed al-Ahwāzi, and Abu al-Jahm himself as Hussein ibn Sa’eed, according to various sources, was one of the companions of Imams Kāzem, Rezā, Javād and Hādi (a.s.) while Thawir ibn Abu Fākhetah and Bokair ibn A'yan lived until the time of Imam Sadiq (a.s.). To solve this problem, some scholars have suggested the possible eliminated intermediaries between Hussein ibn Sa’eed and Abu al-Jahm. Some others do not consider Abu al-Jahm to be exclusive to these two individuals, but they have not reached a definite conclusion about the referent of Abu al-Jahm. Using the documents of narrations in narration books, this study has tried to compensate for the shortcomings in rijāl books to some extent and has proved that although this kunyah in that hadith category corresponds only to these two characters, it has been used for another character in the books of narrations and documents of some narrations, as well, and that person is Harun ibn al-Jahm.