Ibn al-Ghaḍāʾirī’s K. al-Rijāl and the Canonization of Imami ʿIlm al-Rijāl Literature

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Abstract This article offers a historical study and translation of a text written in Baghdad in the first half of the 5th/11th century known to the Imami Shiʿi scholarly tradition as the K. al-Rijāl by Ibn al-Ghaḍāʾirī, containing some of the earliest extant material from the Imami scholarly practice of ʿilm al-rijāl, and providing key insights into the historical development of hadith scholarship in Imami thought. Ibn al-Ghaḍāʾirī’s biographical circumstances provide a particularly useful entry point into Imami hadith scholarship of 5th/11th century Baghdad and the historical circumstances of the authorship of the authoritative textual sources of Imami ʿilm al-rijāl. The remarkable historical achievement of Ibn al-Ghaḍāʾirī’s K. al-Rijāl consists in its reemergence from presumed oblivion in the 11th century CE to attaining quasi-canonical status within Imami scholarship over the 13th to 16th centuries CE, and just as rapidly coming under attack by Imami jurists over subsequent centuries into the present day.