Hadith collections / Al-Kafi

Al-Kafi · Hadith 1

The Book about people with Divine Authority · The Jinns Come to the Imam for Religious Instructions and for Dealing with their Affairs · Volume 1, book 4, chapter 98, Hadith 1

Original Arabic text

1ـ بَعْضُ أَصْحَابِنَا عَنْ مُحَمَّدِ بْنِ عَلِيٍّ عَنْ يَحْيَى بْنِ مُسَاوِرٍ عَنْ سَعْدٍ الاسْكَافِ قَالَ أَتَيْتُ أَبَا جَعْفَرٍ (عَلَيْهِ السَّلام) فِي بَعْضِ مَا أَتَيْتُهُ فَجَعَلَ يَقُولُ لا تَعْجَلْ حَتَّى حَمِيَتِ الشَّمْسُ عَلَيَّ وَجَعَلْتُ أَتَتَبَّعُ الافْيَاءَ فَمَا لَبِثَ أَنْ خَرَجَ عَلَيَّ قَوْمٌ كَأَنَّهُمُ الْجَرَادُ الصُّفْرُ عَلَيْهِمُ الْبُتُوتُ قَدِ انْتَهَكَتْهُمُ الْعِبَادَةُ قَالَ فَوَ الله لانْسَانِي مَا كُنْتُ فِيهِ مِنْ حُسْنِ هَيْئَةِ الْقَوْمِ فَلَمَّا دَخَلْتُ عَلَيْهِ قَالَ لِي أَرَانِي قَدْ شَقَقْتُ عَلَيْكَ قُلْتُ أَجَلْ وَالله لَقَدْ أَنْسَانِي مَا كُنْتُ فِيهِ قَوْمٌ مَرُّوا بِي لَمْ أَرَ قَوْماً أَحْسَنَ هَيْئَةً مِنْهُمْ فِي زِيِّ رَجُلٍ وَاحِدٍ كَأَنَّ أَلْوَانَهُمُ الْجَرَادُ الصُّفْرُ قَدِ انْتَهَكَتْهُمُ الْعِبَادَةُ فَقَالَ يَا سَعْدُ رَأَيْتَهُمْ قُلْتُ نَعَمْ قَالَ أُولَئِكَ إِخْوَانُكَ مِنَ الْجِنِّ قَالَ فَقُلْتُ يَأْتُونَكَ قَالَ نَعَمْ يَأْتُونَّا يَسْأَلُونَّا عَنْ مَعَالِمِ دِينِهِمْ وَحَلالِهِمْ وَحَرَامِهِمْ.

Published English translation

1. Certain persons of our people have narrated from Muhammad ibn Ali from Yahya ibn Musawir from Sa‘d al-Askaf who has said the following. “On one of the occasion of my meeting with abu Ja‘far (a.s.) when I went tosee him he asked me to wait until the sun became very hot on me. I tried to follow the shadow from the sun. No very long thereafter a people came out of his presence that looked like locusts dressed in large gowns and very oale and slim due to extensive worshipping. Their beautiful scene made me to forget other things. When I went in the presence of the Imam (a.s.) he said, “I am afraid I caused you hardships.” I said, “Yes, it was difficult but, by Allah, I forgot other things when I saw them. A people passed by the like of whose beauty I had not seen before. They looked like locusts and pale and slim due to worshipping a great deal.” The Imam (a.s.) said, “O Sa‘d , did you see them?” I said, “Yes, I saw them.” The Imam (a.s.) said, “They are your brethren from Jinns.” The narrator has said that he asked The Imam (a.s.), “Do they come to you?” He said, “Yes, they come to us for religious instructions and to learn the lawful and unlawful matters.”

Narrator and transmission

See the transmission information preserved in the original source text.

Attributed scholarly assessments

Allamah Baqir al-Majlisi: مجهول

Mirʾāt al-ʿUqūl fī Sharḥ Akhbār Āl al-Rasūl (4/291)

Assessment transcribed from the source's named scholar and reference. No new grading or consensus is asserted; differing entries remain separate.

Shaykh Baqir al-Behbudi: Catalogue non-inclusion note (not an authenticity grade)

Ṣaḥīḥ al-Kāfī

Source records non-inclusion in this scholar's selection; this is not itself a weak or authentic grade.

Source, rights, and attribution

dataset Name
Thaqalayn public library, via ThaqalaynAPI snapshot
source Url
https://thaqalayn.com/hadith/1/4/98/1
license
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
edition
Al-Kafi, volume 1, Thaqalayn digital edition / Muhammad Sarwar translation
imported At
2026-10-18T21:36:12.871Z
license Url
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
rights Statement Url
https://thaqalayn.com/terms
attribution
Source: Thaqalayn (Stichting Thaqalayn). Compiler: Shaykh Muḥammad b. Yaʿqūb al-Kulaynī. Translation: Muhammad Sarwar. Data transport: MohammedArab1/ThaqalaynAPI. No endorsement implied.
translator
Muhammad Sarwar
source Revision
becbad600b693ce23735d7403c4126ce7c896d34
content Hash
8438dbbaf8a1d9fca8c6cc17ee5caa1effa668de1e9654699e743e07bcf8ddde
source File Hash
30bc491c96eb3860f3d3dfe97f46353a88858d7cb9e06d662ebdd04252ac5a3e
original Source Url
https://thaqalayn.net/hadith/1/4/98/1
changes
Arabic and English texts preserved verbatim from pinned snapshot. Compiler introduction excluded where present; references mapped to fields; assessment whitespace trimmed; source-supplied English sanad retained separately. Search normalization is not applied to displayed text.
verification Note
Publisher content rights, translator attribution and structural checks, with independent publisher-page spot checks—not scholarly authentication or printed-edition collation. Historical text and scholarly reference strings may contain source errors; they are not silently corrected. No full commentary prose or inferred narrator identity is added. Muʿjam coverage, where present, is only the supplied excerpt, not the complete work.