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Al-Kafi (, , Translated from Arabic means 'The Sufficient') is a hadith collection of the Twelver nocat=y tradition, compiled in the first half of the 10th century Common Era (early 4th century Anno Hegirae) by Muḥammad ibn Yaʿqūb al-Kulaynī. It is one of the Four Books (Kutub al Arba'a) In twelver shia Islam.
It is divided into three sections: Uṣūl al-Kāfī, dealing with epistemology, theology, history, ethics, supplication, and the Quran]]; Furūʿ al-Kāfī, which is concerned with practical and Islamic law issues; and Rawdat (or Rawḍah al-Kāfī, which includes miscellaneous traditions, many of which are lengthy letters and speeches transmitted from the . In total, al-Kāfī comprises 16,199 narrations.
| +Furū al-Kāfī !Chapters |
| The Book of Purity |
| The Book of Menstruation |
| The Book of Funeral Rites |
| The Book of Prayer |
| The Book of Charity |
| The Book of Fasting |
| The Book of Ḥajj |
| The Book of Jihād |
| The Book of Commerce |
| The Book of Marriage |
| The Book of Animal Sacrifice upon the Birth of a Child |
| The Book of Divorce |
| The Book of Emancipation |
| The Book of Hunting |
| The Book of Slaughtering |
| The Book of Food |
| The Book of Drink |
| The Book of Clothing, Beautification, and Honor |
| The Book of Domesticated Animals |
| The Book of Testaments |
| The Book of Inheritance |
| The Book of Capital and Corporal Punishments |
| The Book of Restitution and Blood Money |
| The Book of Testimonies and Depositions |
| The Book of Adjudication and Legal Precedents |
| The Book of Oaths, Vows, and Penances |
| + Rawdat al-Kāfī !Title |
| The Book of Miscellanea – literally a garden from which one can pick many kinds of flowers |
According to the Imami scholar Zayn al-Dīn al-ʿĀmili, known as ash-Shahīd ath-Thāni (1505–1559 CE, 911–966 AH), who examined the asanād or the chains of transmission of al-Kāfi traditions, 5,072 are considered ṣaḥīḥ; 144 are regarded as ḥasan ('good'), second category; 1,118 are held to be muwathaq ('trustworthy'), third category; 302 are adjudged to be qawi ('strong') and 9,485 traditions which are categorized as ḍaʿīf ('weak').
Imam Khomeini (a prominent 20th century Shī‘ah scholar and statesman) said: Wilayat al-Faqih: Al-Hukumah Al-Islamiyyah, p. 72.
The general idea behind this metaphor is that Khomeini objected to the laziness of many ignorant people who simply kept al-Kafi on their shelf, and ignored or violated it in their daily lives, assuming that they would somehow be saved from Jahannam just by possessing the book. Khomeini argued that Islamic law should be an integral part of everyday life for the believer, not just a stale manuscript to be placed on a shelf and forgotten. The irony of the allusion is telling; Khomeini implicitly says that al-Kāfī (literally 'the Sufficient') is not kafi ('enough') to make one a faithful Muslim or be counted among the righteous, unless one uses the wisdom contained within it and acts on it.
Shī‘ah scholar Shaykh Sadūq did not believe in the complete authenticity of al-Kāfī. Khoei points this out in his Mu‘jam Rijāl al-Hadīth, or Collection of Men of Narrations, in which he states:
Scholars have made such remarks to remind the people that one cannot simply pick the book up, and take whatever they like from it as truthful. Rather, an exhaustive process of authentication must be applied, which leaves the understanding of the book in the hands of the learned. From the Shī‘ah point of view, any book other than the Qurʾān, as well as individual hadiths or hadith narrators can be objectively questioned and scrutinized as to their reliability.
The author of al-Kāfi never intended for it to be politicized as "infallible", but compiled it to give sincere advice based on Islamic law (regardless of the soundess of any one particular hadith), and to preserve rare hadiths and religious knowledge in an easily accessible collection for future generations to study.
Al-Kāfi is the most comprehensive collection of traditions from the formative period of Islamic scholarship. It has been held in the highest esteem by generation after generation of Muslim scholars. Shaykh al-Mufīd ( 1022 CE) extolled it as "one of the greatest and most beneficial of Shia books". Al-Shahīd al-ʾAwwāl (d. 1385 CE) and al-Muḥaqqiq al-Karāki (d. 1533 CE) have said, "No book has served the Shia as it has." The father of ʿAllāmah al Majlisī said, "Nothing else like it has been written for Islam."
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