The Issue of Disappearance (of the twelfth Imam  عليه السلام from Public Sight — report 20

RESEARCH · UNREVIEWED. Source publication is not a certification of authenticity.

hadith

ORIGINAL ARABIC SOURCE TEXT

20ـ مُحَمَّدُ بْنُ يَحْيَى وَأَحْمَدُ بْنُ إِدْرِيسَ عَنِ الْحَسَنِ بْنِ عَلِيٍّ الْكُوفِيِّ عَنْ عَلِيِّ بْنِ حَسَّانَ عَنْ عَمِّهِ عَبْدِ الرَّحْمَنِ بْنِ كَثِيرٍ عَنْ مُفَضَّلِ بْنِ عُمَرَ قَالَ سَمِعْتُ أَبَا عَبْدِ الله (عَلَيْهِ السَّلام) يَقُولُ لِصَاحِبِ هَذَا الامْرِ غَيْبَتَانِ إِحْدَاهُمَا يَرْجِعُ مِنْهَا إِلَى أَهْلِهِ وَالاخْرَى يُقَالُ هَلَكَ فِي أَيِّ وَادٍ سَلَكَ قُلْتُ كَيْفَ نَصْنَعُ إِذَا كَانَ كَذَلِكَ قَالَ إِذَا ادَّعَاهَا مُدَّعٍ فَاسْأَلُوهُ عَنْ أَشْيَاءَ يُجِيبُ فِيهَا مِثْلَهُ.

Arabic source transcription, not a back-translation. Text nodes are preserved without spelling or diacritic changes. Printed-edition comparison is pending.

ENGLISH TRANSLATION

20. Muhammad ibn Yahya and Ahmad ibn Idris have narrated from al-Hassan ibn Ali al-Kufi from Ali ibn Hass’an from his paternal uncle, ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn Kathir from Mufaddal ibn ‘Umar who has said the following. “I heard abu ‘Abdallah عليه السلام say, “The in charge of this task (Leadership with Divine Authority) will disappear from the public sight twice. From one them he will return to his family but in the other one it will be said that he is dead or no one knows in which of the valleys has he traveled.” I then asked, “What shall we do in such conditions?” The Imam عليه السلام said, “If any one would claim to have such authority you then should ask him about several things in which he must answer like him (Leader with Divine Authority).”

Source & scholarly assessments

Al-Kafi, vol. 1, book 4, chapter 80, report 20

Open original digital source ↗

Allamah Baqir al-Majlisi · ضعيف · Mirʾāt al-ʿUqūl fī Sharḥ Akhbār Āl al-Rasūl (4/54)

Shaykh Baqir al-Behbudi · لم يخرجه · Ṣaḥīḥ al-Kāfī

Digital-source transcription only. The recorded assessment is attributed to the named scholar; it does not establish absolute historical certainty.

Arabic witness SHA-256: f73dec9ae580bfabaf1caf43533c7a6c3a610dd80078692598a930a6f7be9e6b

Source: Thaqalayn (Stichting Thaqalayn), https://thaqalayn.com/hadith/1/4/80/20. Al-Kafi by al-Kulayni. English translation attributed by the digital catalogue to Muhammad Sarwar. CC BY 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. No endorsement implied.