Imams’ Esoteric Knowledge in Baṣāʾir al-Darajāt

One of the best-known researchers of Shiism in Europe, Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, has claimed that Imamate was an esoteric transcendental religion in the early centuries, and the belief in the supernatural powers of imams is attributed to the early Twelver Shiite tradition. However, in the mid-fourth century, as Shiite scholars turned to the Muʿtazilite School, this belief was rejected by the School of Baghdad. To assess this claim, we examine the hadiths on Imams’ “knowledge” cited in Baṣāʾir al-darajāt and hadith sources of the School of Baghdad, using the content analysis method. In the book Baṣāʾir al-darajāt, nearly half (fifty-seven percent) of the content about knowledge is on “knowledge of the hidden.” It also turns out that the School of Baghdad, just like the School of Qom, accepted Imam’s “knowledge of the hidden.” Books affiliated with this school cite many texts on the subject, except that certain aspects of Imam’s “knowledge of the hidden” are only mentioned in Baṣāʾir al-darajāt. Hence, a drawback of Amir-Moezzi’s methodology is lack of full examination of certain Shiite sources of hadith and failure to take note of certain hadiths.

Keywords:

Amir-Moezzi , Baṣāʾir al-darajāt , esoteric knowledge , content analysis