Collection

Ghurar al-Ḥikam

11,012 narrations 718 chapters

Chapters

About this collection

Ghurar al-Hikam wa Durar al-Kalim

This is a collection of short quotations from Amīrul Mu’minīn Imam Ali bin Abī Tālib (a). The compiler of the book Ghurar al-Hikam wa Durar al-Kalim (Exalted Aphorisms and Pearls of Speech) was the great scholar and muhaddith, Qādi Abu al- Fath ‘Abd al-Wāhid al-Āmudi (d. 510/1116), a scholar of the fifth century AH. He was a contemporary of Sayyid al-Radī – the compiler of Nahjul Balāgha.

Ghurar al-Hikam contains about eleven thousand short hadith of Imam Ali ‘alayhis- salām. These have been ordered alphabetically according to the first letter of the first word of the hadith and divided into 91 chapters. The author has collected these hadith from books such as Nahjul Balāgha, Jahiz’s Mi’at Kalimah, Tuhaf al-‘Uqūl and Dastur ma‘ālim al-Hikam.

The compiler states he was motivated to compile the book to show the vast extent of the knowledge of Imam Ali ‘alayhis salām. The compiler has omitted the chain of narrators and arranged the sayings alphabetically and placed aphorisms and sayings that rhyme together.

The work has been translated into English by Shaykh Tahir Ridha Jaffer and published by Ansariyan Publications of Qum in 2012. The Academy for Learning Islam is grateful to Shaykh TR Jaffer for providing us the entire work with translation for this Hadith Database Project.


References: Ghurar al-Hikam wa Durar al-Kalim, English translation by Shaykh Tahir Ridha Jaffer; en.wikishia.net