Views of Ghaza’iri and Ibn Ghaza’iri concerning Stations of the Imams (A.S) A Critical View to non-Divine Reading of Imamat

Imamate as well as perfections and virtues of the Imams (A.S) are among
most important ideological issues and have created many encounters in
the course of Shi’i history. To get familiar with views of earlier Shi’i scholars
and muhaddithun in historical analysis of Shi’is’ ideas is of paramount
importance. Ghaza’iri and his son were among great scholars of biographies
of scholars of religion (science of rijal). They were familiar with writings of
their contemporary Shi’is. For this reason, their views about stations of the
Imams (A.S) and the limits of extremism are of importance. Because of the
ideas of some of our contemporaries who are of the opinion that most earlier
scholars- and in particular Ibn Ghaza’iri- have provided a non-Divine reading
of the position of Imamate, this view assumes much more importance. In
the present article, relying upon historical evidence, hadiths narrated by
Ghaza’iri and the book al-Du‘afa which is ascribed to Ibn Ghaza’iri, the author
has shown that Ghaza’iri and Ibn Ghaza’iri believe that Imam is appointed
by God and Imams (A.S) enjoy perfections such as infallibility, God-given
knowledge, knowledge of the hidden, and extraordinary capabilities.
Since no independent work written by them has been handed down to us,
perfections such as knowledge of the hidden and the like can be accurately
judged; however, they confirmed such perfections and did not consider
[belief in] them as extremism.