Bihar al-Anwar: Difference between revisions

The importance of the Bihar for the study of Imamite literature can hardly be exaggerated. It reflects the accumulated knowledge of a millennium of Imamite hadith scholarship, and covers most aspects of Imamite religious thought: the concept of knowledge ([[ilm]]) (vol. 1); tawhid and the divine attributes (2); free will and predestination, death and the after-life (3); arguments (ehtejajat), mainly of the imams, in defense of Imamite beliefs (4); stories of the prophets (5); biographies of the Prophet and his forebears (6); the special position of the imams (7); the injustices perpetrated against [[Ali]] and the [[ahl al-bayt]] by the first three caliphs and [[Muawiya]] (8); biographies of [[Fatima]] and the first eleven imams (9-12); the twelfth imam and issues bearing on his occultation (13); cosmology and natural history (14); the concepts of belief and unbelief (15); practical ethics and correct social and religious behavior (16); exhortations (17); the position of the Koran (19/1); the various kinds of supererogatory prayers (doʿa) (19/2-4); the “pillars of Islam” and legal traditions (feqh) relating thereunto (18, 20-21); pilgrimages to the graves of the Prophet, the imams, and other holy men (22); positive law (23-24); the Ketab al-ejazat (25).