Kitāb al-Ḍuʿafāʾ
A work of rijāl rather than hadith, attributed to Aḥmad b. al-Ḥusayn Ibn al-Ghaḍāʾirī of Baghdad in the fifth/eleventh century. Its purpose is narrow and technical: entries on transmitters judged weak, unreliable or fabricators, consulted when weighing whether a chain can carry the claim placed on it. Two things make it contested. Its judgements are far more severe than comparable works, condemning narrators al-Najāshī and al-Ṭūsī accept. And the attribution itself is doubted, since the book survives through quotation in later works rather than a continuous manuscript. It is therefore rarely used alone — a weakening found only here is weighed against the other rijāl books.
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Kitāb al-Ḍuʿafāʾ
A work of rijāl rather than of hadith, attributed to Abū al-Ḥusayn Aḥmad b. al-Ḥusayn Ibn al-Ghaḍāʾirī of Baghdad, writing in the fifth/eleventh century. Its purpose is narrow and technical: entries on transmitters judged weak, unreliable, doctrinally suspect or outright fabricators, consulted when weighing whether a chain can carry the claim placed on it. This edition holds 226 entries.
Two things have kept it contested since it was first cited. Its judgements are markedly more severe than those of comparable works, condemning narrators whom al-Najāshī and al-Ṭūsī accept without hesitation, and its entries are terse, rarely giving the grounds for a verdict. And the attribution itself is doubted: the book has no continuous manuscript tradition and survives through quotation in later works, principally those of al-ʿAllāma al-Ḥillī and Ibn Dāwūd, so it is not settled that what is quoted is what Ibn al-Ghaḍāʾirī wrote, or that he wrote it at all.
Scholars therefore rarely use it alone. A weakening found only here is weighed against the other rijāl books rather than acted on, and a narrator condemned here but accepted elsewhere is generally treated as an open question. It is included because a great deal of later argument about chains cannot be followed without it.