Kitāb al-Zuhd
Al-Ḥusayn b. Saʿīd al-Ahwāzī, a companion of the eighth, ninth and tenth Imams writing in the third/ninth century, who later settled in Qum. Its subject is renunciation: detachment from the world, restraint in appetite and speech, the remembrance of death, and the fear and hope the tradition treats as the proper posture toward God. The reports are short, unadorned and grouped by theme. What gives it particular value is its position in the chain — it belongs to the generation of primary written sources that al-Kulaynī, al-Ṣadūq and al-Ṭūsī drew on, so it shows the raw material of the great collections before they absorbed it.
Chapters
- 1. On silence Except when Speaking what is Good, Abandonment of what does not concern one, and Slander 23 hadith
- 2. Humility and Arrogance 17 hadith
- 3. Showing off, Hypocrisy, Self-Admiration, and Conceit 19 hadith
- 4. Repentance, Seeking Forgiveness, Regret, and Admission (of Guilt) 19 hadith
- 5. Crying out of Fear of Allah 4 hadith
- 6. Remembering Death and the Grave 11 hadith
- 7. What the Believer and Disbeliever will See (Before Dying) 11 hadith
- 8. Questioning in the Grave, Chastisement in the Grave, and Barzakh 11 hadith
- 9. Resurrection, Reckoning, Standing Before Allah, the Exalted, and al-Ṣirāṭ 14 hadith
- 10. Intercession and Those who will come out of the Fire (of Hell) 12 hadith
- 11. Traditions About Paradise and Hell 19 hadith
- 12. On Etiquette and Encouraging Others to do Good 33 hadith
- 13. Enjoining Good and Forbidding Evil 4 hadith
- 14. On Good Character, Kindness and Anger 20 hadith
- 15. Virtue and Vice 9 hadith
- 16. Kindness to Parents, Relatives, Kinsfolk and Severance of Ties 26 hadith
- 17. The Rights of Neighbors 3 hadith
- 18. What has come in Reference to Slaves 5 hadith
- 19. What has come in Reference to this World and One who Seeks it 20 hadith
- 20. The Two Angels and what they Record 7 hadith
- 21. Translator’s Introduction 3 hadith
About this collection
Kitāb al-Zuhd
Al-Ḥusayn b. Saʿīd al-Ahwāzī was a companion of the eighth, ninth and tenth Imams who wrote in the third/ninth century and later settled in Qum, where his books passed directly into the Qummi tradition. This is his treatise on renunciation, and it runs in this edition to 290 narrations across 21 chapters.
Its subject is the interior life rather than practice: detachment from the world and what it costs, restraint in appetite and in speech, the remembrance of death, poverty and sufficiency, and the fear and hope the tradition treats as the proper posture of a servant toward God. The reports are short, unadorned and grouped by theme, with no commentary between them.
Its particular value is its position in the chain of transmission. Al-Ḥusayn b. Saʿīd belongs to the generation of primary written sources that al-Kulaynī, al-Ṣadūq and al-Ṭūsī drew on a century later, so reading it shows the raw material of the great collections in the form it had before they absorbed and rearranged it. A number of its reports recur in al-Kāfi in a recognisably close wording.