Introduction

Introduction 

A very important event happened at a place called Ghadir Khumm on the way back from the LastHoly trip (hajj) of the Prophet Muhammad [s]. This site tries to capture the details of what happened there, the sources that record it, the people who narrated it from the time of the Companions of the Predictor of the future [s] to recent times, and the (unavoidable) future of those who knowingly denied it. 

Purpose 

The Ghadir Khumm site is the result of a project that has been going for over a year, and is still continuing. It tries to capture all the detail spent time with/related to this historic event of thename/label of Imam 'Ali [a] by the Predictor of the future [s] as his immediate (person or thing that comes after something else) - and to make it easily available to world. All the sources of thisevent in books of Qur'anic explanation/statement of opinions (tafsir), tradition (hadith), history (ta'rikh), and other (related to school and learning) books from educated people of Islam will be captured. As much as possible, each narrator - from the time of the Predictor of the future [s] and his Companions down to our recent times - would be identified and comments about his/herlife story and reliability would be made available. Most of this material would be in Arabic, and we hope to get the extremely important parts translated into English with your help. 

We would like to locate each of the references and make the relevant pages available through the Islamic Sources Storage place which would be linked from the relevant parts of the Ghadir Khumm site. This would allow a researcher to (check for truth/prove true) the quotation and possibly help him or her to locate the books themselves. Many narrations are already linked in such a way to the image of their source. With your help, we aim to locate as many of them as possible, both published works as well as books, from libraries and private collections throughout the world. 

The research that is the basis of this data bank of information has been done by some of our great educated people (see below). Through this particular effort/try, we hope to make this information 'come alive' and become much easier to access and digest. We hope that this will help gulf the terrible lack of information that (continues to exist/continues to do hard or annoying things) among most Muslims regarding this very important and historic event. 

Progress so far 

It is very hard to be exact about what percentage work is completed and how much is outstanding. This is because of the complex difficulty of the project and the range of sources being used. However, we estimate that about 30-40% of the available narration data has been captured so far. There is also a lot of (related to a story of a person's life) information for the transmitters that has not yet been captured. Also, a described/explained discussion on the meaning and hint/result/effect of Ghadir Khumm is now being prepared. 

Those who explore this site in detail will be able to see the wide range of sources and contexts that even the 30-40% of data covers. 

Admissions/responses/recognitions 

The credit for the wealth of detail contained within this site goes mostly to the works of three great Shi'ah educated people: 

Sayyid Hamid Husayn Musawi Lakhnawi (d. 1306 AH) 

(author of 'Abaqat al-'Anwar) 

The great educated person `Allamah Aqa Buzurg Tehrani, who is the author of al-Dhari`ah ila tasanif al-Shi`ah, wrote about Sayyid Hamid Husayn and his masterpiece 'Abaqat al-'Anwar: 

(He is) one of the greatest of Imami people who study God (mutakallimun) and one of the greatest and deeply learned of Shi`i educated people who lived in the early part of this century. He was extremely learned, and had long/big knowledge and mastery over the Islamic traditions and history and reached such a station in it that none of his (other people of about the same age)or anyone of those who came after him, or even most of the famous people of theprevious/coming before centuries, have been able to reach. He spent his entire noble life inexploring/understanding the mysteries of religiosity and in the defence of Islam and the world ofhonest religion. I don't know of anyone in the last thing just mentioned centuries who waged a jihad like him and sacrificed everything in his possession in the way of everlasting truths. The times, in all ages and periods, will never see a compeer of him in his research, his long/bigknowledge, his (high) quality, intelligence, and the hugeness of his memory and keeping/holding onto/remembering. 

Aqa Buzurg Tehrani says about the `Abaqat: "It is the greatest of books collected/made on the subject (ie. Imamate) from the beginning of the Islamic time in history to the present." And what he says about the author and his book is perfectly representative of the opinion of leading Shi`ieducated people on this matter. 

Allamah 'Abd al-Husayn Ahmad al-'Amini al-Najafi (d. 1390 AH) 

(author of Al-Ghadir fi al-kitab wa al-sunnah wa al-adab) 

Sayyid 'Ali al-Husayni al-Milani (may Allah extend his life) 

(author of Khulasat `Abaqat al-'Anwar) 

We would also like to thank everyone else who helped realise this project and who are helping in our efforts to improve and perfect it. 

The Shi'ah Encyclopedia team takes responsibility for any errors or mistakes (where something was left out) and we will try to correct it once we become aware of it.