Book

al-Istibṣār fī ma-Khtulifa min al-Akhbār

Researcher

Discription of This Book

This book contains jurisprudential hadiths and is more concise than Tahdhib al-ahkam. The order of the chapters in al-Istibsar is so that the first two parts are dedicated to issues regarding worship (except Jihad) and the last part (part three) is about other jurisprudential issues such as contracts, unilateral obligations, fixed punishments, and financial compensations.

According to statistics that the author has given about the hadiths recorded in al-Istibsar, they are 5511 hadiths,[1] while in a researched publication of the book, the number of hadiths is 5558 and this difference might be due to the way of counting some special hadiths.[2]

In the first two parts, al-Shaykh al-Tusi has recorded almost all hadiths with their references. Still, in the last part, the references are mentioned in a brief way and similar to the style of Tahdhib al-ahkam and more similar to the style of al-Shaykh al-Saduq in Man la yahduruh al-faqih the references of hadiths to hadiths Usul [original references] are mentioned at the end of the work.