Re: Defination of a sahabi -according to Twelver shias
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Same goes with Yaqub Kuleni, he has compiled a book of narrations of Ahlulbayt [as], he never bothered to go into the issue as to what should be the definition of a Sahabi, since it has never been of importance to Shias.
I dont know if I am being clear here or not :S
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brother BOY NICE i think the reason why 12er scholars have not gone too much into defination of sahaba is because their rijal works usually start from times of Imam baqir & sadiq.And so they began writing biographies for companions starting from these imams.By this time vast majority of sahaba were dead anyway.Also in later 12er hadith works there seems to be a effort to distinguish their stance from other pro-Alid doctrines like those of zaydia and mutazilite.Thats why only those narraters with solid 12er credentials seem to have been given preference.
Before that period it seems to me that shia and sunni narraters [or shud i say proto-sunni ,proto-shia] were used by all hadith compilers.So we why so many famous sunni hadith works even the 6 grt books have transmitters with shia-leaning.So in early narraters accepted by both e.g we see hudhaifa ,abu tufayl , zayd b arqam etc.Its hard to characterize their hadith as strictly shia or sunni.Their early biographiers like ibn rafi ,ibn kalbi were also called shia loosely since their forefathers had sided with Ali in civil wars but they generally did not considered imami or 12ers as they did not express any explicit acceptence of the imamate doctrine that came to be associatted with 12ers.