روايات علي بن ابي حمزه بطايني بين رد و قبول

The Traditions of ʹAli b. Abi Hamza Bata ini between Acceptance and Rejection

Ali b. Abi Hamza b. Bataʹini, is among the heretic (fasid al-madhhab) transmitters of hadith, with the difference, however, that he has left behind two distinguishable periods in his life time. For some time he had been on the right path and during that period he had been regarded as among the transmitters of hadith from Imam al-Sadiq (A.S.) and Imam al-Kazim (A.S.), but toward the end of his life he was deviated and denied the Imamate of Imam al-Rida (A.S.). During his upright period, he had related from the two noble Imams many traditions which have found their way into our collections of hadith through reports of the compilers of hadith sources, trustworthy transmitters of hadith, and the people of consensus. Because of the denunciations made of him in biography books, our jurists and scholars have taken different stances in dealing with his related traditions. Their disagreement is rooted in that some of them regard the time of relating the traditions to be during his upright period and others believe it to be during his deviation. This has created a kind of ambivalence in acceptance or rejection of his traditions. According to some evidences, however, most of his traditions seem to belong to his upright period; thus, his traditions can be trusted and counted on, if they meet certain requirements, as it has been so with other famous jurists and scholars.