This podcast series is based on the book Arba‘īnīyyāt written by Sayyid Aḥmad Zanjānī (d. 1973). The book belongs to the genre of “forty-ḥadīth” literature and is on the topic of spiritual purification. Unlike most forty-ḥadīth works which only compile forty traditions on any given theme, Sayyid Aḥmad instead builds 4 unique chains of forty ḥadīth, where each ḥadīth is a preliminary for the next ḥadīth, using the following tradition as his basis:
Imam Baqir (a) says: Allah (swt) sent revelation to Adam (a) saying: I have collected all goodness in four words; one of them is for me, one of them is for you, one of them is for between you and I, and one of them is for between you and the rest of humanity.
1) As for that which is for me it is that you worship me and do not associate any partners with me.
2) That which is for you is the recompense for your deeds with a reward that you most need.
3) That which is between you and I is that you supplicate, and I accept and answer your supplications.
4) That which is between you and people is that you must like for others that which you like for yourself and dislike for others what you dislike for yourself.

For each of these “four words” or four dimensions of human relationship with Allah (swt) and rest of humanity, Sayyid Aḥmad brings forty unique aḥādīth from the Prophet (p) and his Ahl al-Bayt (a) to expand and elaborate on each of these dimensions. The result is a series of 160 traditions, whereby a person who has gone through this series will have a better understanding of what it means to be sincere towards Allah (swt), the nature of Allah’s (swt) rewards for the believers, the nature of supplication and its fulfilment, and our ethical responsibilities when dealing with others.

Syed Ali Imran will be summarizing these discussions of Sayyid Aḥmad Zanjānī in this podcast series, taking the listeners through each ḥadīth one by one.