ʿAlī b. Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm b. Abān al-Kulaynī al-Rāzī, known as ʿAllān al-Kulaynī, was among the Imāmī narrators of the era of the Minor Occultation (260/874 to 329/940-941). Among the early Imāmī biographical scholars, only al-Najāshī (d. 450/1058) provided his biographical account and explicitly affirmed his reliability. He has been identified as the maternal uncle of Muḥammad b.Yaʿqūb al-Kulaynī (d. 329/940), and many narrations from him are quoted in al-Kāfī. A considerable portion of these narrations appears in Kitāb al-ḥujja of al-Kāfī. According to a well-known view among Imāmī scholars, he collected the narrations of his book from earlier ḥadīth collections. Based on this, the question arises as to which book was his written source for transmitting these narrations. This article seeks to evaluate the hypothesis of ʿAllān al-Kulaynī’s transmission of narrations from a written source by al-Kulaynī through collecting and analysing these narrations. The documentary and content-based evidence of these narrations support their transmission from Kitāb akhbār al-Qāʾim by ʿAllān al-Kulaynī. The content of a significant portion of these narrations concerns the twelfth Imam, which is in complete alignment with the title of his book.

KEYWORDS: Shīʿī ḥadīth collections, sources of al-Kāfī, Muḥammad b. Yaʿqūb al-Kulaynī, Kitāb akhbār al-Qāʾim, ʿAlī b. Muḥammad al-Kulaynī al-Rāzī, ʿAllān al-Kulaynī