Amongst the better known duʿāʾs for the month of Rajab is a duʿāʾ beginning “You from whom I hope for every good” (yā man arjūhu li-kulli khayr), the text and directions for the use of which are included by Shaykh ʿAbbās Qummī in his Mafātīḥ al-jinān, cited from Raḍī al-Dīn Ibn Ṭāwūs’s Iqbāl al-aʿmāl. Ibn Ṭāwūs’s text, however, leaves some ambiguity regarding Imam al-Ṣādiq’s posture as he recites the duʿāʾ, presenting a first avenue for study. As for the text’s textual history, an examination of early Imāmī hadith literature reveals that texts resembling this duʿāʾ may be found in works including al-Kulaynī’s al-Kāfī, al-Kashshī’s Rijāl, and al-Ṭūsī’s Miṣbāḥ al-mutahajjid, albeit with divergences in their texts, vowelling, and chains of transmission. A survey of this evidence reveals the version in al-Kashshī as bearing the closest resemblance to that given by Ibn Ṭāwūs in Iqbāl. In his Zād al-maʿād, ʿAllāma al-Majlisī combines the versions of al-Kashshī and Iqbāl and, apparently with recourse to the Kitāb al-duʿāʾ in al-Kāfī, gives his own interpretation of the ambiguous passages in Ibn Ṭāwūs’s version. It is this recension in al-Majlisī’s Zād al-maʿād that underpins current conventions of this duʿāʾ’s recital among the Twelver Shīʿī faithful. The following article reveals that, notwithstanding the accuracy of al-Majlisī’s exegesis of the obscure parts of Ibn Ṭāwūs’s recension, parts of his interpretation do not fit the text in Iqbāl. Analysis of the duʿāʾ’s isnād, meanwhile, demonstrates that none of the available versions possesses a reliable isnād; however, a number of indicators, not least the text’s transmission by figures such as al-Kulaynī, al-Kashshī, al-Ṭūsī, and Ibn Ṭāwūs, enable confidence that the thematic core of the text originates with al-Ṣādiq, though the same confidence cannot extent to the textual particularities of any given version (including specifications of when the duʿāʾ should be read, or other ritual directions regarding its recital).

KEYWORDS: duʿāʾ, hadith, aʿmāl, al-Majlisī, Ibn Ṭāwūs, ʿAbbās Qummī, Shīʿism