Kitab al-Irshad Paperback

Kitab al-Irshad was written by al-Mufid before he was forty. It is written in answer to a request for guidance about the lives of the Imams.

The book is really in two halves. The first deals with the first Imam, Ali b.Abi Talib (a.s.) and the second half deals with the other eleven Imams. The first half of the book is mainly concerned with the inter-Islamic polemic. Al-Mufid attempts to show that 'Ali was the most excellent of the followers of the Prophet and was designated by the Prophet to be his successor.

In the second half of the book Al-Mufid presents the other eleven Imams. These accounts are not full lives of the Imams but rather collections of traditions concerned with critical aspects of their Imamates.