certificates of transmission (“ijāzāt al-riwāya”) and their functions in safavid historical researchs

ijāza a term describing a variety of academic certificates that giving, receiving, and collecting such certificates grew from the science of prophetic tradition and became an essential part of islamic education in nearly all academic fields. the certificate of transmission (“ijāzat al-riwāya”) is a kind of these certificates that granted the recipient (mujāz) the right to pass a specific text on to the next generation of students on the authority of its issuer (mujīz), and it established the student’s place in an unbroken chain of reliable teachers (esnād) going back to the text’s original author. besides these two main purposes of issuing certificate of transmission, these texts have a lot of information on various branches. study of these as historical documents, many benefits can have numerous functions in historical researchs, particularly aware of the lesser known aspects of the shiite academic tradition and interconnected networks of scholars. this paper attempts with citing numerous examples to explain the functions of the transmission certificates in historical researchs about safavid area, as access to imami scholars information, verification of their academic qualifications, check the authenticity of the written sources, identify common books in different fields, geographic information shiite areas and many other historical data.