As noted in the preceding chapters, there is an extremely large number of statements quoted from Ja'far al-Sadiq in Muslim works of various provenance.
Multivolume collections have been assembled and published out of this material. According to one report,[1229] the people who transmitted from him compiled four hundred books, including monographs on specific chapters of the law as well as notebooks: usul or ajza’ of hadith.
They also supplied the original material for later Shi hadith collections such as Kitab al-Kafi and Tahdhib al-ahkam. A few of the original books and notebooks have survived and been published; others have been reconstructed from later collections and published in recent years, with more to come.In the following pages, I present a small selection of this material, together with English translations. The emphasis is on texts that illustrate Ja'far al-Sadiq's style of legal interpretation and argumentation, which was a continuation of that of his father, Muhammad al-Baqir. To retain historical order and provide context, therefore, a few samples from Muhammad al-Baqir precede the selections from Ja'far, again with emphasis on reports that highlight the style of Muhammad al-Baqir's interpretation and argumentation.[1230]