Dialogical Structures in the Ṣaḥīḥ and Kafī: some considerations

Analysis of the dialogical structures which are recurrent in religious texts, both Sunni and Shiite, has not attracted much attention. Here I will deal with two works belonging to the same literary genre but written by authors who, from a religious perspective, represent different traditions: the Ṣaḥīḥ by al-Bukhārī, one of the six canonical Sunni collections, and the Kāfī by al-Kulaynī, one of the four Imami canonical collections. My purpose is to verify if the dialogue, recurrent in these two texts, is a means through which they both exhibit religious authority and if between the prophetic dialogue and the Imami dialogue there are variations that we can relate to the manifestation of a different religious authority.