Draft – Classified Level 3
The original Rijal al-Kashi was a medieval biographical evaluation work, cataloging narrators of Hadith—who was trustworthy, who was a liar, who had deviated into heresy. But the 2021 addendum, numbered 176, was different. It contained no names of the dead. It contained operational notes.
Mehdi Kashani was a mid-level telecom engineer and a Friday prayer regular at the Imam Zadeh Saleh mosque in north Tehran. His beard was regulation length. His phone contained no music, only Quranic recitations. By all measures, he was thiqa .
The next morning, two men in navy jackets were waiting by his car. Rijal Al Kashi Report 176 -2021-
“They are watching people like you,” the investigator said. “Not the government. Someone else. Someone using the old nomenclature. Someone who knows Al Kashi better than the seminarians.”
“Al-Muwakkal” — the entrusted.
The interrogation room in the Ministry of Intelligence had a single hadith painted on the wall: “The believer is not stung from the same hole twice.” Draft – Classified Level 3 The original Rijal
The 2021 update to Al Kashi’s method was not about individuals. It was about networks of goodness that could be weaponized.
Because Report 176 ends with a question in Arabic, written in the margin:
The lead investigator—a soft-spoken man with a ring bearing the seal of Imam Reza—placed a folder on the table. It contained operational notes
Mehdi kept silent.
Report 176 was never closed. It remains in a grey box in a basement archive, stamped “For internal use only – Do not cite.”