Ahkam101 is a Shia AI assistant grounded in Twelver (Jaʿfari) jurisprudence as taught by Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali al-Husayni al-Sistani. It is not a general Islamic chatbot and not a multi-marja tool. It answers from one body of published rulings, cites the exact source each time, and tells you plainly when the corpus has nothing to offer on your question. You can ask in English, Arabic, Farsi, or Urdu.
The Jaʿfari school is the jurisprudence of Twelver Shia Islam, named for Imam Jaʿfar al-Sadiq. Its practical rulings on worship, wealth, and daily life reach today's follower through a living marjaʿ, whose considered opinions a muqallid follows in practice. Ahkam101 makes one such body of opinions — that of Ayatollah Sistani — searchable in ordinary language. It does not compare maraji or reconstruct the school's reasoning; it retrieves what he has published and shows you where it appears, which is what a follower practicing taqlid usually needs.
A Shia AI is only as trustworthy as the texts under it. Ahkam101 retrieves from 49,636 indexed passages across 18 official books — among them the three volumes of Minhaj al-Salihin, al-Masaʾil al-Muntakhaba, the four-volume Persian Tawdih al-Masail Jameh, and the English Islamic Laws and A Code of Practice for Muslims in the West — together with 6,500+ answered questions from the sistani.org Q&A archive. Nothing outside this corpus is treated as a source, and when it holds no relevant ruling, Ahkam101 says so instead of improvising.
These texts were published in Arabic, Persian, and English, and Ahkam101 searches all three at once. That matters for a Shia corpus in particular: many rulings exist only in Arabic or Persian and were never translated, and a tool limited to English would simply miss them. Ask in English, Arabic, Farsi, or Urdu, and the applicable ruling is found in whichever language it was written and explained back to you in yours — with its citation attached. And because it runs as an online assistant, it is available 24/7 — day or night, within your monthly question allowance, with no office hours to wait for.
Ahkam101 is built by Mārefa Source — hawza-trained scholars studying at the Dars al-Kharij level, working alongside leaders and engineers from the technology industry, including Meta and AI startups. That pairing is deliberate: the scholarship keeps the rulings faithful to the source texts, and the engineering keeps retrieval and citation honest. Ahkam101 is not affiliated with the office of Sayyid al-Sistani.
Yes. Ahkam101 is a Shia AI assistant that answers questions of Twelver (Jaʿfari) jurisprudence from the published rulings of Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali al-Husayni al-Sistani. It is a single-marja tool by design: it draws only on his works, so answers never silently blend the positions of different scholars or schools.
Every answer carries a citation to the specific source it was drawn from — a book with a page or ruling number, or a numbered entry from the sistani.org Q&A archive. Before an answer is shown, a validation layer checks that each citation actually appears in the retrieved text and removes anything that cannot be traced to a real passage. The goal is verifiability: you are meant to check the source yourself, not take the model on trust.
Ahkam101 answers questions of jurisprudence (fiqh) — practical rulings — not hadith lookup or authentication. Those rulings are themselves derived by the marjaʿ from the Qur’an and the hadith of the Ahl al-Bayt, so hadith stands behind them, but Ahkam101 is not a hadith database and does not retrieve, grade, or authenticate individual narrations. If you ask a hadith-research question, it will point you to the ruling it can source rather than present a hadith it cannot properly authenticate. For hadith study, use a dedicated hadith collection or a qualified scholar.
One marjaʿ only: Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali al-Sistani. Ahkam101 does not cover other maraji or offer a multi-marja comparison. A Shia AI is only useful if you know exactly whose rulings you are reading, which is why the corpus is deliberately limited to his published works.
The corpus is 49,636 indexed passages across 18 official books — including Minhaj al-Salihin, al-Masaʾil al-Muntakhaba, Tawdih al-Masail Jameh, and Islamic Laws — together with 6,500+ answered questions from the sistani.org Q&A archive. These are retrieved in their three original publication languages: Arabic, Persian, and English.
You can ask in English, Arabic, Farsi, or Urdu, and the answer returns in your language. Because the source texts are searched in Arabic, Persian, and English, a ruling is found in whichever language it was published rather than only where a translation exists.
Yes. Ahkam101 is an online assistant available around the clock — day or night, you can look up a ruling the moment a question arises, with no office hours to wait for. Usage follows the plan limits (12 questions a month free, 100 on Premium), but the service itself runs 24/7.
Ahkam101 is built by Mārefa Source — hawza-trained scholars studying at the Dars al-Kharij level, working alongside leaders and engineers from the technology industry, including Meta and AI startups. The scholarship keeps the rulings faithful to the source texts; the engineering keeps retrieval and citation honest. It is not affiliated with the office of Sayyid al-Sistani.
Ahkam101 is an educational assistant, not a marjaʿ, nor a substitute for one. Answers are generated from published rulings of Ayatollah Sayyid Ali al-Husayni al-Sistani and may contain errors. For matters of consequence, please confirm with your marjaʿ's office or a qualified scholar. Ahkam101 is not affiliated with the office of Sayyid al-Sistani.