and then abandoned it.

Al-Shaʿbī said: “I saw ʿAlī with his head and beard completely white, as though the two were cotton.”

He also said: “I saw ʿAlī with a white beard; I have never seen a larger beard than his, and only a few small tufts of hair remained on his head.”

Abū Isḥāq said: “I saw him delivering a sermon, wearing a waist-wrapper and a cloak. He had a receding hairline, a prominent belly, and his head and beard were white.”

Abū Jaʿfar al-Bāqir said: “ʿAlī was brown-skinned—deeply so—with heavy, large eyes, and he was nearer to short than tall.”

ʿUrwah said: “ʿAlī embraced Islam when he was eight years old.”

Al-Ḥasan ibn Zayd ibn al-Ḥasan said: “He embraced it when he was nine.”

Al-Mughīrah said: “He became Muslim at the age of fourteen”; Jarīr transmitted this from him.

It is authentically reported from Ibn ʿAbbās that he said: “The first person to embrace Islam was ʿAlī.”

Muḥammad al-Quraẓī said: “The first to accept Islam was Khadījah, and the first two men were Abū Bakr and ʿAlī. Abū Bakr was the first to make his Islam public, whereas ʿAlī concealed his Islam for fear of his father, until Abū Ṭālib met him and asked, ‘Have you accepted Islam?’ He replied…”