Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥaḍramī, the ḥadith master—Muṭīn—(1), who said:
“If the Shīʿah knew the true identity of the grave they venerate at Najaf, they would pelt it with stones; it is in fact the grave of al-Mughīra ibn Shuʿbah.”

Al-Wāqidī (2) said: “Abū Bakr ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Abī Sabrah related to me, from Isḥāq ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Abī Farwah, who said: I asked Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī al-Bāqir, ‘How old was ʿAlī when he was killed?’ He replied, ‘Sixty-three years.’ I then asked, ‘Where was he buried?’ He answered, ‘He was buried in Kūfah at night, and the place of his burial was concealed (3) from me.’”

In another report from Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, his age was given as fifty-eight. It has also been said that ʿAlī was buried in front of the congregational mosque of Kūfah; this was stated by al-Wāqidī (4). The well-known opinion [is that he was buried] in the Governor’s Palace, [while others say: in the wall of the Great Mosque of Kūfah].

Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī (5) reported from Abū Nuʿaym al-Faḍl ibn Dukayn that al-Ḥasan and al-Ḥusayn moved his body to Madinah and buried it in al-Baqīʿ beside the grave of his wife Fāṭimah [their mother].

Another account says that when they placed him on a camel, the animal wandered off and members of Ṭayyʾ seized it, thinking it contained money. When they opened the casket (6) and found a dead man—without knowing [who he was]—they buried the casket with its contents, so no one knows where his grave is; al-Khaṭīb also related this.

The ḥadith scholar Ibn ʿAsākir (7) transmitted from al-Ḥasan: “I buried ʿAlī in a room among the houses of the family of Jada.”

ʿAbd al-Malik ibn ʿUmayr said: “When Khālid ibn ʿAbd Allāh [al-Qasrī] dug the foundations of the house he was building for his son Yazīd, they uncovered an elderly man, his head and beard white, as though he had been buried only yesterday. He intended to burn the body, but Allah turned him away from that [to something else]; so he called for fine Egyptian linen, wrapped the body in it, perfumed it, and left it where it was. They say that spot lies opposite the Booksellers’ Gate on the qiblah side of the mosque, in a cobbler’s house, and hardly does anyone settle there without soon moving away.”

Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad al-Ṣādiq said: “The funeral prayer over ʿAlī was held at night; he was buried in Kūfah and the location of his grave was concealed, though it is near the Governor’s Palace.”

Ibn al-Kalbī said: “Al-Ḥasan, al-Ḥusayn, Ibn al-Ḥanafiyyah, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Jaʿfar and others of the family attended his night-time burial. They buried him outside Kūfah and obscured his grave for fear of the Kharijites and others.”

In sum, ʿAlī was killed at dawn on a Friday, the seventeenth of Ramadan in the year 40 AH; some say he was killed in Rabīʿ al-Awwal, yet the first date is the more accurate and widely accepted—Allah knows best. He was buried in Kūfah at the age of sixty-three, and this view has been deemed sound