al-Malā’ī (1), from Anas ibn Mālik, who said: “The Messenger of Allah was commissioned on Monday, and ʿAlī prayed on Tuesday.”

Some transmit this report from Muslim al-Malā’ī, from Ḥabbah ibn Juwayn, from ʿAlī—yet Ḥabbah is not worth even a ḥabbah (a single grain).

Salmāh ibn Kuhayl related, through Ḥabbah, that ʿAlī said, “I worshipped Allah together with the Messenger of Allah for seven years before anyone else worshipped Him.”
This is utterly unsound; it is a fabrication.

Sufyān al-Thawrī and Shuʿbah also reported—from Salmah, from Ḥabbah, from ʿAlī—that he said, “I am the first to have embraced Islam.” This too is unsound, for Ḥabbah is weak.

Suwayd ibn Saʿīd said: “Nūḥ ibn Qays narrated to us, from (2) Sulaymān ibn ʿAbdullāh, from Muʿādhah al-ʿAdawiyyah, who said: I heard ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib on the pulpit of Basrah saying, ‘The great truthful one informed us: I believed before Abū Bakr believed, and I submitted before he submitted.’ ”
Al-Bukhārī (3) declared this report unsound.

What is mass-transmitted from ʿAlī, however, is that he proclaimed from the pulpit of Kūfah: “O people, the best of this community after its Prophet is Abū Bakr, then ʿUmar; and had I wished to name the third, I would have done so.” (4) This has already been cited in the chapter on the virtues of the two Shaykhs—may Allah be pleased with them and grant them His good pleasure.

Imām Aḥmad (5) said: “Sulaymān ibn Dāwūd related to us; Abū ʿAwānah related to us, from Abū Balj, from ʿAmr ibn Maymūn, from Ibn ʿAbbās, who said: ‘The first person to pray—with one variant, to embrace Islam—with the Messenger of Allah ﷺ after Khadījah was ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib.’ ”
Al-Tirmidhī (6) likewise recorded it through Shuʿbah, from Abū Balj.

Reports have also been attributed to Zayd ibn Arqam and Abū Ayyūb al-Anṣārī stating that ʿAlī prayed seven years before anyone else. None of these chains is sound by any standard.

Numerous narrations claim that he was the first in this nation to become Muslim, but none of them is authentic; the soundest of them is the one we have just quoted, and even that has counter-narrations. The great ḥāfiẓ Abū’l-Qāsim ibn ʿAsākir devoted special study to this question