Moreover, this contradicts what is known through mass transmission. Knowledge from the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, reached all the Muslim cities through channels other than ‘Alī, may Allah be pleased with him. This is obvious in the case of the people of Medina and Mecca, and likewise those of Syria and Basra, who transmitted very little from ‘Alī. Most of his knowledge circulated among the people of Kūfa. Yet even they had learned the Quran and Sunnah before ‘Uthmān assumed the caliphate, let alone before ‘Alī’s caliphate.
The people of Medina most learned in jurisprudence and religious knowledge had learned the religion during ‘Umar’s caliphate and earlier. None of them had learned anything from ‘Alī except those who learned from him while he was in Yemen, just as they learned at that time from Mu‘ādh ibn Jabal. Mu‘ādh ibn Jabal stayed longer among the people of Yemen and taught them more than ‘Alī did. Thus, the people of Yemen transmitted more from Mu‘ādh than they did from ‘Alī. It was under Mu‘ādh that Shurayh and other leading Successors learned jurisprudence.
When ‘Alī arrived in Kūfa, Shurayh was already serving there as a judge. During his caliphate, ‘Alī found Shurayh and ‘Ubayda al-Salmānī serving as judges, both of whom had learned jurisprudence under others, not under him.
Thus, if knowledge of Islam had spread throughout the “cities of Islam”—in the Hijāz, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Khurāsān, Egypt, and the Maghreb—before he arrived in Kūfa, and if, when he came to Kūfa, most of the knowledge that had reached him had also been conveyed by other Companions, and if ‘Alī conveyed no knowledge exclusively without others conveying still more knowledge that was exclusive to them,