He—may Allah have mercy on him—was asked:

“Do the scholars regard the following claims as authentic: that ʿAlī, may Allah be pleased with him, fought the jinn in the well; that he stretched out his hand on the day of Khaybar and the army crossed over it; that he charged the Confederates, who divided into seventeen groups before him, with a man behind each group striking with a sword and saying, ‘I am ʿAlī’; and that he had a sword called Dhū al-Faqār which could lengthen and shorten?

“That he struck Marhab with it while Marhab had a marble basin on his head, splitting it, him, and his horse with a single blow that continued into the ground, while a voice called out in the air, ‘There is no sword but Dhū al-Faqār, and no valiant man but ʿAlī’; that he launched toward the fortress of al-Ghurāb in a catapult; that he was sent secretly to every prophet and openly alongside the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace; and that he would charge armies of fifty thousand, twenty thousand, and thirty thousand single-handedly?

“That when Marhab came out from Khaybar to face him, he struck him once, cleaving him lengthwise and his horse crosswise, and the sword penetrated two or three cubits into the ground; and that he grasped the ring of Khaybar’s gate and shook it, causing the town to shake and battlements to fall from the wall? Is any of this authentic?”

He replied:

Praise be to Allah. These accounts are fabricated lies, by the unanimous agreement of the people of knowledge and faith.