of guidance and the religion of truth and are the faction farthest (1) from error and waywardness (2), then the Rāfidah are the very opposite.

It has become clear that the words stated by this man (3) contain falsehood obvious to any rational person and would be cited as proof only by someone ignorant. It has also become clear that this man had some familiarity and association with the Shi'a and that, through what he stated in this book, he fell in with their inclinations (4), even though he was not a scholar of transmitted reports and traditions. Rather, he belonged to the class of transmitters of historical accounts upon whom discerning people do not rely.

Anyone whose knowledge of the Companions and their circumstances derives from a book such as this (5) has excluded himself from the ranks of people of understanding. Who would abandon the books of transmitted knowledge whose authenticity scholars of such reports have unanimously affirmed, and disregard what has been recurrently transmitted in the hadith books, some of which (6) are the Sahīh collections, the Sunan works, the Musnad compilations, the Mu'jam collections, works on names and virtues, books containing reports about the Companions, and other such works; as well as books of prophetic biography and military campaigns—although these rank below the former—and works of tafsīr and fiqh, and other books whose reader would know through conclusive mass transmission (7) the opposite (8) of what is found in the false report, and would know that