Other groups of people, such as the Karrāmiyya, said:

“Rather, Ali was an imam and Muāwiya was also an imam.” They allowed the people to have two imams when necessity required it. They said the same regarding the time of Ibn al-Zubayr and Yazīd, since they found that the people had not agreed upon a single imam.

Although Ahmad ibn Hanbal was the person of his age most knowledgeable in hadith, he argued for Ali’s imamate on the basis of the hadith found in the Sunan:

“The Prophetic Caliphate will last thirty years, after which it will become kingship.” (1)

Some people deemed this hadith weak, but Ahmad and others accepted it as established. This, then, is their principal textual proof for Ali’s caliphate. Had they found a report agreeing with it—whether with a connected chain or even one directly attributed to the Prophet by a Successor—they would have rejoiced over it.

It is therefore evident that the explicit designation claimed by the Rāfida was never heard by anyone versed in the sayings of the Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him—whether in earlier or later times.

For this reason, hadith scholars necessarily knew that this transmission was false, just as they knew that other fabricated transmissions were false.

The arbitration by the two arbiters took place while most people were with Ali, yet no Muslim—whether one of his companions or anyone else—mentioned this explicit designation, despite his many supporters. Nor did anyone among them invoke it as proof on an occasion such as this, when every motive and incentive existed to make such a designation known.

It is well known that, had this explicit designation been known among Ali’s supporters—to say nothing of others—the ordinary course of events would have required one of them to say:

“This is the Messenger of Allah’s explicit designation of him as caliph, so he must be given precedence over Muāwiya.”

Abū Mūsā himself was among the finest Muslims. Had he (2) known that the Prophet—may Allah bless