he may (1) have felt inwardly inclined to be appointed, but he never said, “I am the Imam,” or “I am infallible,” or “The Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings of Allah be upon him—(2) appointed me as the Imam after him,” or that he had obligated the people to follow him, or anything to that effect. Rather, we know as a matter of necessity that whoever attributes this or anything similar to him is lying about him. We know that Ali was too God-fearing to make a manifestly false claim which all the Companions knew to be false.

As for the report attributed to him that he said:

“Ibn Abī Quhāfa indeed donned it as a garment, although he knew that my position in relation to it was that of the pivot to the millstone.”

We reply:

First: Where is the chain of transmission for this report (3), with one trustworthy narrator transmitting it from another through an uninterrupted chain back to him? No such chain exists at all. Reports of this kind are found only in Nahj al-Balāgha and similar works. Scholars know that most of the sermons in this book were falsely attributed to Ali. This is why most of them cannot be found in any earlier book and have no known chain of transmission. So from where did the person who transmitted these sermons obtain them?

These sermons are like the claim of someone who alleges that he is an Alid or an Abbasid, although none of his ancestors is known ever to have claimed such a lineage, nor did anyone claim it for him; his falsehood is therefore evident. A lineage must be known from its origin and traced down to its branch. Likewise, transmitted reports must be established and known from those through whom they have been transmitted until they reach us. Thus, if someone compiled a book in which he included numerous sermons by the Prophet—peace and blessings of Allah be upon him—and by Abu Bakr