Second:

This is a claim unsupported by any proof and therefore need not be accepted.

Third:

It is contradicted by (1) what is more widely known and more evident: that it was revealed concerning Abū Bakr and his companions, who fought the apostates alongside him. This is the well-known view [among people] (2), as explained above. But these liars sought to take the virtues reported concerning Abū Bakr and ascribe them (3) to Ali. This is evil scheming, which recoils only upon its perpetrators.

A trustworthy member of our circle told me that he had met a shaykh whom I know. This shaykh possessed religious devotion and asceticism and was known for his spiritual states, but he had Shiite leanings.

He said:

“He had a book that he held in great esteem. He claimed that it was an esoteric work which he had obtained from the treasuries of the caliphs, and he went to great lengths in describing it. When he produced it, there it was: a book (4) written in an elegant hand. They had taken all the hadiths found in al-Bukhārī and Muslim concerning the virtues of Abū Bakr, Umar, and others like them, and recast them as being about Ali. This book may well have come from the treasuries of the Egyptian Banū Ubayd, for their inner circle were atheistic zindīqs whose aim was to subvert Islam. They had fabricated so many hadiths that ran counter to the religion that only Allah knows their full extent.

“Ignorant people of this kind suppose that the hadiths found in al-Bukhārī and Muslim were taken solely from al-Bukhārī and Muslim themselves, just as Ibn al-Khatīb and others like him—people who do not understand the true state of affairs—suppose. They also suppose that errors could slip past al-Bukhārī and Muslim, or