This is despite al-Hākim’s being regarded as having Shi‘i leanings. He was asked to narrate a hadith extolling Muʿāwiyah, but replied:

“I cannot bring myself to do it; I cannot bring myself to do it.”

They beat him for this, yet he still refused. In his Forty Hadith, however, he narrates hadiths that leading hadith scholars deem weak—indeed, fabricated—such as his report concerning ʿAlī’s fight against the oath-breakers, the unjust, and the renegades.

Yet the Shi‘i leanings of al-Hākim and hadith scholars like him—such as al-Nasāʾī, Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, and their peers—do not extend to preferring ʿAlī over Abū Bakr and ʿUmar. Indeed, no hadith scholar is known to prefer him to them both (1). Rather, the most a Shi‘i-leaning scholar among them will do is prefer him to ʿUthmān, make some critical remark, or refrain from mentioning certain merits, and the like. For hadith scholars have been safeguarded and held within bounds by their knowledge of the authentic hadiths demonstrating the superiority (2) of the Two Shaykhs.

As for someone with some involvement in hadith who embraces Rāfidism, such as Ibn ʿUqdah and others like him, the most he can do is gather the false and fabricated reports narrated concerning ʿAlī’s virtues; he cannot gainsay the mass-transmitted reports concerning the virtues of the Two Shaykhs,