every legal ruling he issued. Nor is any of the leading scholars of the early generations—whether from Banū Hāshim or otherwise—known to have said that Alī must be followed in everything he says.
The third point: The kindred did not agree upon Alī’s imamate or preeminence. Rather, leading members of the kindred, such as Ibn Abbās and others, accorded Abū Bakr and Umar precedence * in both the imamate and preeminence. Likewise, the rest of Banū Hāshim—including the Abbāsids, the Ja'farids, and most of the Alids—acknowledged (1) the imamate of Abū Bakr and Umar * (2). The followers of Mālik, Abū Hanīfa, al-Shāfi'ī, Ahmad, and others among them are many times more numerous than the Imāmīs among them.
What has been reliably transmitted from all the scholars of the Prophet’s Household among Banū Hāshim—from the Successors and those who followed them, including the descendants of al-Husayn ibn Alī, the descendants of al-Hasan, and others—is that they were loyal to Abū Bakr and Umar and considered them superior to Alī. Reports from them to this effect are established and mass-transmitted.
The hadith master Abū al-Hasan al-Dāraqutnī wrote a book titled The Companions’ Praise of the Kindred and the Kindred’s Praise of the Companions (3), in which he included a selection of such material. The same is true of every hadith scholar who wrote on the Sunnah—for example, al-Sunnah by Abd Allāh ibn Ahmad, al-Sunnah by al-Khallāl (4), al-Sunnah by Ibn Batta, al-Sunnah by al-Ājurrī, and the works of al-Lālakā'ī, al-Bayhaqī, Ibn Dharr al-Harawī, al-Talamankī, Ibn Hafs ibn Shāhīn, and many times as many others. The books this man cites in support of his argument—such as the works titled The Virtues of the Companions by Imam Ahmad and Abū Nu'aym (5), and al-Tha'labī’s Tafsīr—contain, among