(by anyone)(1) in it. If he was the most ascetic(2), then he was the imam, since no one inferior to him could take precedence over him(3).”
The response is that both propositions are false: he was not more ascetic than Abū Bakr and Umar, and not everyone who is more ascetic is thereby more entitled to the imamate. That is because Alī and his family possessed wealth and slave-concubines that Abū Bakr and Umar did not.
Abd Allah ibn Ahmad narrated:
Alī ibn Hakīm related to us: Sharīk related to us, from Āsim ibn Kulayb, from Muhammad ibn Kab al-Qurazī, who said: I heard Alī say, “I was with the Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—and would tie a stone against my stomach out of hunger, yet today my charitable endowment amounts to forty thousand.”(4)
Although this report is weak, it may nevertheless be set against the claim that, while in Iraq, he ate nothing but barley bread, especially since that account has no chain of transmission.
There is no doubt that Alī possessed greater wealth than Abū Bakr and Umar. Even if one considered only what Umar used to give him, his children, and the members of his household, Umar gave them larger monetary grants than he gave the other clans of Quraysh. Umar did not give anyone from Banū Adī, Taym, or any other clan as much as he gave the relatives of the Messenger of Allah—may Allah bless him and grant him peace. This(5) alone accounts for their considerable wealth.