struck without cleaving through (1), that would have been closer to the truth, given the many men Khālid is known to have killed in battle and the fact that he continued to be granted victory.

As for his statement:

“He often relieved the Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—of hardship.”

This is an obvious lie, of the same kind as the fabrications of the turuqiyya (popular storytellers). No occasion is known on which Alī ever relieved the Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—of any hardship. Nor, indeed, is this known of Abū Bakr or Umar, although both had striven in Allah’s cause more than he had. Rather, it was the Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—who often relieved them of their hardships.

Abū Bakr did, however, come to his defense when the polytheists sought to beat and kill him in Mecca. He kept saying:

“Would you kill a man merely for saying, ‘My Lord is Allah’?”

They eventually beat Abū Bakr, and Alī is not known to have done anything similar.

As for the allegation that the polytheists surrounded him until Abū Bakr or Alī rescued him, sword in hand, no scholar has ever transmitted it, and it has no basis in fact. Yet it is as though this Rāfidī and others like him had pored over (2) the biographies and campaign narratives fabricated by liars and the turuqiyya, such as the liar al-Bakrī’s Tanaqqulāt al-Anwār and the works of others like him. Such works are of the same sort as what is related in the popular romances of al-Battāl, Dalhama, al-Ayyār, Ahmad al-Danaf, and al-Zaybaq the Egyptian; the tales they tell of Hārūn and his vizier’s dealings with the common people; and the lengthy romance composed about Antara ibn Shaddād.

Liars have also introduced into accounts of the Messenger of Allah’s military campaigns—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—material that is