The eighth argument:

It may be said: Scholars know that the Imāmī Shīʿah, who claim an explicit designation, first appeared toward the end of the era of the Rightly Guided Caliphs. This claim was fabricated by Abd Allāh ibn Saba’ and his band of liars; they had not existed before then. What mass transmission, then, can they claim?!

The ninth:

The hadiths transmitted by the Companions concerning the virtues of Abū Bakr, Umar, and Uthmān are far more widely transmitted among both ordinary people and scholars than this explicit designation. If the transmission of those virtues by the vast majority of the Companions can be challenged, then this report is all the more open to challenge. If this report cannot be challenged, then those reports are even less open to challenge. Once the virtues of the Companions attested by those numerous, mass-transmitted texts are established, it becomes impossible that they should have agreed to oppose this explicit designation. For opposing it—if it were true—would be among the gravest acts of sin and transgression.

The tenth:

Not a single member of the Imāmiyyah transmits this explicit designation through an unbroken chain of transmission, let alone through mass transmission. This wording (* requires repeated rehearsal: unless its transmitters repeatedly studied it, they would not have memorized it. And where are the great numbers (1) who memorized this wording *) (2) as the wording of the Quran, the testimony of faith recited in prayer, and the call to prayer have been memorized, generation after generation, in a chain reaching back to the Messenger?

When we claim mass transmission concerning the virtues of the Companions, we sometimes mean mass transmission of the meaning, as with the mass transmission of the caliphates of the four caliphs and the battles of the Camel and Siffīn,