However, he was not alone in narrating it; Fiṭr ibn Khalīfah corroborated him, reporting from Abū al-Ṭufayl, who said:

“Ali—may Allah be pleased with him—gathered the people at al-Raḥbah and said to them: ‘I adjure by Allah every Muslim who heard what the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said on the day of Ghadīr Khumm to stand up and testify to what he heard.’ Thirty people stood up—and in another narration: many people stood up—and testified that, when he took Ali’s hand, he said to the people: ‘Do you not know that I have more right over the believers than they have over themselves?’ They replied, ‘Yes, O Messenger of Allah.’ He said: ‘Whoever I am his guardian, this man is his guardian. O Allah, befriend whoever befriends him and oppose whoever opposes him.’

He said: ‘I left with some misgiving in my heart, until I met Zayd ibn Arqam and said to him, “I heard Ali saying such-and-such.” He replied, “What do you find objectionable? I heard the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, say that to him.”’

It was recorded by Aḥmad (4/370), Ibn Ḥibbān in his Ṣaḥīḥ (2205, Mawārid al-Ẓamʾān), Ibn Abī ʿĀṣim (1367 and 1368), al-Ṭabarānī (4968), and al-Ḍiyāʾ in al-Mukhtārah (no. 527, in my critical edition).

I say: Its chain of transmission is authentic according to the criteria of al-Bukhārī. Al-Haythamī said in al-Majmaʿ (9/104): “It was narrated by Aḥmad, and its narrators are those of the Ṣaḥīḥ, apart from Fiṭr ibn Khalīfah, who is trustworthy.”

Salamah ibn Kuhayl also corroborated him. He said: “I heard Abū al-Ṭufayl relate from Abū Sarīḥah or Zayd ibn Arqam—Shuʿbah was uncertain—which he traced to the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, in abbreviated form: ‘Whoever I am his guardian, Ali is his guardian.’”

It was recorded by al-Tirmidhī (2/298), who said: “A good, authentic hadith.”