Shattering the Mirage: A Response to ‘Abdul Hussain Sharaf al Din’s al Muraja’at: Letter 103 and 104

1) The Imam used to be quiet in publicizing the texts pertaining to him, without using them for personal gains against his opponents out of his own concern about the safety of Islam and to safeguard the strength of Muslims. He often used to defend his silence and reluctance to demand it, in such circumstance, by saying: “A man is not blamed if he takes his time in obtaining what is his; the blame is on that who takes what does not belong to him.”[1] He used to apply certain methods crowned with manifest wisdom in disseminating the texts in his honour.

Have you noticed what he did in the incident of the Rahba, when he gathered people during his caliphate to celebrate the Ghadir Day? He said to them: “I ask each Muslim of you who heard the Messenger of Allah, peace be upon him and his progeny, say on the Ghadir Day what he said to stand and testify to what he had heard, and nobody should stand except those who have seen him;” thirty companions, including twelve participants in the battle of Badr, testified to what they had heard of the Ghadir hadith as we have indicated above in Letter No. 56. This is the maximum that he could do under such critical circumstances due to ‘Uthman’s murder, and the mutiny in Basra and Syria. It is, indeed, the peak of wisdom in such publicity in those days, and what a praiseworthy effort that revived the Ghadir tradition from its tomb and brought it to life after it was almost buried for good! The crowds at the Rahba were reminiscent of those who witnessed the Prophet (pbuh) on Ghadir Khumm day taking ‘Ali ‘alayh al-Salam in his own eminent hand and addressing a hundred thousand or more of his nation to convey to them the message that he would be his successor. Thus, the Ghadir tradition is one of the most reliable among consecutive traditions; so, observe the Prophet’s wisdom when he exhorted him in front of such thronging crowds, and be mindful of the wisdom of the wasi on that Friday when he asked them to testify, thus highlighting the truth in a quiet manner dictated by circumstances, and by a peaceful method the Imam preferred. Thus was his method in disseminating the covenant and publicizing for the tradition. He was the type of person who would attract the attention of the unaware through means which did not require making a lot of noise or creating bad feelings among people.

Consider what the authors of books of traditions have quoted of his own hadith, peace be upon him, during the incident of the feast arranged by the Messenger of Allah, peace be upon him and his progeny, at the house of his uncle, the most dignified man among the people of Mecca, when he warned his near in kin. It is a lengthy and sacred tradition people have always considered as one of the proofs of Prophethood and the miracles of Islam due to its inclusion of the Prophetic miracle of feeding a large number of people with very little food. We have already quoted it in Letter No. 20. It concludes by stating that the Messenger of Allah, peace be upon him and his progeny, took ‘Ali ‘alayh al-Salam by the neck and said: “This is my brother, the executor of my will, and my own successor; so, listen to him and obey him.” He used quite often to tell how the Messenger of Allah, peace be upon him and his progeny, said to him: “You are the wali of every believer after me,” and he also quite often used to narrate this statement of the Prophet (pbuh): “Your status to me is like that of Aaron to Moses, except there will be no Prophet after me,” and, reminescing of Ghadir Khumm, “Do not I have more authority over the believers than the believers themselves have?” They said: “Yes, indeed.” He then said: “To whomsoever I have been a wali, this (‘Ali ‘alayh al-Salam) is his wali,” in the words of Ibn Abu ‘Asim, as we explained at the conclusion of Letter No. 23, in addition to many such irrefutable texts.

They have been publicized by the most trustworthy and reliable traditionists. This is all that he was able to do during those circumstances. [“Purposeful wisdom; so, how can the nuthur be of any use?”]

On the Day of Shüra, he discharged his responsibility and warned others, sparing none of his own attributes or feats without using it as an argument. During the days of his caliphate, he often complained about the gross injustice done to him, painfully announcing his complaint from the pulpit, saying: “By God, that person vested it upon himself, knowing that my place from it was like the axle from the quern: From me does the stream of knowledge flow, and birds do not soar higher; so, I lowered against it my curtain and kept aloof therefrom. I had to opt between either fighting with an amputated arm, or be patient about a blind calamity in which the grown-ups become elderly and the youngsters grow gray hair, one wherein a mu’min sweats till he meets his Lord. I decided that to be patient was wiser; so I became patient while seeing eye sores, tongue-tied, witnessing my inheritance being plundered,” to the end of his shaqshaqi sermon, which is khutba 3 in Nahjul Balaghah, page 25, Vol. 1. He often said: “O Lord! I seek Thy assistance against Quraysh and those who support them, for they have cut my flesh, demeaned my status, and disputed with me about what is mine, then they said: ‘It is only right that we take it, and that you should abandon it.’” Refer to either khutba 167 or page 103, Vol. 2, of Nahjul Balaghah. In the same khutba, someone said to him: “You seem to be so much concerned about this matter.” The Imam ‘alayh al-Salam answered: “No; by God you are more concerned about it than I am. I have demanded one of my own rights, while you have stood between it and my attaining thereof.” He, peace be upon him, has also said: “By Allah, since the time when Allah took the life of his Messenger, peace be upon him and his progeny, till today, I have always been pushed away from my right, while others are preferred over me,” as in khutba 5, page 36, Vol. 1, of Nahjul Balaghah.

He, peace be upon him, said once: “We have a right; if we do not attain it, we will have to mount old camels even if the journey is lengthy.”[2] He, peace be upon him, said in a letter he wrote to his brother ‘Aqil: “May the One who affects justice retaliate on my behalf against Quraysh who have separated me from my own kin and deprived me the support of my own maternal brother,” as stated in epistle 36, page 67, Vol. 3, in Nahjul Balaghah. He, peace be upon him, quite often used to say: “I looked around and found no supporter other than my Ahl al Bayt whom I preferred to protect against death, overlook against my wish, and I remained patient, containing my anger though it is more bitter than colocynth [Citrullus Colocynthis],” as in khutba 25, page 62, Vol. 1, of Nahjul Balaghah.

Some of his friends asked him once: “How did you keep your folk away from that post knowing that you have more right to it than anyone else?” He, as stated on page 79, Vol. 2, of Nahjul Balaghah, statement 157, answered: “O fellow of Banu Asad! You are disturbed by such a mysterious matter to the extent that you ask your question awkwardly. Yet we are obligated to you due to our kinship, and you have the right to ask such a question. You have asked, so be informed that as regarding some people oppressing us in this regard, while they know that we are superior in lineage to them, and stronger in blood ties to the Messenger of Allah (pbuh), this came due to the selfishness of certain people who were supported by others. The government is only to Allah, and the return is unto Him on the Day of Judgment; so, do not ask me about the usurpation called for even inside his [Prophet’s] own chambers…” He, peace be upon him, has also said: “Where are those who claim that they are more deeply rooted in knowledge than we are? They tell lies about us and flagrantly oppress us though Allah has raised our status and lowered theirs, granted us and deprived them, and permitted us to enter while ordering them out, and through us has He taken them out of the darkness of blindness into the light of guidance. The seeds of imamate have been planted in the wombs of the descendants of Hashim of Quraysh; it suits nobody else, and caliphate is appropriate for nobody other than them…,” to the conclusion of statement 140, on page 36 and the succeeding pages, Vol. 2, of Nahjul Balaghah.

Consider his statement in one of his sermons: “When the Messenger of Allah, peace be upon him and his progeny, passed away, some people turned back [in their covenant to him], aiming to take various paths [rather than just one Right Path], relying on treachery, favouring those who were not his kin, abandoning the path they were ordered to take in order to please him, thus moving the foundation stones of Islam from their places, using other sinful substances in the building of its structure. They have entered into Islam through the doors of those who follow their own inclinations, going to extremes in their bewilderment, distracted like drunkards, following the sunnah of the descendants of Pharaoh, worshippers of this life, those who have deliberately abandoned their religion.”

Refer to this statement, which is cited at the beginning of page 25; it concludes sermon 2, Vol. 1, of Nahjul Balaghah, which he delivered after receiving the oath of allegiance, for it is one of the greatest. In it, he says: “Nobody can be compared with the progeny of Muhammad, peace be upon him, from all the members of this nation, and nobody can be the peer of those who have received His blessing. They are the corner-stones of the faith, the pillars of conviction; through them does the extremist return to moderation, and through them does the one who has left knowledge behind him retracts; they possess the characteristics of those who deserve to rule, and in them lie the covenant and the legacy. Now right has returned to its people and transferred back to its appropriate place.” Add to this his statement cited in the context of sermon 84, page 145, Vol. 1, of Nahjul Balaghah in which he wonders about those who oppose him: “How amazed I am to see the error of these groups, disputing in their arguments about their religion, neither following in the footsteps of the Prophet (pbuh), nor the example of his wasi…!”

2) Al Zahra’, peace be upon her, delivered very wise arguments in this regard. Two of her own statements were in wide circulation among Ahl al Bayt ‘alayh al-Salam, so much so that they used to require their children to memorize them just as they required them to memorize the entire text of the Holy Qur’an. They deal with those who “moved the foundation stones of the faith from their bases” and built them somewhere else. She said: “How dare they? Where have they moved it [caliphate] to, building it somewhere else other than at the haven of the Message, the foundations of Prophethood, the place where the faithful spirit [Gabriel] descends, the one who is the authority about secular as well as religious matters? This, indeed, is the manifest loss. Why do they hate al Hasan’s father so much? By Allah, they hate the strength of his sword, his might and astounding deeds, and his extra-ordinary effort in supporting the religion of Allah. By Allah, had they all yielded to his leadership,[3] he would have taken them to the easy path, without harming anyone. He would have brought them to an overflowing fountain of goodness, advised them in secrecy and in public, neither filling his belly with their own sustenance, nor satisfying his thirst nor hunger out of their own toil. The gates of mercy of the heavens and the earth would have been widely opened for them. Allah will punish them for the sins they were committing; so, come and listen to the story, and so long as you live, be amazed, and when you are amazed, the incident bemuses you… Where have they gone, and which nitche have they clung to? What an evil guardian they have taken, and what an evil bunch! How evil is the end of the oppressors who traded the tails for the hoofs, and the rumps for the chests! So, dusted are the noses of those who think that they have done well; they are the ones who fill the world with corruption without knowing it. Woe unto them! ‘Isn’t that who guides to the truth more worthy of being followed than the one who does not guide? What is the matter with you? How do you judge?’”[4] up to the conclusion of her sermon which is a specimen of the speech of the purified progeny in this regard, and you may judge the rest by this one, Wassalam.

Sincerely,

=====================

[1] This statement is a short one dealing with his noble objective, and it is included in Nahjul Balaghah. Refer to what the Mu’tazilite scholar has said while explaining it on page 324, Vol. 4, of his Sharh Nahjul Balaghah.

[2] This statement is number 21 of his statements in the chapter dealing with “choice gems of his wisdom,” page 155, Nahjul Balaghah. Sayyid al Radi has commented on it in a very valuable commentary, and so has Shaykh Muhammad ‘Abdoh. Both deserve the attention of any scholar.

[3] The reins passed on to him by the Messenger of Allah are those of governing the nation in the matters pertaining to its religion as well as the daily life. The meaning is that had they all been in consensus in submitting to such a government, yielding to such a leader, they would have been protected from harm.

[4] This is quoted by Abu Bakr Ahmed ibn ‘Abdul-’Aziz al Jawhari in his book Al Saqifa and Fadak, from a chain of narrators including Muhammad ibn Zakariyya, Muhammad ibn ‘Abdul-Rahman al Muhallabi, ‘Abdullah ibn Hammad ibn Sulayman who quotes his father, ‘Abdullah ibn al Hasan who quotes his mother Fatima bint Husayn, ending with al Zahra’, peace be upon her. It is also narrated by Imam Abul-Fadl Ahmed ibn Abu Tahir, who died in 280, on page 23 of his book Balaghat al Nisa’ through Harün ibn Muslim ibn Sa’dan, from al Hasan ibn Alwan from Atiyyah al ‘Awfi who narrated this khutba from a chain of narrators including ‘Abdullah ibn al Hasan from his mother Fatima bint al Husayn, from her grandmother al Zahra’, peace be upon her. Our own fellows narrate this khutba from Suwayd ibn Ghaflah ibn Awsajah al Ju’fi from al Zahra’, peace be upon her. Al Tibrisi has quoted it in his book Al Ihtijaj, and al Majlisi in his book Bihar al Anwar, and it is narrated by many other trustworthy narrators.

Discussions

The present exchange marks an expected progression in the narrative. The interlocutor, having been gradually reduced to a conduit for concession, now affords ‘Abdul Hussain the space to address a difficulty that his own argument has generated. The question is no longer whether the Sahabah disregarded clear texts, but how ‘Ali radiya Llahu ‘anhu himself is to be understood in light of that claim.

The response is telling. The language of usurpation is retained, but it is now tempered by an appeal to higher wisdom. ‘Ali’s radiya Llahu ‘anhu restraint is framed as a deliberate choice in an act of foresight aimed at preserving unity and averting discord. The implication is that he possessed a clear, divinely sanctioned right, yet elected not to assert it publicly for the sake of the greater good.

This move introduces what may be described as a softened form of Taqiyyah: a distinction between outward conduct and inward conviction. Public compliance is recast as strategic silence, while the “true” position is said to have been preserved and transmitted within a more select inner-circle. The effect is to render the public record insufficient, and to relocate authority in a parallel, less verifiable stream of transmission.

Such a framework is not without consequence. Once succumbed to, it opens the door to a mode of reasoning in which any report that contradicts the reconstructed narrative can be set aside as a product of concealment, while any report that supports it, however weak its transmission, can be privileged as an expression of the repressed concealed truth. It is precisely this logic that later gave rise to layers of attribution and fabrication, each insulated from scrutiny by the claim that the Imam spoke differently in public than in private.

Yet, this construction cannot withstand objective examination. It sits uneasily with what is known of ‘Ali’s radiya Llahu ‘anhu conduct, his participation in governance, his counsel to the Khalifas before him, and his own public statements as transmitted through reliable channels. Nor does it accord with the expectations of leadership in matters of divine import. A binding designation, if such existed, is not the sort of directive that admits of prolonged concealment without undermining its very purpose.

The treatment of the incident at al Rahbah illustrates a repeated tendency toward reframing. It is presented as a revival of a suppressed designation, even a kind of commemorative assertion of authority. In reality, the incident occurred during ‘Ali’s radiya Llahu ‘anhu own Caliphate, in a period marked by tension, suspicion, and political fracture following the murder of ‘Uthman radiya Llahu ‘anhu. His appeal to those present to testify regarding Ghadir must be read against that backdrop. It was not a retrospective challenge to the legitimacy of Abu Bakr and ‘Umar radiya Llahu ‘anhu, but an invocation of a well-known report in a context where his own standing was being questioned.

The report of Ghadir itself has never been in dispute in its broad outlines. What is contested is its meaning. The Prophet salla Llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam did not declare a political succession before the assembled multitudes of the Hajj, nor did he introduce a new constitutional principle. Rather, the address at Ghadir is best understood within its immediate context, including the complaints that had arisen from the Yemen expedition. The instruction to maintain loyalty and goodwill toward ‘Ali radiya Llahu ‘anhu does not, without further evidence, translate into a designation of exclusive political authority.

It is also notable that those who testified for him at al Rahbah included individuals who had previously pledged allegiance to Abu Bakr radiya Llahu ‘anhu. There is no indication that ‘Ali radiya Llahu ‘anhu was contesting their earlier position, nor that they understood Ghadir in the manner now being asserted. The appeal, in both form and context, does not sustain the weight that has been placed upon it.

Among the reports invoked once again are the hadith of Yawm al Dar[1] and the Hadith of Manzilah[2]—neither of which is being introduced here for the first time, nor in any form that alters their evidentiary value. The former has already been examined across its transmitted variants and shown to rest upon unstable chains and inconsistent formulations, with the more reliable versions lacking the very language upon which the claim of designation depends. Its reappearance here does not strengthen it; it merely repeats what has already failed under scrutiny.

As for the hadith of Manzilah, its authenticity is not in question, but its meaning has been consistently overstretched. The analogy to Harun was articulated in a specific context: the Prophet’s salla Llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam departure for Tabuk; and indicates deputisation within that moment, not an unqualified transfer of authority. The explicit exclusion of prophethood further confines the scope of the comparison.

The remaining citations follow a similar pattern. Reports are revisited and rhetorically intensified, not to introduce new evidence, but to reconstruct an alternative narrative. Chief among these is the so-called al Khutbah al Shaqshaqiyyah, a sermon attributed to ‘Ali radiya Llahu ‘anhu and recorded in Nahj al Balaghah. Its contents are a well-known forceful expression of grievance, describing the succession as having been seized and lamenting the course of events that followed.

Yet, whatever its rhetorical power, its status as a historical event is far from accurate.

Status of Nahj al Balaghah

At several points in the present discussion, reliance has been placed upon passages drawn from Nahj al Balaghah, particularly in support of the claim that ‘Ali radiya Llahu ‘anhu consistently regarded the succession as having been wrongfully appropriated. Given the centrality of these citations to the argument, it is necessary to clarify the status of this work and the limits of its evidentiary value.

Nahj al Balaghah is a compilation assembled by al Sharif al Radi (d. 406 AH), who gathered sermons, letters, and sayings attributed to ‘Ali radiya Llahu ‘anhu from a range of earlier materials. The work is rightly admired for its literary excellence and rhetorical power, and it has long occupied an important place in the Arabic intellectual tradition. That, however, is a matter distinct from its standing as a source of historically verifiable reports.

Critically, al Radi did not provide chains of transmission (isnad) for the material he included. The contents are presented in a collected and edited form, without the apparatus by which earlier scholars assessed the reliability of reports. As a result, the work does not, in itself, allow for independent verification of attribution. Its contents must therefore be traced back, where possible, to earlier sources in order to determine their authenticity.

When such tracing is undertaken, it becomes apparent that the material within Nahj al Balaghah is not uniform in status. Some passages correspond to reports found elsewhere with acceptable chains, while the bulk of his material appears only in later or weakly transmitted sources, and still others have no verifiable basis in the earlier Hadith or historical corpus. The work, in other words, is a compilation of varying provenance, not a critically authenticated collection.

This has been recognised by scholars across different traditions. Even among those who hold the text in high regard, it has not been treated as a self-authenticating source. Rather, its contents are evaluated individually, and only those passages supported by sound transmission elsewhere are admitted as evidence.

In light of this, the use of Nahj al Balaghah as a primary proof for claims of this magnitude, particularly those relating to alleged usurpation, or systematic injustice, cannot be sustained. To treat such material as definitive historical proof, while dismissing more rigorously transmitted reports, is methodologically untenable.

What emerges, therefore, is not a coherent body of evidence, but a layered construction of an alternative narrative which relies on contextual reconfiguration and rhetorical embellishment. Once these elements are disentangled, the underlying argument loses its force, and the attempt to displace the truth with a parallel, selectively transmitted narrative cannot be sustained.

So, to answer the Sheikh al Azhar’s ‘question’: the Imam did not object at Saqifah, nor did he advance any claim grounded in explicit designation of succession. His conduct reflects not the suppression of a clear nass, but the absence of one.

The alleged Khutbah Fadakiyyah

There is a concerted attempt to draw attention to this sermon attributed to Fatimah radiya Llahu ‘anha. The very public nature of this episode stands in contrast of what is generally known of her radiya Llahu ‘anha. It is presented by ‘Abdul Hussain as though it enjoyed wide circulation among the Ahlul Bayt, to the extent that it was memorised and preserved with a care likened to that of the Qur’an. It would appear that citing this sermon would serve as external corroboration for the narrative that is being constructed.

The sermon is cited across a number of works, among them al Jawhari’s Kitab al Saqifah wa al Fadak, Ibn Abi Tahir’s Balaghat al Nisaʾ, al Tabarsi’s al Ihtijaj, and later compilations such as al Majlisi’s Bihar al Anwar. The way the material is presented gives the illusion of multiplicity whereas independent investigations have found this sermon traced back to solitary chains and it appears mostly in literary anthologies, or in later polemical works that do not provide verifiable chains but are reliant on the said anthologies for their material.

Let us take a moment to examine the claim of widespread transmission from a broad perspective before zooming in on the particulars. Any report described in the way this sermon is described in al Muraja’at ought to exhibit the distinctive features of organic transmission across multiple independent nodes. One would be able to trace the dispersion across successive generations from the time of its emergence and find reference to it in multiple early and later sources. Rather, what we encounter after investigations reveals quite the opposite. Instead of the various routes of transmission spreading out as expected; they converge into solitary defective strands of transmition. This pattern of transmission, prior to the actual investigation of narrators, is reminiscent of forgeries that are passed of as reliable reports.

So the comparison to the transmission of the Qur’an, even as a rhetorical device, is quite revealing. The Qur’an is established through independent strands of transmission across regions and generations, forming a network that does not rely on any single point of convergence. Here, by contrast, the entire structure rests upon precisely such points.

When the individual chains are examined, the picture becomes clearer still. The chain of transmission through al Jawhari’s Kitab al Saqifah wa al Fadak begins with Muhammad ibn Zakariyya, who was labelled a liar by al Daraqutni and accused of fabrication by other narrator critics[3], is followed by narrators whose status is unknown[4]. The alternative routes cited do not escape this phenomenon. The chain through Balaghat al Nisaʾ passes through ‘Atiyyah al ‘Awfi, whose status has previously been addressed.[5]

What is most telling is that this alleged Khutbah is transmitted in Balaghat al Nisaʾ by way of Zaid ibn ‘Ali. Yet what is independently and widely reported about Zaid is that he refused to repudiate Abu Bakr and ‘Umar radiya Llahu ‘anhuma, and that this refusal was one of the reasons the Rafidah broke from him. He is on record for praising Abu Bakr radiya Llahu ‘anhu explicitly and treating disavowal of him as disavowal of ‘Ali radiya Llahu ‘anhu himself. How is it that a figure historically known for rejecting the very sectarian premise later associated with Rafidism should now function as a major transmitter of a khutbah that appears to support precisely that narrative?

NEXT⇒ LETTER 105 and 106

[1] See Discussions under Letter 20.

[2] See Discussions under Letter 26.

[3] Muhammad ibn Zakariyya al Ghalabi, see Lisan al Mizan, vol. 7 pg. 139.

[4] Kitab al Saqifah, pg. 233. The editor states that he could not find biographical data on Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al Rahman al Muhallabi, the narrator immediately above Muhammad ibn Zakariyya.

[5] Letter 8 – ‘Attiyah al ‘Aufi