"do not speak ill of ʿAlī, for he is from me and I am from him, and he is your protector after me. Indeed, he is from me and I am from him, and he is your protector after me." This was recorded by Aḥmad (5/356). I say: Its chain of narration is good, its narrators are trustworthy, the narrators of al-Bukhārī and Muslim except for al-Ajlaḥ, who is Ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Kindī, about whom there is disagreement. In "Taqrīb," it is stated: "Truthful, a Shīʿī." If someone says: The narrator of this supporting evidence is a Shīʿī, and likewise in the chain of the supported ḥadīth there is another Shīʿī, namely Jaʿfar ibn Sulaymān. Does this not constitute a flaw in the ḥadīth and a defect in it? I say: No, because the consideration in narrating ḥadīth is truthfulness and accuracy, and as for the sect, it is between him and his Lord, and He is his judge. Therefore, we find the authors of "the two Ṣaḥīḥs" and others have included many trustworthy narrators who were opponents, such as the Khawārij and the Shīʿah, among others. This is the principle before us, as Ibn Ḥibbān authenticated the ḥadīth as you saw, even though he said about its narrator Jaʿfar in his book "Mashāhīr ʿUlamāʾ al-Amṣār" (159/1263): "He was inclined towards Shīʿism and extreme in it." Moreover, he said in his "Thiqāt" (6/140): "He harbored dislike for the two Shaykhs." Although I am in doubt about the authenticity of this statement attributed to him, there is no doubt that he was a Shīʿī, as there is consensus on that, and Shīʿism does not necessarily entail dislike for the two Shaykhs, but rather mere preference. The chain of narration that Ibn Ḥibbān mentioned with the explicit statement of his dislike for them includes Jarīr ibn Yazīd ibn Hārūn, for whom I did not find a biography, nor did I come across another chain of narration leading to him. Nevertheless, Ibn Ḥibbān said following that explicit statement: