By that...

By that, they want to rely on the "historical" stories of someone who was regarded a liar and "zindeeq"! If the problem of Sayf was just lack of knowledge about Shari'ah (divine law), one could say he can be trusted on other accounts. But the problem with Sayf was that he was a liar, and made lots of forgery by constructing the events, attributed fabricated traditions to good narrators. Then such person becomes questionable for almost everything.

As for his historical accounts we will witness in Part V that even Christian historians have confirmed great inconsistencies between his historical report and other sober transmitters. No need to mention Sunni and Shia opinion on the heretical nature of Sayf.

The stories about Abdullah Ibn Saba which do NOT have any source or any chain of transmitters There are some reports from both Shia and Sunni scholars, historians, and story tellers of ancient cultures who wrote few lines about Abdullah Ibn Saba but did not supply any evidence for their claims, nor did they provide any chain of supportive authorities (isnad) for their reports to be examined.

For instance, their reports start with: "some people say so and so ..." or "some scholars say so and so ..." without mentioning who that scholar was, and where they got it from. It was based on rumor which was propagated by Umayads (AFTER Sayf's work) which had reached them, and some based on the authors' own creativity. This is inferred when we see these authors have reported some legends which are clearly false and rejected by logic.

These reports are provided by those who wrote books about "al-Milal wa Nihal" (stories about civilizations and cultures) or "al-Firaq" (divisions/sects). Among the Sunnis who mentioned the name of Abdullah Ibn Saba in their stories WITHOUT bringing any source for their claims, are: (1) Ali Ibn Isma'il al-Ash'ari (d. 330) in his book "Maqalat al- Islamiyin" (Essays about the People of Islam). (2) Abdul-Qahir Ibn Tahir al-Baghdadi (d.