We argue with “Ahlul Sunnah wal Jama`ah” thus...

We argue with “Ahlul Sunnah wal Jama`ah” thus: If such is your creed and attitude towards the Messenger of Allah, how do you claim to be upholding his Sunnah, believing that you and your predecessors regarded such Sunnah as unprotected from Allah from error, even unknown and unrecorded?![^3] Yet we reject these claims and false charges and are able to refute them by quoting your own references and Sahih books.[^4] Examples: In a chapter on recording knowledge in his Kitab al-`Ilm (Book of Knowledge) of his Sahih , al-Bukhari quotes Abu Hurayra saying, “None among the companions of the Prophet narrates more hadith than me except Abdullah ibn Umar, for he can write whereas I cannot (i.e.

am illiterate).”[^5] This statement clearly indicates that there were among the Prophet's sahaba those who wrote his ahadith down. Since Abu Hurayra narrated more than six thousand traditions of the Prophet orally (because he could not write), Abdullah ibn Umar quoted more traditions of the Prophet because of his ability to write them down.

Undoubtedly, there were among the sahaba those who could write the Prophet's traditions and whom Abu Hurayra did not mention because they were not famous for being so prolific. Add to the above Imam Ali ibn Abu Talib who used to spread out from the pulpit a scroll which he used to call al-jami`a in which he compiled all what people need of the Prophet's traditions, and which was inherited by the Imams of Ahlul Bayt who often referred to it.

Examples: Imam Ja`far al-Sadiq has said, “We have the saheefa ; it is seventy yards long: it is the dictation of the Messenger of Allah written down in the hand-writing of Ali.

Nothing permissible or prohibitive the knowledge thereof is needed by people, nor any other issue, except that it is in it, even the penalty for inflicting an offense as minor as a tiny scratch on someone's cheek.”[^6] Al-Bukhari himself has referred to this saheefa , which was in Ali's possession, in many chapters of his book, but he, as was quite often his habit, curtailed a great deal of information about its nature and contents.