A New Look into the Speech References of Nahj-ol-balagha

Sayyed Al-Radhi has not brought any reference nor evidences for the speeches, which he has quoted from Imam Ali (AS) from Nahj-ol-balagha. Whilst Ali’s (AS) eloquence and oratory is evident to the plebeian and noble, this matter has caused some Sunni scholars, and recently, some Orientalists and Arab researchers to suspect the authenticity of this book to Imam Ali (AS). Because of that Shia pundits have made widespread efforts into presenting the reference and evidence of Nahj-ol-balagha. Sapients such as “Kashef-ul-Qeta, Imtiyaz Ali khan Arshi, Abdul Zahra Hussaini, Muhammad Mahdi Ja’fari and Muhammad Dashti” have made so many efforts to depicting the authenticity of these speeches to Imam Ali (AS) by hinting to Shia-Sunni sources, each has tried to complement others’ researches. Researchers of this field have failed to find so many Nahj-ol-balagha speeches of Imam Ali (AS), despite all their efforts. Through these researches, numerous defects are observed because of various restrictions such as inaccessibility to Arabic sources which strongly require rectification and further reviewing. For instance, through these researches some sources have been observed which have been written after the gathering of Nahj-ol-balagha, in which most of them are from Shia sources that are ineligible based on Sunni and opponents point of view, while others do not exist or attribute the speeches to someone except Ali (AS). This study scrutinizes the Nahj-ol-balagha evidence references by studying 250 sayings from the 480 speeches attributed to Imam Ali (AS) which this research has gathered from Sunni resources and documents, (sayings No. 1-250) which other researchers and pundits have never brought into light. According to the poem “The lover’s secret that’s been kept concealed, is best through tales of other loves revealed.” The result of this research is that for the first time by this research; the evidence’s authenticity of 100 Nahj-ol-balagha sayings of Imam Ali (AS) from Sunni books will be presented and will be proved.