Nasb-and-the-Nawasib

However, this does not exonerated the Pro Abbasid Historians, who utilised history
as a medium of bolstering the Abbasid campaign, 1 from the suspicion of forging
narrations and reports that poured into the same channel and which alongside
the Shīʿī narrations emphasised the wickedness of the Umayyad Rulers and their
ill treatment of the Ahl al-Bayt. This of course entailed a subtle declaration of
innocence of the Abbasids in the eyes of the Shīʿah.
Hence, it is impossible for an impartial person to believe reports such as the one
narrated from Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Muqriʾ2 which states:
كان بنو أمية إذا سمعوا بمولود اسمه علي قتلوه
When the Umayyads would hear of a child whose name was ʿAlī they would
kill him. 3
There are few considerations in this narration:
First of all, the endeavour to emphasise the transgressive nature of the Umayyads
by giving them resemblance to Firʿawn who killed every male child that was born
to the Banū Isrāʾīl due to fear of losing his kingdom. This alone entails a very
powerful means of disenchanting the people.
Secondly, had this really happened it would widely echo throughout the society.
Hence it is strange that only one person narrates it when it is an issue of such a
magnitude that it would demand multitudes of people to narrate it; especially
1 Sosiolojiā al-Fikr al-Islamī: Ṭawr al-Takwīn p. 244.
2 ʿAbd Allah ibn Yazīd al-Qurashī al-ʿAdawī, their client, Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Makkī. A reliable
scholar who was from the eminent teachers of al-Bukhārī. He was originally from Basrah or Ahwāz.
He became famous as ‘al-Muqriʾ’ because he taught the Qurʾān for seventy and some odd years
consecutively. He passed away in Makkah in 212 A.H. almost reaching a hundred years. His narrations
appear in the six books. See: al-Ṭabaqāt al-Kubrā 5/501; Tahdhīb al-Kamāl 16/320; Tārīkh al-Islam 15/241;
Tadhkirah al-Ḥuffāẓ 1/367.
3 Tārīkh Madīnah Dimashq 41/480; Tahdhīb al-Kamāl 20/429; Tārīkh al-Islam 7/427; Siyar Aʿlām al-Nubalāʾ
7/413; al-Wāfī bi al-Wafayāt 21/72; Tahdhīb al-Tahdhīb 7/280 (also see the comment of al-Dhahabī).
279