Hadith of position an Imam of his own time when he was appointed as the fourth Rashidun Caliph. Ibn Hajar al Asqalani holds another view and according to him the caliphate of Ali should have been limited to the life of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad. Hadith of position The hadith of position (, "Hadith al-Manzilah") is a Sahih hadith in Islamic traditions, in which Muhammad draws a parallel between himself and Musa (Moses) and Ali to Haroun (Aaron). It is one of the primary hadiths used by the Shia to justify Ali's right in the succession to Muhammad; Sunnis however, interpret it otherwise
Criticism of Hadith According to Racha El Omari, early Mutazilites believed that hadith were susceptible to "abuse as a polemical ideological tool"; that the "matn" (content) of the hadith -- not just the "isnad" -- ought to be scrutinized for doctrine and clarity; that hadith "supported by some form of "tawātur"", i.e. by a large number of "isnād" strands, each beginning with a different Companion, were valid. In writing about "mutawatir" (transmitted via numerous chains of narrators) and "ahad" (any ahadith that is not "mutawatir") and its importance from the legal theoretician's point of view, Wael Hallaq notes the medieval scholar Al-Nawawi argued