Does the hadith of Ghadir designate Ali as imam?

The hadith of Ghadir Khumm is the second of the proofs from the Sunna that Ibn al-Mutahhar al-Hilli offered for the imamate of Ali after the Prophet ﷺ. Ibn Taymiyya answered it in the third chapter of Minhaj al-Sunna on three grounds: when the verse was revealed, how well the hadith's wording is established, and what mawla means. ¹

In Ibn Taymiyya's quotation al-Hilli says: it is mass-transmitted from the Prophet that when the verse of conveying was revealed he addressed the people at Ghadir Khumm and said to the whole gathering, "Am I not closer to you than yourselves?" They said yes. He said: "Of whomever I am mawla, Ali is his mawla; O God, befriend whoever befriends him, be hostile to whoever is hostile to him, help whoever helps him and forsake whoever forsakes him." Umar said, "Bravo, you have become my mawla and the mawla of every believing man and woman." Mawla here, for al-Hilli, means the one with greater right to authority, because of the preceding affirmation "Am I not closer to you than yourselves?". ¹

Ibn Taymiyya holds that the verse of conveying was revealed long before the Farewell Pilgrimage; that the day of Ghadir was the 18th of Dhu al-Hijja, on the way back from the pilgrimage, after which the Prophet lived two months and part of a third; and that the verse of the perfecting of religion was revealed at Arafa on the 9th of Dhu al-Hijja, nine days before Ghadir. ² He argues for the earlier date from the verse's promise of protection from people, and from the report that the Prophet was guarded until it was revealed and then gave up his guard – which, he says, belongs to the time before his message was fully conveyed; after the Farewell Pilgrimage the people of Mecca, Medina and their surroundings were all submissive Muslims and the hypocrites were subdued. ^{2 3 4}

He adds that most of the pilgrims did not return with him to Medina; had what he said at Ghadir been something he was commanded to convey, he would have conveyed it at the Farewell Pilgrimage, the general assembly, and no one has transmitted, with a sound or a weak chain, that he mentioned Ali's imamate there. ⁴

Ibn Taymiyya says that what Muslim transmitted of the Ghadir Khumm sermon is "I leave among you two weighty things: the Book of God", followed by "I remind you of God concerning my household" three times; al-Tirmidhi added "and they will not part until they come to me at the Basin", an addition several hadith masters criticised, while those who accepted it said it shows that the family of Banu Hashim as a whole will not agree on error – one of the answers of al-Qadi Abu Ya'la. ⁴ "Of whomever I am mawla, Ali is his mawla" was transmitted by al-Tirmidhi and Ahmad but is not in the Sahih collections, and scholars disputed it: al-Bukhari, Ibrahim al-Harbi and others are reported to have judged it weak, Ahmad is reported to have judged it hasan as al-Tirmidhi did, and Abu al-Abbas ibn Uqda wrote a work collecting its chains. ⁵ He holds that the addition "O God, befriend whoever befriends him and be hostile to whoever is hostile to him" is false, as is "You are closer to every believing man and woman", and reports from al-Athram that Ahmad rejected two hadiths transmitted by Husayn al-Ashqar, this addition among them. ⁵ He quotes Ibn Hazm as saying that what is authentic of Ali's merits is the hadith of the rank of Aaron, the hadith of the banner and "none loves him but a believer", and that "Of whomever I am mawla" is not authentic through trustworthy narrators. ^{5 6}

Ibn Taymiyya gives what he calls a compound answer: if the Prophet did not say it there is nothing to discuss; if he did, he certainly did not mean the caliphate by it, since nothing in the wording points to that, and a matter so great would have had to be conveyed plainly. ⁶ For him mawla is like wali, and friendship (muwalat) is the opposite of enmity and holds on both sides; he cites the verses on the friendship between God, His Messenger and the believers, and among the believers themselves. ⁷

The Imami argument is given here only through Ibn Taymiyya's quotation and needs to be set out from Imami books; the views of other Sunni scholars who authenticated the hadith and academic studies of the Ghadir episode have not yet been added.