Al-Sharif al-Radi, who died in 1015 CE, was a descendant of the Prophet, a leading figure of Twelver Shia Baghdad under the Buyids, and one of the finest poets of his age. He states his editorial principle in the introduction: from the vast material attributed to Ali he selected what reached the peak of eloquence, and he gave the book its title on that ground. He did not supply chains of transmission, and that silence became the centre of a long argument.
From Ibn Khallikan onward, some Sunni scholars questioned whether the contents, or which of them, genuinely go back to Ali, suggesting parts were composed by al-Radi himself or his brother al-Murtada; defenders answered by tracing individual sermons and letters to sources earlier than al-Radi, and modern scholarship of both communities treats the collection as layered, with much material attested in earlier works and some pieces of uncertain origin.
Within Shia tradition the book's authority has been continuous and immense: commentaries number in the hundreds, the most famous being that of the Mutazili scholar Ibn Abi al-Hadid in the thirteenth century, itself a mine of early history, and the modern commentary of Muhammad Abduh, the Egyptian Sunni reformer, carried the text to a wide Sunni readership. Memorised, quoted in sermons and printed constantly across the Shia world, it remains the most read Islamic book after the Quran in some communities.