There is a group of narrators who were contemporaries of the event but did not attend the battle, either due to imprisonment or other reasons, and they number 8 people:

Abū ‘Uthmān Al-Nahdī.

‘Abdullāh ibn Khāzim Al-Azdī.

‘Abbās ibn Ja‘d Al-Jadalī.

Abū Al-Kanūt ‘Abd Al-Raḥmān ibn ‘Uwaydah.

Al-Sa‘af ibn Zuhayr Al-Azdī (has 9 reports about Karbalā’).

Numayr ibn Wa‘d Al-Yāni‘ī Al-Hamdānī (has 10 reports narrated from Abū Mikhnaf).

Sulaymān ibn Abī Rāshid Al-Azdī (narrated reports of Ḥumayd ibn Muslim and ‘Abd Al-Raḥmān Al-Kindī; has 20 reports on Al-Taff).

Abī Isḥāq ‘Umar ibn ‘Abdullāh Al-Sabī‘ Al-Hamdānī (was the head of hadith scholars in Kūfah, narrated from by Abū Qutaybah, has 33 reports).

There are dozens of slips in this book, and we do not want to detail the matter so as not to prolong the research. It is known that the Persian and Indian libraries have hundreds of fabricated Maqatil books and strange stories and myths for which Allah has sent down no authority. May Allah make ugly their authors and make ugly those who believe them.

This is the condition of the Maqatil books whose news spread and some of which became axioms in the Shi'a community. There is no reliable book written by one of the trustworthy Companions, for example; rather, they were written by those who held power at that time. Even those that were written did not reach us, and it is not proven that they are them.

Then followed a group of Maqatil written in later centuries. The lying in them was clear due to the inconsistency of events and the impossibility of all methods of mutilation and killing happening to one person or at the same time. Sometimes he is stabbed 300 times with a sword and spear, sometimes he is like a hedgehog from the abundance of arrows, sometimes he falls to the ground and a killer climbs on his chest to sever his head, then horses trample his chest and level him with the ground, then after that they say he twitched and moved and stood up and fell when they attacked his tents, then after this his clothes are looted—and I do not know what clothes remain after all this?!!