Later descendents of ali who are considered imams in shiism also accept the early caliphs. That should have been binding on shia.
You are missing the point. Because Shiites (whatever their imams have to say) believed that the first three successors were evil, they have hadith in opposition to them and in opposition to the wife of the prophet because she fought against Ali. Since we are not shia, we immediately see through this manipulation. But you are not able to see manipulation in your own texts.
They didn't succeed in their aims.
Because Allah preserved the Qur'an
The example of the prophet and the word of god guided Muslims in the ways to deal with the hypocrites. Scholars heard of people making up hadiths and they spread awareness about who they were and we have their names and they are blacklisted. People narrated directly from the prophet and the. People narrated directly from those companions. Most narrations come from aisha and abu huraira.
Or people chose to ascribe narrations to them and other young companions like ibn Abbas because they lived a long time. It's really strange how a big chunk of the narrations are from a handful of few younger companions while most of senior comapnions have very few hadiths. Abu Bakr has 8 in Bukhari, Umar has ~90, Uthman had 10, Ali had ~90 while the later younger guys have: Abu Hurayrah (who only knew the prophet for 2 years): 1000, ibn Abbas :600, ibn Umar: 700, Anas: 800.
Ali was teaching for two and a half decades before he bacame Caliph and even afterwards. And yet we have only few from him compared to Abu Hurayrah.
Even Abu Hurayrah breaks the fourth wall and comments on why he narates so much compared to others. This alleged story shows that people at that time were wondering why are so many hadith ascribed to Abu Hurayrah - strongly enough to warrant a response from people ascribing stuff to Abu Hurayra.
I am not insinuating against any one, especially not companions. You have to understand WHY people would ascribe hadith to particular people rather than others.
Islam had plenty of enemies and it clearly succeeded as a scholarly tradition when empires fell. The multitudes of rebellions especially by shiite groups couldn't change the traditions of islam. Changing islam would have needed to be a large campaign with thousands of hypocrites to make it seem like they have mutawatir hadiths which is impossible.
Have you considered why most rulers co-opted Sunnism instead of Shiism? Because of its teaching about the authority of Quraysh (rather than just hashimites), their opposition to rebellion, their emphasis on obeying the ruler no matter what even if they are the most evil oppressive people on earth. While Kharijites rejected that it ws confined to Quraysh because, what do you know, most Kharijite imams were non-Qurayshi.
Please, you have to be extra criticial of this stuff.
They appear weird to shia too which is the point. The shia also use bukhari and muslim to reference hadiths about their claims when they don't have them.
They use them against Sunnis just like we muslims use gospels against Christians.
That's not the focus of sunni hadiths. I expected better than this.
When did I say this was the only focus? And yet we have these hadith making into sunni canon despite all the checks and balances. This is what I mean people were biased in who they vouched for. Sectarian reasons aside there are plenty of other motives as I pointed out.
The quran is mutawatir using the same criteria for hadith. It is multiply attested by differing chains of narration. The same people who preserved the quran in memorization and writing are the same people transmitting the hadith.
No it is not. Quran was transmitted generation to generation by thousands and thousands of Qurra teaching eachother, reciting in mosques - just like what I said abour prayer. There may be chains for it. But the main mode of transmission was through memorization by Qurra.
No one actually claims the hadiths are on the same footing as the quran. The analogy doesn't work. The Quran was gathered during the lifetime of the prophet and then again afterwards by a scribe who only accepted each verse to be attested by two witnesses who directly took it from the prophet.
The Quran was written down in pages and recited from pages in the time of the Prophet himself according to the Quran.
The hadiths were written down during his lifetime but then weren't codified until much later on when the need arose. They weren't preserved in the same way because the hadiths weren't meant to be on the same level as the quran. They were meant as a secondary source.
This is debatable whether they were written in the time of the prophet. Please read "The Opponents Of The Writing Of Tradition In Early Islam"
They were meant as a secondary source.
This brings us bak to the question. Who says there is a seperate source other than the Quran which was authorized?
I have already shared verses (see OP) that the Prophet was ordered to follow and Judge based solely on the Quran. It even says, rhetorically
What, shall I seek after any judge but God? For it is He who sent down to you the Book well-distinguished