to consult, out of a desire to maintain their superior position and so that those over whom they claimed authority would not view them as incompetent and consequently turn away from them.
12 This is a summary statement of the cause of their disagreement up until the advent of al-Mahdī, the Divinely Guided One24 of the nation, a member of the Family of the Prophet, the stock of the House of Mercy. Reports from the Messenger of God that convey the glad tidings of his uprising and relate what would occur—the establishment of the faith of God at his hands and during his days—are so numerous that to present them would take too long and exceed the scope of this book. Among them is the Prophet’s statement: “The Divinely Guided One will be from among my descendants. He will revive my practice, fulfill my command, and demand revenge for the people of my House. He will fill the earth with justice and equity, just as it is now filled with tyranny and injustice.”25 The Divinely Guided One, the Mahdī, arose, and he revived the practices of old, put an end to innovations, and silenced the concoctors of lies who were in disagreement over the religion. He erected the light tower of the faith and raised its standard. He instituted its laws and made its rulings straight, compelling the nation to its path and eradicating innovations and heresies from it as well as disagreement and dispute concerning it.26
13 A certain miscreant surreptitiously slipped al-Mahdī a petition, as if to advise him without revealing himself, on which was written, “If the Commander of the Faithful had only treated the common people according to the doctrine of Zayd,27 which most of them adopt concerning inheritance, then from this he could pay into the treasury a tremendous sum.” When al-Mahdī read his statement, he became quite furious and ordered that the man be sought out and tracked down, so that he might make an example of his punishment. The man could not be found, and his identity remained a mystery, for he had not shown himself but had delivered his petition by stealth. Al-Mahdī, God’s blessings be upon him, observed: “This sinner wanted the people to witness us violating God’s ruling on account of worldly greed. We, however, obey God by upholding His faith and by ruling according to what is right among his worshipers. God did not cause us to rise up in order to hoard the goods of the world without His permission or for the sake of something other than Him. We have expended our lives and our blood for His sake alone, so that we might uphold His faith and champion His truth, and revive the Practice of our forefather, His Prophet.”
14 Al-Mahdī, peace be upon him, commanded that no two subjects meet to negotiate concerning something lawful or forbidden except according to what he had established, the true doctrine according to the Book of God and the Practice of His Prophet Muḥammad. The Commanders of the Faithful among his descendants,28 God’s blessings upon them, followed him in adopting this principle and, after his passing, imposed it on the populace, so that the religion returned to its original state and came back to the proper order on the necklace-cord of God’s wards, the Imams. The prediction of the Messenger, God’s blessings upon him and his family, was fulfilled. For having mentioned the Divinely Guided One, he stated, “He will come from the descendants of this boy,” pointing to al-Ḥusayn, God’s blessings on all of them. Then he said, “Through us, God opened the religion, and through us, He will seal it.”29 This is similar to the report transmitted from the Prophet in which he said, “The religion began as a stranger, and will return to being a stranger just as it began, so blessed on that day are the strangers.”30 In this regard there are many other long reports and numerous similar accounts that we have omitted for the sake of brevity.
DISAGREEMENT OVER THE RULINGS OF THE RELIGION
15 Those Sunnis31 who are acclaimed as knowledgeable about the law agree unanimously that when legal rulings, the knowledge of permitted and forbidden matters, are apparent in the text of the Qurʾan, they must be ruled on and adopted in practice accordingly, and that those matters that they allege are not found in the Qurʾan should be sought from the Practices of the Messenger. If something is found in the Practices, then it should be adopted, and no other ruling besides should be sought. Many of them said, “We seek legal rulings that are found neither in the Book of God nor in the Practice of the Messenger of God among the opinions of the Companions. If we find that they professed an opinion and agreed unanimously upon it, we adopt that as the correct ruling. But if we find that they disagreed concerning it, we are free to choose the opinion of whichever Companion we wish and to adopt it.”
16 Some Sunni jurists32 said, “When we find that one of the Companions held a certain opinion, we do not deviate from his opinion. Regarding what we do not find in the Book of God, the Practices of the Messenger of God, or the opinions of any of the Companions, we examine the opinions of later scholars. If it is something on which the scholars are in agreement, then we adopt it, and we do not deviate from their unanimous agreement on this.” We will mention the opinion of each group of the Sunni jurists33 in this book when presenting their doctrine and refuting them.
17 Then they disagreed concerning what they allege is not found in the Book of God, or, they claim, in the Practice of their Prophet, or in the opinions of the Companions, or in the consensus of the scholars after them. One group of them espoused submission to the authority of their forebears and obedience to their masters and leaders. They said: “They knew better than we where the truth lies. What they have said, we accept as the correct ruling, following them in this and not contradicting them. We accept on their authority what they adopted, and we defer to them with regard to what they said.” But these jurists differed concerning whose authority to accept, each group of them espousing the opinion of a different figure from among those who preceded them, adopting his opinion, considering permitted what he had made lawful to them, and considering forbidden what he had forbidden them. They made his opinion an incontrovertible argument, in their view, and they turned away from the opinions of those who went against him whom others followed and accepted as authorities. Each group considered the others to be in error, and each group accused the groups who opposed them of unbelief.
18 Other jurists disagreed with them, and rejected arbitrary submission to authority. Concerning matters of which they were ignorant, they adopted the doctrine of those whom the others accepted as authorities with respect to the derivation of legal rulings. They said: “We can derive rulings just as they did, and we do not accept their opinions merely on authority.”34 Some of them espoused analogy. Others espoused personal judgment and individual legal interpretation, others espoused preference, others espoused speculative reasoning, and others espoused inference. These are all labels that they applied to their opinions in order to claim that their methods formed part of what they alleged was the true doctrine. All of these methods revert to one fundamental idea, and they are all encompassed by one invalid concept, which is the adoption of whim and surmise, when God warned against both and criticized those who followed them. For He said: «Who is more miscreant than he who follows his own desire, with no guidance from God?»;35 «They follow nothing but a guess, and a guess can never take the place of the truth»;36 «O David, We have made you a representative on the Earth, so judge among the people by the truth, and do not follow your whim, lest it lead you astray from the path of God»;37 and «Judge among them by what God has sent down, and do not follow their whims.»38 In addition, the Messenger of God said: “Follow and do not innovate, for every innovation is an error, and every error leads to the Fire.” Those jurists followed their whims, without guidance from God, and they produced new rulings originating with themselves regarding the religion of God, contradicting the Book of God and the speech of the Messenger of God. I will present a full discussion of their error and of the argument against them, God willing, in the chapter which follows this one.
AGAINST DISAGREEMENT OVER THE RULINGS OF THE RELIGION
19 The invalidity of their claim—that some of what God made lawful