= This point has repercussions for sparing their lives through payment of the jizya when the ruling is restricted to the ahl al-kitab (People of the Book); the same wording appears in al-Fatawa al-Kubra, 4:94. See also Zad al-Maʿad, 5:92. (1) The words enclosed in square brackets are taken from the printed edition. In the manuscript margin one reads: “Thus in the original; perhaps the intended wording is: ‘for man is to be considered …’, so examine and correct.” The copyist then added: “Following this marginal remark of the original, we have placed the phrase between half-brackets within the text so that the sentence reads coherently.” (2) Shaykh al-Islam was indeed accurate. He treated this question at length in Majmuʿ al-Fatawa, 35:223, and likewise in al-Fatawa al-Kubra, 4:619, where—after detailing the issue—he wrote: “The view that the ahl al-kitab mentioned in the Quran are only those whose fathers and grandfathers adhered to that religion before it was abrogated or altered is weak. What is decisive is that a person’s status as a member of the People of the Book is determined by his own adherence, not by his lineage. Anyone who embraces their religion is one of them, whether or not his father or grandfather entered it, and whether his entry occurred before or after alteration took place. This is the explicit position transmitted from Ahmad, even though his later followers differ on it, and it is the position firmly established among the Companions without dispute. Al-Tahawi even declared it an early consensus.” He adds in Darʾ Taʿarud al-ʿAql wa-l-Naql, 9:208: “The majority of scholars—Malik, Abu Hanifa, Ahmad …”