that he was meticulous in this regard, and one will scarcely find an issue about which he reported a consensus of the scholars without at least one of the leading authorities in the discipline—such as Ibn Ḥazm, Ibn Rushd, Ibn Qudāmah, or others—supporting him. Now and then a singular, odd dissent is cited, but such instances are few compared with the issues for which no disagreement can be traced. Moreover, that dissent may not be soundly established from the person to whom it is attributed; and even if it is, it could be a view he later retracted, or his well-known position may actually be the opposite, or the consensus may have been formed before his objection, or the objector may be someone whose contrary view is not given weight by the scholars, or at least by some of them.
Should none of these possibilities apply, this still ought not to be turned into a pretext for impugning all the consensuses cited by the author, or for judging him lax in reporting consensus, or for alleging that he declares consensus while knowing of an opposing view, or without being certain that no opponent exists. None of that is admissible….” End of the quotation.

I say: It also happens that disagreement on a given question surfaces only after the era of Ibn al-Mundhir; prior to—or during—his lifetime no recognized dispute existed. Therefore a consensus transmitted by Ibn al-Mundhir should not be discredited merely because some later scholar happened to differ.

Secondly: Is the passing away of the generation that reached consensus a condition for that consensus to be binding?

Al-Futūḥī, in his commentary on al-Kawkab al-Munīr (p. 233), ascribed this requirement to Imām Aḥmad and most of his companions, and then said: “There are other views on the matter.

1. The first—held by the three Imāms and by the majority of jurists and theologians—is that the extinction of the generation is never a condition.
2. The second view is that the passing of the generation is required only for tacit consensus, because of its inherent weakness and not for other kinds. This was chosen by al-Āmidī and others, reported from al-Ustādh Abū Manṣūr al-Baghdādī, and said to be the position of the keen analysts among the Shāfiʿīs. Qāḍī Abū Ṭayyib considered it the view of most of the school; Abū al-Maʿālī transmitted it from al-Ustādh Abū Isḥāq, and it was preferred by al-Bandanījī. Salīm al-Rāzī limited the dispute to other than tacit consensus.
3. The third view is that the passing of the generation is required only for analogical consensus and not for the rest.