—the school of Mālik and those who followed his opinion.

• A second group allowed it without the presence of a muhallil.

Shaykh al-Islām said: “That is also the purport of what has been transmitted from Abū ʿUbaydah ibn al-Jarrah. He said, ‘I do not know of any of the Companions (1) who made the muhallil a condition; the only person from whom this requirement is known is Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyib, and it is from him that people received it. For this reason Mālik said: We do not adopt Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyib’s view on the muhallil, and the muhallil is not obligatory.’

“What popularised this opinion was the reverence people felt for its proponent and their fear of permitting gambling; they imagined that the presence of a muhallil would remove the contract from the realm of gambling. Thus Saʿīd’s prestige in the eyes of the ummah combined with the grave and repugnant nature of gambling. Yet it was unavoidable to deem the stake (sabq) permissible, just as the Prophet ﷺ had allowed it, and no text prohibits both parties from contributing. Still, the leading scholar of his time declared, ‘Without the muhallil the contract is gambling.’ That is what carried this view forward. Allah knows best.”

Section

So reflect, O fair-minded reader, on these schools and the grounds on which they rest, that you may realise the scant stock of one who has gathered a few scraps of knowledge (2) of no real worth, slaked his thirst at a source that is no spring, then rejects every view but the one he imitates without understanding, censures anyone who adopts another view (3), issues fatwas in its favour and defends it, as though his own school and the statement of the authority he follows