and the scholars’ disagreements over them, as he did in his account of the expedition against Banū Qurayzah when discussing the Companions’ disagreement over how to act upon the Prophet’s statement (peace and blessings be upon him): “None of you is to pray the afternoon prayer except at Banū Qurayzah.” He mentioned the jurists’ disagreement over which of the two positions was more correct and proceeded to weigh them against each other, before returning to the account of the expedition.

As for highlighting the merits of the Sharia and the wisdom underlying it, this occurs frequently in the book. Sometimes the author discusses these independently, but often he does so when presenting the differing positions and the considerations favouring one over another. Among these considerations, he includes the fact that his preferred ruling accords with the Sharia’s underlying principles and wisdom. See the dedicated index of the Sharia’s underlying principles and wisdom among the book’s scholarly indexes.

Repetition is also apparent in several places in the book. A question may recur in two different places within the same volume, or in different volumes separated by a considerable interval. This is clear in the fifth volume, where he discusses the Prophet’s judicial decisions and rulings (peace and blessings be upon him) concerning certain questions of jihad, war booty and related matters. Having already discussed them in detail in the volume devoted to the military campaigns, he refers the reader there for fuller treatment. Likewise, he discusses combining prayers at the time of the earlier prayer while travelling, together with the hadith concerning it, in the first volume (605 - 608), then returns to the subject in the third volume among the lessons drawn from the expedition to Tabūk (683 - 685). He also discusses the requirement of intention for all formulas of divorce and manumission, whether explicit or indirect, in the third volume (735) and then in the fifth (452). Further examples of repeated questions and discussions may be found in the book’s scholarly indexes.