is to be taken of people’s wealth; and his clarification of the rites of pilgrimage. When he performed the Ḥajj with the people, the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—said: “Learn your rites from me.” He also said: “Pray as you have seen me pray.” Al-Bukhārī recorded it.

Ibn al-Mubārak narrated from ʿImrān ibn Ḥuṣayn that he once said to a foolish man, “Do you find in the Book of Allah that the ẓuhr prayer is four units in which the recitation is silent?” He then enumerated for him the rulings of prayer, Zakāh, and the like, and added, “Do you find any of this explicitly set out in the Book of Allah? The Book of Allah has left such matters general, and it is the Sunnah that explains them.”

Al-Awzāʿī reported from Ḥassān ibn ʿAṭiyyah who said: “Revelation would come down upon the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, and Gabriel would attend him with the Sunnah that elucidated it.”

Saʿīd ibn Manṣūr transmitted—ʿĪsā ibn Yūnus told us, from al-Awzāʿī, from Makhḥūl—who said: “The Qur’an has greater need of the Sunnah than the Sunnah has of the Qur’an.” And through the same chain al-Awzāʿī reported that Yaḥyā ibn Abī Kathīr said: “The Sunnah judges over the Book, whereas the Book does not judge over the Sunnah.”

Al-Faḍl ibn Ziyād said: “I heard Abū ʿAbdillāh—meaning Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal—asked about the narration stating that ‘the Sunnah judges over the Book.’ He replied, ‘I would not venture to say that; rather, I say that the Sunnah explains and clarifies the Book.’ ”

There is another kind of prophetic elucidation that constitutes an addition to the rulings of the Book—for instance, the prohibition of marrying a woman together with her paternal or maternal aunt; the prohibition of domesticated donkeys and every beast of prey with fangs; judging by an oath together with a single witness; and other matters that will be discussed, Allah willing.

Chapter: The manner of learning and understanding the Book of Allah, Exalted is He, and the Sunnah of His Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, and the reports indicating that previous generations found it easy to act upon them even without memorizing them.

Abū ʿAmr al-Dānī narrated in his work al-Bayān, with his chain of transmission from ʿUthmān, Ibn Masʿūd, and Ubayy, that the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, would teach them ten verses at a time; they would not move on to another ten until they had learned the deeds required by those verses. Thus he taught us the Qur’an and the practice together.

ʿAbd al-Razzāq reported—from Maʿmar, from ʿAṭāʾ ibn al-Sāʾib, from Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī—who said: “When we had learned ten verses of the Qur’an, we would not proceed to the next ten until we had understood what they made lawful and unlawful, what they commanded and forbade.”

And in Mālik’s Muwaṭṭaʾ it is reported that ʿAbdullāh