and of many of the Baghdad Mu‘tazilites, such as al-Nazzām and others like him, and of Imāmī Shī‘a scholars, such as al-Mufīd, al-Murtadā, al-Tūsī, and others like them.

Many of these maintain that analogical inference alone properly deserves to be called inference in the literal sense, whereas calling syllogistic inference “inference” is figurative, as al-Ghazālī, Abū Muhammad al-Maqdisī, and others have stated.

The position held by most people—and it is the correct one—is that both are inference in the literal sense, and that each sometimes yields certainty and sometimes probability. Indeed, the two necessarily go together. Analogical inference consists in connecting the ruling to the shared attribute, which is the cause of the ruling, evidence for that cause, or something that entails the ruling. This shared attribute is the middle term in syllogistic inference.

Thus, if someone reasoning by analogy says:

“An intoxicating wheat-based drink is forbidden by analogy with a grape-based drink, because it is an intoxicating beverage and is therefore forbidden by analogy with the latter,”

and explains that intoxication is the basis of the prohibition, so that the prohibition must apply to every intoxicating drink, this constitutes analogical inference.

It is equivalent to saying:

“This is an intoxicating drink, and every intoxicating drink is forbidden.”

The intoxicating character made the middle term in this inference is the same shared attribute made the basis of the ruling in the other inference. Upon close examination, therefore, there is no difference between them in meaning; rather, they necessarily go together. They differ only in the ordering and expression of their meanings. In the first, discussion of the shared attribute—the middle term—and the explanation that it entails and implies the ruling come later, while the original case, which parallels the new case, is mentioned first.

In the second, discussion of the middle term comes first, and its inclusive and general scope, together with its entailment of the ruling, is explained at the outset.