the interpretation of the Qur’an, carrying his wooden tablets. Ibn ʿAbbās said to him, “Write,” and Mujāhid kept writing until he had asked him about the entirety of the exegesis.

For that reason Sufyān al-Thawrī used to say, “If an explanation of the Qur’an reaches you from Mujāhid, it is sufficient for you.”

So too with Saʿīd ibn Jubayr, ʿIkrimah—the freedman of Ibn ʿAbbās—ʿAṭāʾ ibn Abī Rabāḥ, al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, Masrūq ibn al-Ajdaʿ, Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyib, Abū al-ʿĀliyah, al-Rabīʿ ibn Anas, Qatādah, al-Ḍaḥḥāk ibn Muzāḥim, and others from the Successors, their students, and those who followed them. When their statements on a verse are cited, one finds variation in wording. Someone lacking insight may imagine this to be disagreement and pass on their remarks as conflicting views. That is not the case: some of them describe a matter by referring to what it entails or to something analogous, while others name the very thing itself. In many places the meaning is one and the same. Let the discerning take note—Allah is the One who guides.

Shuʿbah ibn al-Ḥajjāj and others said, “The statements of the Successors on subsidiary legal issues are not binding proof; so how could they be proof in exegesis?”—meaning that their words are not authoritative over those who disagree with them. This is correct. However, if they unanimously agree on something, there is no doubt that such consensus is proof. If they disagree, the view of one is not proof against another, nor against those who come after them. In that situation one returns to the language of the Qur’an, the Sunnah, the common usage of the Arabs, or the sayings of the Companions on the matter.

Commentary: Shaykh al-Islam—may Allah have mercy on him—here indicated that the scholars differed over