As for horse-flesh, Mālik, Abū Ḥanīfah and a number of scholars held it to be forbidden, whereas al-Shāfiʿī, Abū Yūsuf, Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan and others considered it lawful.

The reason they differed over domesticated donkeys is the clash between the verse cited earlier and the sound ḥadīths on the subject, foremost among them the report of Jābir and others who said:

“The Messenger of Allah — peace and blessings be upon him — on the day of Khaybar forbade the meat of domesticated donkeys and permitted the meat of horses.”

Whoever sought to reconcile the verse with this ḥadīth interpreted the verse as expressing mere dislike, whereas whoever deemed the ḥadīth abrogative ruled donkey meat to be unlawful, or treated it as an additional prohibition that did not, in his view, amount to abrogation.

Those who did not regard it as forbidden argued from what is related by Abū Isḥāq al-Shaybānī from Ibn Abī Awfā, who said:

“We captured some donkeys with the Messenger of Allah — peace and blessings be upon him — at Khaybar and cooked them. Then a herald of the Messenger of Allah — peace and blessings be upon him — announced: ‘Turn the pots over with whatever is in them!’ ”

Ibn Isḥāq said: I mentioned this to Saʿīd ibn Jubayr and he replied, “He only forbade them because they had been feeding on filth.”

Their disagreement over mules arises from the implicit indication (mafḥūm al-khitāb) of the verse,

“And horses, mules and donkeys for you to ride and as adornment” (al-Naḥl 16:8),

coupled with His statement regarding the cattle:

“that you may ride some of them and eat of others” (Ghāfir 40:79),

and with the verse that confines what is forbidden. The implied meaning is that, with respect to mules, only riding is permitted, especially when the mule is further analogised to the donkey.

The reason they disagreed about horses is the tension between this implied meaning and Jābir’s ḥadīth, as well as the analogy that would lump the horse together with the mule and donkey. Yet the explicit permission to eat horse-flesh contained in Jābir’s report is a direct text that should not be opposed by analogy or by an inferred indication.

The third issue concerns their dispute over the animals that one is commanded to kill even inside the Sacred Precinct. They are the five explicitly named: the crow, the kite, the scorpion, the mouse, and the vicious dog. Some scholars, noting the command to kill them alongside the general prohibition on killing animals whose flesh is lawful, concluded that the reason is the unlawfulness of eating them; this is the view of al-Shāfiʿī. Others understood the command as prompted solely by their harmful aggression, not by their being unlawful to eat; this is the position of Mālik, Abū Ḥanīfah and the majority of their followers.

The fourth category consists of creatures that people instinctively find repulsive—such as insects, frogs, crabs, tortoises and the like. Al-Shāfiʿī declared them unlawful, whereas other scholars permitted them, and some merely regarded them as disliked.

The source of their disagreement lies in how they understand the scope of the term khabāʾith (“impurities”) in the verse,

“He makes unlawful for them all that is impure” (al-Aʿrāf 7:157).

Those who hold that “impurities” refers only to things expressly prohibited by the Law do not deem repulsive creatures unlawful in the absence of a specific text. Those who understand “impurities” as whatever sound human nature finds repulsive judge such creatures to be forbidden.

As for what Abū Ḥāmid quoted from al-Shāfiʿī concerning his declaring unlawful the animals about which the texts forbid