The great majority of scholars hold that the Sunnah may restrict the general wording of the Qurʾān. It is possible that the first group either never received these ḥadīths or did not consider them authentic. This opinion is transmitted from Ibn ʿAbbās and ʿUthmān and was widely known among the earliest generation; its currency among the Companions is evidence of the soundness of those reports, for a ruling of this kind is not arrived at through analogy. Allah knows best.

Lineage That Confers Inheritance

Among the questions that turn on proving lineage—thereby establishing the right to inherit—is the case of a man who leaves two sons, one of whom acknowledges a third brother while the other denies him.

• Mālik and Abū Ḥanīfah maintain that the son who acknowledges him must give the claimant his proper share of the estate, yet that acknowledgment does not, by itself, establish the claimant’s lineage.

• Al-Shāfiʿī holds that the lineage is not proven and the acknowledger is therefore not obliged to pay the claimant anything.

Mālik and Abū Ḥanīfah then differ over how much the acknowledging brother must hand over. Mālik says he must pay whatever he would have owed had the second brother also acknowledged the claimant and the lineage been confirmed, whereas Abū Ḥanīfah obliges him to give half of what he currently holds.

The same ruling, according to Mālik and Abū Ḥanīfah, applies when a man leaves only one son and that son acknowledges an additional brother: the lineage is not established, yet the inheritance becomes due. Al-Shāfiʿī has two opinions on this scenario. One mirrors his earlier view—that neither lineage nor inheritance is established—while the other affirms both lineage and inheritance. This latter view is the one commonly accepted by Shāfiʿī jurists in their theoretical discussions; they treat it as a general principle: whenever someone is in possession of the estate, his acknowledgment establishes lineage, even if he is the sole heir—be he a brother or another relative.

The Shāfiʿīs’ evidence for their first opinion—and for the less well-known of the two views just mentioned—is that lineage is not proven except by the testimony of two upright witnesses; where lineage is unproven, no inheritance follows, because lineage is the root and inheritance the branch. When the root is absent, the branch cannot exist.

Mālik and Abū Ḥanīfah, by contrast, argue that establishing lineage is a right that extends to the denying brother, so it cannot be proven against him without the testimony of two just witnesses. As for the portion of the estate currently held by the acknowledging brother, his own admission is operative, for he has conceded a right that affects himself. A judge, therefore, may not rule against the denying brother until the lineage is established in court, yet the acknowledger may not, before Allah and within his own conscience, withhold from one he knows to be his co-heir the share that is due him.

The Shāfiʿīs base their position that lineage can be confirmed by the acknowledgment of a single heir on both transmitted evidence and analogy.

As for the transmitted evidence, they cite the ḥadīth related by Mālik from Ibn Shihāb, from ʿUrwah, from ʿĀʾishah—whose authenticity is unanimously accepted—in which she said:

“ʿUtbah ibn Abī Waqqāṣ charged his brother Saʿd ibn Abī Waqqāṣ, saying, ‘The son of Zamʿah’s bondwoman is mine; take him into your care.’ When the year of the Conquest arrived, Saʿd ibn Abī Waqqāṣ took the boy, declaring, ‘This is the child my brother entrusted to me…’”