for independent legal reasoning—namely, knowledge of the foundational principles and how to derive conclusions from them by analogy—then it is all the more fitting to require this of one who passes judgment on existing things: that he know the first principles of reason and how to derive conclusions from them.

In short, error in matters of religious law is of two kinds. The first is an error for which someone qualified to investigate the matter in question is excused, just as a skilled physician is excused when he errs in medicine, and a skilled judge when he errs in judgment. Someone unqualified in that field, however, is not excused. The second is an error for which no one is excused: if it concerns the foundational principles of religious law, it constitutes disbelief; if it concerns matters beyond those principles, it constitutes religious innovation.

This latter kind of error concerns things that all kinds of evidential methods lead one to know, so that knowledge of them is, in this way, accessible to everyone. Examples include acknowledging Allah, blessed and exalted is He, prophethood, and happiness and misery in the Hereafter. For these three principles are established through the three kinds of evidence, which no one among