Likewise, in most of the questions for which people turn to the jurists and give them precedence, the person who would judge fairly is nowhere to be found in this world!

237 – He said, “And how could such a one not exist?”

238 – He—or perhaps one of those sitting with him—replied, “In these matters I consider only the man whom the hadith experts themselves attest to be a jurist.”

239 – I said, “There is no town at all except that among its own people there are those of the same description who deny him competence in fiqh, charge him with ignorance, or declare that it is unlawful for him to issue fatwas and unlawful for anyone to accept his verdicts.”

240 – “I have seen the people of every town divided among themselves, and then I have seen each town divided from the others.”

241 – “Thus we learned that among the Meccans were some who scarcely ever departed from the opinion of ʿAṭāʾ, while others preferred someone else to him. Then al-Zanjī ibn Khālid issued legal opinions there: some of them promoted him in jurisprudence, whereas others leaned toward the view of Saʿīd ibn Sālim. The followers of each of these two belittled the other and went beyond the bounds of moderation.”

242 – “I also discovered that the people of Medina had once given precedence to Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyib, yet they abandoned part of his opinions. Later, in our own time, Mālik emerged from among them: many of them set him above others, while some went to extremes in weakening his positions. I have seen Ibn Abī al-Zinād exceed all moderation in censuring Mālik’s doctrines, and I have seen al-Mughīra, Ibn Abī Ḥāzim, and al-Darāwardī adopt some of those doctrines—and I have seen people who censured them in turn.”

243 – “And in Kūfa I saw a group inclining toward the view of Ibn Abī Laylā, denouncing the schools of Abū Yūsuf; others inclined toward Abū Yūsuf, denouncing the schools of Ibn Abī Laylā and anything that diverged from Abū Yūsuf; still others leaned toward al-Thawrī, and others …”