together with a single witness is sufficient, and no contrary view has been preserved—so far as I know—from any Companion of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. On the basis of the principles you yourself adopt, therefore, you are bound to accept this ruling and to treat it as a consensus!

344 – He replied, “Some of them say that what Ibn ʿAbbās reported is not our position!”

345 – I said, “That is exactly what I have found in this matter—and in others you have discussed with us. Allah alone grants help.”

346 – He asked, “Then is the combination of an oath and a single witness unanimously accepted in Medina?”

347 – I answered, “No; it is a point on which they differed. Still, whenever a contested issue is soundly traced back to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ by the kind of chain you recognize, we act upon it.”

348 – I then asked him, “Which group is it such that, when their statements about a report concur, the report is deemed sound, but when they differ you discard the hadith on account of their disagreement?”

349 – He said, “The Companions of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ.”

350 – I asked, “A report confined to a select few?”

351 – He said, “No.”

352 – I said, “Then can knowledge of their consensus or their disagreement be recovered through a report that is widespread among the generality?”

353 – He answered, “Whatever I cannot retrieve by means of a widespread report, I consider the consensus of today’s scholars: when I find them united on something, I infer that their present agreement reflects the divergence of those who came before.”

353 – I said to him, “And what of the argument that their consensus itself counts as the report of numerous groups among them?”

354 – He asked, “What, then, do you propose to say?”

356 – I said, “I would say that no one is entitled to pronounce on the matter until he first knows their consensus regarding…"