“And you have given one of them a great amount.”

‘Umar then accepted her point. He had memorized the verse but had forgotten it. Likewise, it is related that, on the day of the Battle of the Camel, ‘Alī reminded al-Zubayr of something the Messenger of Allah (may Allah bless him and grant him peace) had entrusted to them both. Al-Zubayr remembered it and withdrew from the fighting. Such instances are frequent among earlier and later generations.

The sixth reason:

The scholar may not understand what the hadith means. Sometimes this is because a word in it is unfamiliar to him, such as muzābana, muhāqala, mukhābara, mulāmasa, munābadha, gharar, and other unfamiliar terms whose interpretation scholars may dispute. Another example is the hadith traced back to the Prophet:

“Neither divorce nor emancipation is valid in a state of ighlāq.”

Some scholars have interpreted ighlāq as coercion, while someone who disagrees with them may be unaware of this interpretation.

At other times, a word’s meaning in the scholar’s own language and customary usage differs from its meaning in the language of the Prophet (may Allah bless him and grant him peace). He understands it according to his own usage, on the presumption that linguistic meanings remain unchanged. For example, some heard reports permitting nabīdh and thought it meant certain kinds of intoxicating drink, because that was its meaning in their usage. Yet what was intended was simply a drink made by steeping ingredients in water to sweeten it, before it becomes intoxicating, as explained in many authentic hadiths.

They also heard the word khamr in the Quran and the Sunnah and believed that it referred exclusively to intoxicating grape juice, on the assumption that this was its meaning in