that she could leave consecration if something prevented her from continuing; {and the hadith of ʿĀ’ishah about her applying perfume to the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, before he entered consecration and before he circumambulated the House}; {and the hadith of Ibn ʿAbbās stating that he continued reciting the talbiyah until he stoned Jamrat al-ʿAqabah}; and other reports?”

The reply is: If these instances are compared with those in which others among the Kufans and the like went against hadiths, the latter are more numerous. Moreover, in such matters he followed reports from ʿUmar ibn al-Khattāb, Ibn ʿUmar, and others. Although the correct course when the Companions disagree is to refer the matter back to the Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, someone who had not received certain Sunnah reports and therefore followed ʿUmar, Ibn ʿUmar, and others like them held a stronger position than someone who was unaware of more of the Sunnah than the people of the Prophet’s city and lacked predecessors comparable to theirs.

Another example is the sanctuary of the Prophet’s city. Hadiths establishing its sanctuary status have been mass-transmitted from the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, through numerous channels. Indeed, it is also authentically reported from him that he prescribed, as the penalty for someone cutting down a tree there, that his belongings should go to whoever found him doing so. The position of the scholars of Medina and those who agree with them, such as al-Shāfiʿī and Ahmad, is that Medina too is a sanctuary, although they disagree about the penalty for hunting there. Those Kufans who differed on this had not received these Sunnah reports. Some of their followers, however, began countering them with reports such as the hadith of Abū ʿUmayr and the hadith about the wild animal. Even if these reports were comparable in authenticity, they could not legitimately be used to oppose those reports; yet those reports are mass-transmitted. The hadith of Abū ʿUmayr is understood to mean that