As for the imams mentioned, they are among the foremost imams of Islam. Al-Thawrī was the imam of the people of Iraq, and most of them regarded him as more eminent than his contemporaries, such as Ibn Abī Laylā, al-Hasan ibn Sālih ibn Hayy, Abū Hanīfah, and others (*). His school survives to this day in Khurāsān. Al-Awzāʿī was the imam of the people of Syria, who continued to follow his school until the fourth century. Indeed, the people of the Maghrib followed his school before Mālik’s school reached them.

Hammād ibn Abī Sulaymān was Abū Hanīfah’s teacher. Moreover, this view is also held by Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Ishāq ibn Rāhawayh, and others, and his school survives to this day. It is also the position of Dāwūd ibn ʿAlī and his followers, whose school likewise survives to this day. Thus, people today have not reached a consensus against this view; rather, many uphold it in both the East and the West.

The Quran and Sunnah draw no distinction between individual imams qualified to exercise independent legal reasoning. Mālik, al-Layth ibn Saʿd, al-Awzāʿī, and al-Thawrī were all imams in their time, and following the legal authority of any one of them is like following that of another. No Muslim says that it is permissible to follow one but not another. However, when someone prohibits following any of these imams in our time, such a prohibition rests on only one of two grounds:

The first is his belief that no one remains who knows their schools. There is a well-known disagreement over following a deceased scholar. Those who prohibit it say, “These scholars are dead,” while those who permit it say, “There must be someone living who knows the deceased scholar’s position.”