matter, and because of what they understood from the words of Allah and His Messenger, what they discerned in the principles of His law, and what had reached them from the earliest generation. These belong to the kinds of questions over which those qualified to exercise independent juristic judgment have differed. This is unlike the approach of those who depart from this and resort to calculation or writing, such as tables and computations of positions and corrections derived from the motions of the sun and moon, and other such methods which the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, expressly stated were not the practice of his community and prohibited.

For this reason, scholars have consistently regarded those who resort to such methods as having introduced into Islam something that does not belong to it. They therefore reject these views with the same condemnation they direct towards the people of religious innovation. Those who have introduced innovations in this matter resembling those of the People of the Book and the Sabians fall into several groups:

One group consists of people affiliated with the Shia, including the Ismā‘īlīs and others, who rely on numerical reckoning rather than sighting the crescent. This innovation first arose in Kufa. Some of them rely on a table which they claim Ja‘far al-Sādiq handed down to them, although it was brought forward only by ‘Abd Allāh ibn Mu‘āwiya. Knowledgeable Shia and non-Shia alike agree that this is a fabrication falsely attributed to Ja‘far by this ‘Abd Allāh. Reliable transmission from Ja‘far and the general body of the imams of the Prophet’s household has established their adherence to the position held by the Muslims. This is also the view of most discerning Shia.