the legal schools as a whole, and they are worthy of being followed because they possess the qualifications for such leadership. Others do not hold the same rank, even if they are great imams who have followed in their footsteps.”

He then presented the twelfth chapter, summarizing the imams’ explicit statements after having devoted a separate chapter to each of them. He said:

“When I examined the source works that I could reliably transmit, I found in them the beliefs of the imams that I have already mentioned. I then arranged these according to the sequence of the chapters I included, and prefaced each” chapter “with a number of their praiseworthy qualities, bearing witness to their standing as imams and calling upon people to follow them, affirming the obligation to agree with them and the prohibition against opposing them or breaking ranks with them. For following the imams we have mentioned in matters of foundational belief in our time is equivalent to following the consensus transmitted to us from the Companions and their successors: no Muslim may oppose it, nor is he excused for doing so. The truth does not lie outside their positions, for they are the guides and leaders of this community’s schools, its foremost figures and eminent scholars who lead the way—men of faith and piety, truthfulness and trustworthiness, abundant knowledge and evident scholarly exertion. It is for this reason that people have followed them in practical legal matters, making them intermediaries between themselves and Allah in those matters, until they became the leaders of the legal schools throughout the East and West. Let people likewise accept them in matters of foundational belief concerning their relationship with their Lord, and accept what they explicitly affirmed and called others to follow.”

He said:

“For we know with certainty that they are unquestionably better acquainted with what is authentically established of the beliefs of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, and of his Companions after him. This is because of the soundness of their knowledge, their possession of the qualifications for leadership, and the closeness of their time to that of the Messenger, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, and his Companions, as we explained at the beginning of the book.”