residence be taken up in one of the two Holy Sanctuaries.” Or: “On condition that the jurists attend the lesson every morning.” There are countless comparable examples.

One mistake some minds make in such cases is to suppose that the beginning of a statement contradicts or conflicts with its ending. This is one of the specious objections raised by some of the linguistically inept among those who deny that wording can have general application. They say:

“If these forms of expression were general, an exception would constitute a retraction or a contradiction.”

This is ignorance. Numerical expressions are unambiguous, yet they admit exceptions, as Allah Most High says:

“So he remained among them a thousand years, less fifty.”

Likewise, an indefinite noun in an affirmative statement is unrestricted, yet it admits qualification, as in His words:

“Then the freeing of a slave.”

Their error arises from imagining that to describe these forms of expression as general is to describe them as unconditionally general. If they are said to be unconditionally general, and an exception then removes part of what they entail, the excluded case would be both included by the general expression and excluded by the exception. That, they argue, would constitute a contradiction or a retraction.

The answer is:

“When these expressions are described as general, their general application is conditional upon their not being connected to a clause that restricts their scope. Thus, they are general when left unqualified, not general without qualification. The same expression conveys different meanings depending on whether it is left unqualified or qualified.”

For this reason, the jurists unanimously agree that if a man were to say, “I owe him a thousand dirhams in such-and-such coinage,” or “in broken coins