or the view of someone who fixed a particular minimum travel distance for shortening prayers and held that they could not be shortened below that distance; or who held that a traveller may not fast while travelling.

Other examples include Salmān’s statement that saliva is ritually impure; Ibn Umar’s statement that marriage to a woman from the People of the Book is impermissible; Muʿādh and Muʿāwiya’s allowing a Muslim to inherit from a disbeliever; Umar and Ibn Masʿūd’s refusal to allow someone in a state of janāba (major ritual impurity) to perform dry ablution; and the statement of Alī, Zayd and Ibn Umar that a woman whose marriage was contracted without a specified dowry is not entitled to a dowry if her husband dies. They also include Alī and Ibn Abbās’s statement that a pregnant widow must observe a waiting period ending at the later of the two prescribed terms; and Ibn Umar and others’ statement that, when someone in ihrām (pilgrimage consecration) dies, his ihrām ends and he is treated as someone not in ihrām.

Further examples include Ibn Umar and others’ statement that stipulating a condition in Hajj is impermissible; Ibn Abbās and others’ statement that a widow is not required to remain at home; and Umar and Ibn Masʿūd’s statement that an irrevocably divorced woman is entitled to accommodation and maintenance. These and similar matters over which the Companions disagreed must be referred back to Allah and the Messenger. There are many such examples. Nothing constitutes prescribed religious law for the community except what the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, prescribed.

Those scholars who said, “A Companion’s statement is authoritative proof,” meant this only when no other Companion disagreed with him and no text was known to contradict his statement. If the statement then became widely known and they did not object to it, this constituted assent to that statement. It may therefore be said, “This is consensus by assent,” provided it is known that they assented to it and that none of them objected, for they do not assent to falsehood. If, however, the statement did not become widely known, then, if it is known that no other Companion disagreed with him, it may be said, “It is authoritative proof.”