the ruling, he is certain that he must act on the conclusion to which his probable judgment has led him. Knowledge is thus certainly attained, while conjecture figures in the process leading to it.”

The substance of this answer is that there are two premises here:

First: I have formed a conjectural judgment.

Second: Conclusive evidence has established the obligation to follow this conjectural judgment.

The “first premise” is known through introspection, while the “second” is practical and established through inference. Thus, conjecture itself is not a premise in the proof, as some have imagined. Nevertheless, it may be objected:

The obligation to act on this conjecture is a ruling belonging to legal theory, not jurisprudence itself. Rather, jurisprudence is the conjectural judgment derived from apparent textual meanings, solitary reports, and analogy; legal theory establishes that acting on this conjecture is obligatory. Jurists, as such, do not address this question. Hence, this practical ruling of legal theory is not jurisprudence itself.

This answer is that of the judge Abū Bakr, who based it on his own foundational position: according to him, every jurist exercising independent judgment is correct, there is no objectively correct ruling to be sought, and there is no evidence requiring one conjectural judgment to be preferred over another. Rather, in his view, conjectural judgments arise by chance.

Al-Ghazālī and others who defended his position said:

“A conjectural judgment may arise from a person’s inclination towards one of two opinions rather than the other, as when someone of stern disposition inclines towards one opinion, and someone of gentle disposition towards another.”

Accordingly, in their view, whenever a jurist exercising independent judgment finds a conjectural judgment within himself, Allah’s ruling for him is