if he knew that a category was intended, he would be certain that no restriction to particular instances applied. The same reasoning applies to all other evidence. For example, someone may rely on texts that have been abrogated without the abrogating text having reached him. Such was the case with those who prohibited preparing fruit infusions in vessels and visiting graves because the abrogating text had not reached them. Likewise, some continued to pray towards Jerusalem before learning of the abrogation, including Muslims living in the desert regions, Mecca, Abyssinia, and elsewhere.

These were distinct from those in Medina, some of whom offered a single prayer facing both directions: part towards one direction and part towards the other. When they learned of the abrogation during the prayer, they turned from facing Jerusalem to facing the Kaaba—from the direction of Syria to that of Yemen.

Al-Qādī Abū Bakr and others deny that there is an actual ruling to be sought through independent legal reasoning, or evidence pointing to it. They say that there is nothing beyond the conjecture in the mind of the jurist exercising independent judgment, that evidentiary indications have no fixed standard, and that no indication is stronger than another. Yet if they say this, it follows that someone who acts on the weaker rather than the stronger evidence is mistaken, whereas, on their view, there is no error in objective reality.

The early generations, the four imams, and the majority, however, maintain that some evidentiary indications are objectively stronger than others. A person must therefore exercise independent judgment and seek the strongest evidence. If he finds one piece of evidence stronger than another and finds nothing that opposes it, he acts upon it. Allah does not burden any soul beyond its capacity. If, in reality, there is evidence stronger than this,