Shaykh al-Islām also said:

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The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said:

“I have been given concise yet comprehensive speech”—with the additional wording, in one narration, “and its endings,” and in another, “and its beginnings and endings.”

He also said in a hadith:

“Your Prophet has been given concise yet comprehensive speech, together with its beginnings and endings.”

This is a noble and comprehensive hadith. Speech is of two kinds: performative utterances, involving requests, will, and action; and informative utterances, involving belief and knowledge. Knowledge and will, expressed respectively through statements and requests, each have many branches and encompassing principles.

These principles are of two kinds: universal, comprehensive, and general; and primary and causal. Universal and primary knowledge, together with universal and primary intentions, arrangements, and commands, encompass the whole order of existence. All the information sought concerns existing truth and intended truth.

Thus reasoning—whether rational, scriptural, or otherwise—is of two kinds: subsumptive reasoning and causal reasoning. Analogical reasoning falls within one or the other: if the attribute shared by the two analogous cases is the subject of the judgment, this is subsumptive reasoning;