The well-known report from ʿUmar concerning this, narrated by Mālik in al-Muwattaʾ and relied upon by the jurists, relates that Abū Mūsā sent some money which he had lent to ʿUmar’s two sons. They traded with it and made a profit. ʿUmar demanded that the entire profit be taken for the Muslims, because Abū Mūsā had singled them out for this loan rather than the rest of the army. One of them said to him:

“Had the money been lost, we would have borne the loss. How, then, can you have the profit while we bear the liability?”

One of the Companions said to him:

“Treat him as the managing partner in a mudāraba.”

So he treated the transaction as a mudāraba. That Companion said this only because mudāraba was already familiar among them, and the Messenger’s time was still recent; it had not arisen after him. He therefore knew that it had been familiar among them during the Messenger’s lifetime, just as farming and other occupations, such as tailoring and butchery, had been.

Accordingly, in matters on which consensus has been reached, some jurists exercising independent judgment may have known of no relevant text and arrived at their conclusions through reasoning that agreed with the text, while other scholars possessed that text.

Ibn Jarīr and a group of scholars say:

“Consensus can only be established on the basis of a text they have transmitted from the Messenger.”

They maintain this while also affirming the validity of analogical reasoning.

We do not stipulate that they must all have known the text and conveyed its meaning, as reports are transmitted. Rather, we have surveyed the matters on which consensus has been reached and found that all of them are addressed by texts. Many scholars were unaware of the relevant text yet agreed with the body of scholars. Likewise, a scholar may argue by analogy in a matter on which there is a consensus unknown to him, and thus agree with that consensus. Similarly, a matter may be addressed by a specific text, while some scholars argue for it on the basis of a text’s general wording, as Ibn Masʿūd and others did when citing His words:

“For those who are pregnant, their waiting period is until they give birth.”

Ibn Masʿūd said: