they differed over making up the prayers.

Likewise, if someone engaged in transactions involving usury or gambling that he believed permissible, then learned of their prohibition after taking possession of the proceeds, should he annul the contract or not, just as we would not annul it if he had done this before embracing Islam?

Similarly, suppose he contracted a marriage that he believed valid according to their customs, but when the laws of Islam reached him, he realized that he had failed to fulfil some of its conditions—for example, he had married a woman during her waiting period, which has since expired. Is this marriage invalid, or is he allowed to remain in it, as he would if he had contracted it before embracing Islam and then become Muslim?

Underlying all of this is the question: Are revealed rulings binding upon those who do not know them, or do they become binding only after one learns of them? Or should a distinction be drawn between abrogating rulings and rulings introduced for the first time?

There are three opinions on this, corresponding to three positions within Ahmad’s school. Judge Abū Yaʿlā mentioned the two positions that make no such distinction in one of his books. He and others also mentioned, in their discussions of the principles of jurisprudence, the position that distinguishes between the two: abrogation does not take effect for a legally accountable person until the abrogating ruling reaches him. Abū al-Khattāb also derived a position holding that it does take effect before then.

Another instance is someone who omitted the required purification without knowing that it was obligatory, or prayed in a prohibited place before learning of the prohibition: must he repeat the prayer? There are two explicitly transmitted reports from Ahmad on this.

The correct position throughout this entire matter is that a ruling becomes binding only when one is able to learn of it, and that one need not make up what one did not know was obligatory. For it is established in an authentic report that