the fact that he denounces it in the manner of someone who imagines that Abū Hanīfah is saying: “This child was created from the semen of this man, who never had intercourse with his wife.” No one of even the slightest intelligence would say such a thing, let alone someone like Abū Hanīfah. Rather, he establishes the legal status of lineage in the absence of biological descent. This is a principle unique to him, on which the majority disagreed with him (1) and held those who espoused it to be mistaken.

Some of them establish lineage when it was possible for the husband to have had intercourse with her, as al-Shāfiī and many of Ahmad’s companions maintain. Others say that lineage is established only if he consummated the marriage with her. This is the other position in Ahmad’s school and the view (2) of Mālik and others.

The same applies to the question of the permissibility of nabīdh beverages (3). It is well known that the majority of Ahl al-Sunnah prohibit them and take so strict a position that they even impose the prescribed punishment upon a drinker who acted on a legal interpretation. They hold two views on whether he is thereby deemed an open sinner. The position (4) of Mālik and Ahmad, according to one report, is that he is not deemed an open sinner; and the position of al-Shāfiī and Ahmad, according to the other report, is that he is not deemed an open sinner. Muhammad ibn al-Hasan holds that they are prohibited. This is the position preferred by fair-minded scholars among the companions of Abū Hanīfah, such as Abū al-Layth al-Samarqandī and others like him.

[Discussion of the Rāfidī’s claim that Ahl al-Sunnah permit nabīdh]

And the statement of [this Rāfidī] (5), “and the permissibility of nabīdh, despite its sharing with wine in respect of