seven hundredfold, as explicitly stated in the Quran. It has also been reported (1) that He multiplies it into two million good deeds. Thus, He described these multiples as “many,” just as He described these occasions as “many.”

Allah Most High also said:

“How many a small company has overcome a large company by Allah’s permission! And Allah is with the patient.”

Here, “many” encompasses amounts of various sizes, because (2) groups described as numerous are not confined (3) to any specific number. A small company may number one thousand and the large company three thousand; the former is small in relation to the greater number of the latter.

Allah Most High also said:

“When Allah showed them to you in your dream as few—and had He shown them to you as many, you would have lost courage and disputed over the matter—but Allah spared you.”

[Surah al-Anfāl: 43]

It is known that Allah showed him the people of Badr as numbering more than one hundred, yet He described that as “few” in a relative and comparative sense.

All of this demonstrates that fewness and abundance are relative matters. Hence, the jurists disagreed over a case in which someone says to another:

“I owe you wealth that is great, substantial, abundant, or considerable.”

There are two views: should he be allowed to define its meaning himself, explaining it (4) as anything that may be regarded as property, as held by al-Shāfiʿī and a group of Ahmad’s companions? Or should his explanation be accepted (5) only if it refers to something of considerable value (6), as held by Abū Hanīfa, Mālik, and some of Ahmad’s companions? Among the proponents of the second view, some set it at the minimum value for theft to incur the prescribed penalty, others at the minimum threshold for zakat, and still others at the amount of the blood money. This disagreement concerns an acknowledgment, because it is a report, and a report concerns a past matter already known to the person making the acknowledgment.