zakat and performing other such obligations. If he did not know that wine was forbidden and drank it, he would not be subjected to the prescribed penalty, by unanimous Muslim agreement. They differed only over whether the missed prayer must be made up (1).

Likewise, if he entered into a transaction involving usury or gambling that he believed lawful, and only after taking possession learned that it was forbidden, should the contract be annulled or left intact, just as it would not be annulled (2) if he had done so before embracing Islam? Similarly, if he contracted a marriage that he believed valid according to his people’s customary practices, but upon learning the laws of Islam realized that he had failed to meet one of its conditions—as when he married a woman during her waiting period, which had since ended—should the marriage be deemed invalid, or should he be permitted to remain in it, just as if he had contracted it before embracing Islam and then became Muslim?

The underlying issue in all of this is whether the prescriptions of the Sacred Law bind someone who does not know them, or whether they bind no one (3) until he learns of them, or whether a distinction should be made between prescriptions that abrogate earlier rulings and those newly instituted. There are three opinions on this question, corresponding to three positions within the school of Ahmad. Al-Qādī Abū Ya‘lā mentioned the two unqualified positions in one of his works, while he and others mentioned the position that draws a distinction in works on the principles of jurisprudence: namely, that abrogation does not take effect with respect to a legally accountable person until the abrogating provision reaches him (4). Abū al-Khattāb derived another position holding that it does take effect.

Also falling under this issue is the case of someone who omitted an obligatory ritual purification without knowing that it was obligatory, or who prayed (5) in a place where prayer was prohibited before learning of the prohibition: must he repeat the prayer?