the evidence runs counter to their view, and yet he still gives a fatwa against that evidence?! Reflect on this remark, for by itself it is enough to demolish blind imitation. For this reason some imitators among the shaykhs denied that the statement could be attributed to Abu Hanifah when I criticized him for issuing a fatwa based on Abu Hanifah’s opinion without knowing its proof. (1) I add: The Imam often built his ruling on analogy (qiyas). Later a stronger analogy might appear to him, or a hadith of the Prophet might reach him, so he would adopt it and abandon his earlier position. Al-Shaʿrani says in al-Mizan (1/62), in summary: ‘Our conviction—and that of every fair-minded person—regarding Imam Abu Hanifah is that had he lived until the Sharia was compiled and the hadith masters had journeyed through the cities and frontier towns to collect it, and it all came into his hands, he would have acted upon it and left aside every analogy he had drawn. Analogy would then have been rare in his school, just as it is rare in the other schools compared with his. But because the proofs of the Sharia were dispersed in his time among the Successors and their followers throughout towns, villages, and garrisons, analogy necessarily became plentiful in his madhhab, for the texts were absent in the issues where he used analogy. The situation differed for the other imams: by their era the hadith scholars had already travelled in search of the reports, gathered them from towns and villages, and written them down, so the hadiths of the Sharia corroborated one another. This is why analogy is abundant in his school and scarce in the others.’ Most of this passage is reproduced by Abu al-Hasanat in al-Nafiʿ al-Kabir (p. 135), with annotations that support and clarify it; whoever wishes may consult it. I say: If this is Abu Hanifah’s excuse for unintentionally differing from sound hadiths—and it is certainly a valid excuse, for Allah does not burden a soul beyond its capacity—then it is impermissible to censure