(2 – continued) I reply: Any intelligent, perceptive reader can see that the argument adduced is not strong enough to prefer that version, for the Prophet ﷺ could depart from his habitual order for some reason—such as illustrating permissibility. Since that is possible, one must choose between the two reports on the basis of the rules of hadith criticism. We have already shown that the first wording is the reliable one, and it alone carries weight. Qadi Iyad therefore said: "This hadith is proof for those who say that arranging the surahs was an act of ijtihad by the Muslims when they wrote the mushaf, and that the order did not come from the Prophet ﷺ himself; rather, he left the matter to his community after him." He added: "This is the view of Malik and the majority of scholars, and it was adopted by Qadi Abu Bakr al-Baqillani. Ibn al-Baqillani declared it the sounder of the two opinions, even though both are possible." He continued: "In our view, fixing the order of the surahs is not mandatory in writing, prayer, study, or in teaching and instruction. The Prophet ﷺ gave no explicit text or limit whose contravention would be forbidden; that is why the early codices differed in sequence before the codex of Uthman." He also said: "The Prophet ﷺ himself—and the Muslim community after him in every age—considered it permissible to depart from the surah order in prayer, study, and instruction." And he said: "According to those scholars who maintain that the order was divinely fixed and conveyed by the Prophet ﷺ exactly as it settled in the codex of Uthman, the earlier codices varied only because the final instruction and last review (al-‘ard al-akhirah) had not yet reached them. Thus they interpret his recitation here of al-Nisa first and then Al ‘Imran as occurring before that definitive ordering; in the codex of Ubayy these two surahs were indeed arranged that way."