120 ANALOGY, SYSTEMATIC REASONING,

E. SHAFI'I

Shāfi'ī and ra'y

In his earliest period Shāfi'ī uses ra'y in the same loose way as the ancient schools. Straightforward examples of this will be found in Tr. I, Tr. VIII, and Tr. IX.¹ It so happens that Tr. II, which belongs to the same period, does not contain equally telling passages, but only the ascription of ra'y to Companions, which is irrelevant in this connexion and occurs, indeed, in early and late contexts. There are further numerous passages from all periods where Shāfi'ī formulates his conclusions cautiously by giving them as his opinion in a non-technical sense.² He also uses ara'aita and alā tarā for introducing systematic arguments.³

In Tr. IV, 261, which belongs to Shāfiʿī's middle period, he says: 'When there is no explicit text in the Koran and no sunna, the mujtahids [scholars] may use their ijtihād and hold what they think right (ma raʾāhu ḥaqqan).' But this has to be interpreted in the light of Shāfiʿī's polemics, in the same treatise, against istiḥsān and arbitrary ijtihād, and in favour of disciplined qiyās. In Tr. III, 148 (p. 244), Shāfiʿī still recognizes that one has to make decisions on points of detail on which there is no consensus and no guidance in Koran and sunna, but he claims that this occurs only rarely.

From Tr. VII onwards Shāfi'ī rejects arbitrary ra'y in favour of strict analogy, for which he even claims a consensus of the scholars.⁴ Ibid. 273: Shāfi'ī knows of no scholar who would authorize an intelligent and cultured man to give a judgment or a fetwa by his own opinion, if he did not know the bases of qiyas, which are Koran, sunna, consensus, and reason ('aql). Ris. 58: Shāfi'ī uses the term qiyas, whereas his opponent, a representative of the ancient schools, calls it ra'y. Tr. III, 77: Shāfi'ī refuses to set his ra'y against a tradition from a Companion. Ikh. 21: 'No one is authorized to apply reasoning (li-ma) or questioning (kaif) or anything tainted by personal opinion