AND PERSONAL OPINION 115

seems to be part of the misleading picture created after Shāfiʿī's time of the character of the Medinese school.¹

Zuhrī, who belongs to the same generation, is quoted both in favour and in disparagement of raʾy. On one side he is related, on the authority of Auzāʿī, to have said: 'What an excellent minister of knowledge is sound opinion';² on the other he is alleged to have said: The [traditional] scholar (al-ʿālim) is superior to the mujtahid by a hundred degrees.³ In view of the importance of raʾy in the Medinese school, the second statement can at once be dismissed as spurious; but the first, too, the self-conscious wording of which goes beyond the simple and natural use of raʾy by Mālik and Ibn Qāsim, is probably spurious.

Mālik's older contemporary Mājashūn called the final doctrine on a particular problem, at which the reasoning of the Medinese school had arrived, raʾy.⁴

Mālik's raʾy

The use of raʾy by Mālik is well known,⁵ and Shāfiʿī, in a polemical passage, reproaches him for making raʾy his final criterion (Tr. III, 65). Mālik credits Companions of the Prophet with raʾy, which he follows (e.g. Muw. ii. 69). He uses his raʾy on points on which there are no traditions (e.g. ibid. ii. 307), expresses it in confirming traditions from Companions and later authorities (e.g. ibid. iii. 260), uses it in order to interpret traditions restrictively (e.g. ibid. iii. 129), and in connexion with the practice makes it prevail over traditions (e.g. Mud. i. 65). His raʾy may be a strict analogy (e.g. Muw. ii. 268), or an arbitrary, inconsistent decision which may be called istiḥsān.⁶ Occasionally it stands for broader systematic reasoning (e.g. Ṭabarī, 61), and Mālik uses araʾaita for introducing systematic arguments (e.g. Muw. iii. 183).

Ibn Qāsim's raʾy

Ibn Qāsim expresses his raʾy in the Mudauwana, passim, either confirming Mālik's doctrine (e.g. iii. 33), or contradicting it (e.g. i. 42), or discussing points not decided by Mālik (e.g. ii. 229). On one of these last he gives his 'raʾy and istiḥsān' (xvi. 203). But where there are traditions and well-established sunnas on the authority of the Prophet, analogy and reasoning (naẓar) are out of place (iv. 151).