84 CONSENSUS AND DISAGREEMENT  

cialism,¹ and in Tr. III, 22, Shāfi'ī states that he has confined himself in his argument to the premises of the Medinese, and spoken of the consensus only as the consensus of Medina. In his reply to the Medinese Rabī' in Tr. III, 148 (p. 242) Shāfi'ī points out that men in other countries do not acknowledge the local consensus of Medina as a real one. This Medinese provincialism certainly does not imply any pretension on their part that their city was the true home of the sunna,² although it may have become one of the starting-points for this later claim. It is, more likely, just a crude remnant of the original geographical character of the ancient schools of law,³ a provincialism which had been superseded, in the case of the Iraqians, by a wider outlook and—not an isolated case—a more highly developed theory. Furthermore, some Medinese share the Iraqian idea of consensus.⁴

Rabī', speaking for the Medinese, declares in Tr. III, 22, that 'there is consensus only when there is no disagreement', but points out at the same time that this test is not applied indiscriminately, but only to 'approved scholars'. Even so, only the agreement of the majority is demanded (Tr. III, 148, p. 248). Mālik, in Muw. iii. 183, makes the far-reaching claim that 'no one anywhere disagrees' with a certain doctrine,⁵ but Ibn 'Abdalbarr (quoted in Zurqānī, ad loc.) points out that this claim is not quite correct. More moderately, Mālik says in Muw. ii. 83, that he has seen the scholars approve of a doctrine, or, in Muw. ii. 171: 'This is what the scholars in our city have always held.'

The Medinese consensus is to a great extent anonymous, and Shāfi'ī attacks it for this reason. In Tr. III, 71, he says: 'I wish I knew who they are whose opinions constitute consensus, of whom one hears nothing and whom we do not know, Allah help us! Allah has obliged no man to take his religion from [private] persons whom he knows.⁶ Even if Allah had done so, how would this justify taking one's religion from persons unknown?'⁷ The alleged Medinese consensus resolves itself for Shāfi'ī into the claim of 'hereditary transmission of knowledge in Medina'.⁸