128 ANALOGY, SYSTEMATIC REASONING

no text in the Koran and no sunna, and they must have arrived at them by ijtihād.

Ijtihād leads to disagreement.¹ Because of the tradition on the single or double reward of the mujtahid, every mujtahid who has done his best to arrive at the correct solution is considered to be right, in so far as he has discharged his obligation, even if the result of his ijtihād is wrong.²

F. THE MU'TAZILA

The ahl al-kalām, that is, the Mu'tazila,³ base their whole doctrine on reasoning (nazar) and qiyās, aiming at consistency. They hold that qiyās and naẓar lead to truth, and consider themselves as particularly adept in their use.⁴

The names by which Shāfi'ī and Ibn Qutaiba call them, ahl al-kalām and ahl al-naẓar or ahl al-qiyās, mean 'adherents of systematic reasoning, rationalists'. Shāfi'ī, in Tr. I, 122, reports their analogical reasoning on a question of law and refutes it. They reject traditions on account of naẓar and reason, and use qiyās as a basis for criticizing traditions.⁵

Naẓẓām sought to discredit the statements hostile to qiyās and ra'y which were ascribed to some Companions; he also blamed Ibn Mas'ūd for a decision based on an arbitrary assumption (ibid. 24 f.), and believed that the Companions committed mistakes in their fetwas when they followed their personal opinion (ra'y) (Khaiyāṭ, 98). The context of Ibn Qutaiba shows that this was meant to discredit the ancient schools of law whose main authorities were Companions, and was not directed against the use of systematic reasoning as such. Only Ibn Qutaiba, who upheld the case of the traditionists and opponents of human reasoning in law, and particularly Khaiyāṭ, who represented a later stage of the Mu'tazilite doctrine,⁶ misrepresented Naẓẓām as wishing to exclude ra'y and qiyās.

G. THE TRADITIONISTS

The traditionists⁷ are hostile to all reasoning and try to rely exclusively on traditions. They do not refer anything in matters