by means of ra’y or qiyas, due to the [Quranic] verse, "…in accordance to what God has shown you" (4:105). Ahmad Ibn Hanbal On Ahmad's views, Christopher Melchert states “Ahmad and his fellow traditionalists of the ninth century expressly condemned the Hanafi exercise of qiyas…” When compared with Dawud al-Zahiri's intensely negative stance towards qiyas, Melchert also states “Ahmad ibn Hanbal could likewise be quoted, as we have seen, in total rejection of ra’y (opinion) and qiyas (analogy)." Ahmad ibn Hanbal has been quoted as saying "There is no qiyas in the Sunnah, and examples are not to be made up for it” Support for its validity Early support for the validity of analogical reason in jurisprudence came from Abu Hanifa and his student Abu Yusuf. Al-Shafi'i was a proponent of analogical reasoning as well, though his usage was less frequent than that of Abu Hanifa. Acceptance of analogical reason gradually increased within the Muslim world. With the Malikite and Hanbalite schools eventually granting full acceptance as the Hanafites and Shafi'ites already had done, the overwhelming majority of Sunni jurists from the late period onward affirmed its validity. Japanese scholar of Islam Kojiro Nakamura defined the orthodox Sunni schools in regard to their eventual acceptance of analogy in descending order of that acceptance: Hanafis, Malikis, Shafi'is, Hanbalis and Zahiris. Much work was performed on the details of proper analogy, with major figures such as Al-Qastallani, Al-Baqillani, Al-Juwayni and al-Amidi from the Shafi'ite school and Ibn Abidin from the Hanafite school providing rules and guidelines still used to this day. Application as a source of law Sunni scholar Baghawi gave a commonly accepted definition of analogy in Islamic law: analogical reasoning is the knowledge by which one learns the method of deriving a ruling from the Quran and prophetic tradition. In this case, the above-mentioned ruling should not already be apparent in the Quran, prophetic tradition or consensus. If there is no derivation involved due to the explicitness of the ruling in the Quran and prophetic tradition, then such a person is not, by definition, a mujtahid. In order for Qiyas to be used in Islamic law, three things are necessary. First, there must be a new case for which the Quran and Sunnah of the Prophet do not provide a clear ruling. Second, there must be an original case which was resolved using a hukm, or ruling, from the Quran,