Then Ibn Hanzalah asked what the two should do...

Then Ibn Hanzalah asked what the two should do, and the Imam replied: “They must seek out one of your own who narrates our traditions, who is versed in what is permissible and what is forbidden, who is well-acquainted with our laws and ordinances, and accept him as judge and arbiter, for I appoint him as judge over you…”[^2] Besides these ahadith, we have quite a few sayings of the Imams which tell us what to do if we come across two ahadith which are contradictory or semi-contradic­tory and solving the contradictory ahadith is one of the functions of ijtihad.

These types of ahadith are known as al-akhbar al-‘ilajiyyah , the ahadith which solve the problems in the process of ijtihad. What we have mentioned above clearly shows that ijtihad is necessary for the perpetuity of the Islamic legal system. Was not Ijtihad forbidden in the Early Shi’ah Sources? There are some sayings of the Shi'ah Imams (a.s.), some writings of their companions and that of our early 'ulama which severely condemn the use of ijtihad.

This has created confusion among non-specialist readers and has given rise to the question whether or not ijtihad was permitted in Shi'ah Islam. This confusion can be easily sorted out by studying the changes undergone by the word " ijtihad ".

The word ijtihad was used for the first time by a Sunni school of fiqh in the meaning of ra'iy : Ra'iy means "a subjective opinion, an opinion based on one's personal judgement as opposed to that of the Qur'an and the hadith." In this sense, " ijtihad " was by itself an independent source of the shari'ah laws besides the Qur'an and the sunnah.

Abu Hanifah, the founder of the Sunni Hanafi school of fiqh, was the main proponent of this system of ijtihad.[^3] The term ijtihad continued to be used exclusively in the meaning of ra'iy up until the early seventh Islamic century. In the seventh Islamic century, some of the Shi'ah 'ulama' started using the term ijtihad in a different and new meaning. They used the term “ ijtihad ” for "the process of deriving the laws of the shari'ah from its sources".

In the first meaning, " ijtihad " stands alongside the Qur' an and the sunnah as an independent source of the shari'ah laws; in its new meaning, " ijtihad " is a process of deriving the shari' ah laws from the Qur' an and the sunnah. The first Shi'ah scholar to use the term "ijtihad" in its new meaning was Muhaqqiq al-Hilli (d. 676 A.H.) in his al-Ma’arij .