As another anti-Wahhābī refuter, the Palestinian Ḥanbalī Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Saffārīnī (d. 1188/1774), later put it, “[W]hosoever seeks to exercise ijtihād in these times … has sought the impossible” (man rāma ʾl-ijtihād fī hādhihi ʾl-azmina … fa-qad rāma ʾl-muḥāl).94 He compared Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s purported claim of ijtihād to Musaylima’s claim of prophecy.95
