"Shāfi'ī set his face decidedly against any acceptance of the idea then current that in all such cases the Qur'ān had abrogated the Sunnah, or the Sunnah the Qur'ān," Burton writes. Shafi'i insisted that "... any verbal discrepancies between the Qur'ān and the reported sayings or reports of the practices of Muhammed — the Sunnah of the Prophet" were illusions that "could always be removed on the basis of a satisfactory understanding of the mechanism of revelation and the function of the prophet-figure".