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Origins of Muḥammadan jurisprudence

Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence

جوزيف شاخت - 1389 AH

Publisher

Oxford At The Clarendon Press

Publication Year

1950 AH

Genres
Principles of Islamic Jurisprudence
history of legislation
•
Regions
Germany

248 THE MEDINESE AND MECCANS

doctrine in Tr. VIII, 13, may also be authentic,1 and perhaps even the quotation in Ṭaḥāwī, i. 43, which expresses the anti-traditionist attitude of the first half of the second century A.H. and contains a conclusion a maiore ad minus.

Examples of spurious information on Rabī'a have been discussed above, pp. 65, 117, 151, 168f. Apart from alleged opinions of Rabī'a, they include traditions for which Rabī'a was claimed as a transmitter. But Rabī'a himself was not a traditionist.

D. YAḤYĀ B. SA'ĪD

Yaḥyā b. Sa'īd is still later than Rabī'a, stands half-way between Zuhrī and Mālik, and is one of Mālik's immediate authorities. The opinions ascribed to him by Mālik and other ancient authors are certainly authentic. On the other hand, Yaḥyā is responsible for the transmission of a considerable amount of fictitious information on the ancient Medinese authorities, information which had come into existence in his time; he also transmits recently created traditions and isnāds.2

With Mālik, soon after the time of Yaḥyā, the school of Medina enters the literary period. Shāfi'ī (Tr. IV, 257) speaks of the struggle of opinions within the Medinese legal tradition in the time of Mālik,3 but the details have been lost because the ancient school of the Medinese transformed itself into that of the Mālikīs and only the works of Mālik and his followers were preserved.

E. THE MEDINESE OPPOSITION

As we found was the case in Iraq,4 there existed in Medina a mass of legal traditions which represented opinions advanced in opposition to the 'living tradition' of the school. By this I do not mean the unavoidable residue of ancient and later opinions which were discarded or failed to gain recognition in the normal course of the development of doctrine.5 What concerns us here are the opinions which, in the form of traditions from the

1 See above, p. 206, n. 5. 2 See, e.g., above, pp. 169, 211 f.
3 Tr. IV, 257, translated above, p. 7. 4 See above, pp. 240 ff.
5 See above, pp. 101 (on Zuhrī), 114 (l. 4 f.). Two further examples of such opinions occur in Tr. VIII, 9.

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