66 SUNNA, 'PRACTICE' AND 'LIVING TRADITION'

Qāsim b. Muhammad and Sulaimān b. Yasār were contemporaries, the responsibility for it can be fixed on either Ibn 'Uyaina or 'Amr b. Dīnār who were both members of the traditionist group.¹

On the other hand, 'practice' is explicitly identified with those traditions which the Medinese accept, for instance in Muw. ii. 368 (= Muw. Shaib. 314): Mālik—Zuhrī—Qabīṣa b. Shu'aib—'Umar gave the grandfather the same share in the inheritance which men give him nowadays. In other words: Medinese contemporary 'practice' is projected back into the time of 'Umar. If 'Umar and Ibn 'Umar are the particular authorities of the Medinese,² this means only that their names were used in order to justify doctrines which reflected the current 'practice' or which were meant to change it; it does not mean that the traditions going under their names were more or less authentic and formed the basis on which the doctrine was built.³ (The same applies to Ibn Mas'ūd, 'Alī, and 'Umar as authorities of the Iraqians.)⁴ We shall be able to prove the late origin of many of these traditions in detail.⁵ We should not, of course, be justified in assuming an absolute identity of legal doctrine and formal traditions for any school at any period.

After the first legitimization of doctrine by reference to Companions of the Prophet had been achieved, the further growth of traditions from Companions and also from the Prophet went partly parallel with the further elaboration of doctrine within the 'living tradition' of the ancient schools, but partly also represented the means by which definite changes in the accepted doctrine of a school were proposed and supported. These efforts were sometimes successful in bringing about a change of doctrine, but often not, and we find whole groups of 'unsuccessful' Medinese and Iraqian doctrines expressed in traditions.⁶ I need hardly point out that we must regard the interaction of legal doctrines and traditions as a unitary process, the several aspects and phases of which can be separated only for the sake of analysis. The greatest onslaught on the 'living tradition' of the ancient schools of law was made by the traditionists in the