76  SUNNA, 'PRACTICE' AND 'LIVING TRADITION' 

Muw. Shaib. 361, where he calls it 'something we have heard on the authority of the Prophet'; but his whole evidence for this consists in statements of Zuhrī and 'Aṭa' on a change of practice in Umaiyad times.

In his long reasoning in Tr. VIII, 13, Shaibānī, as it happens, does not use the term sunna. But the whole passage, as far as legal arguments are concerned, might have been written by Auzā'ī. Shaibānī refers to the Koran, to traditions from the Prophet (in general terms), to traditions from Companions, and to a later authority (Zuhrī), and claims that the practice changed under Mu'āwiya.

To sum up, the 'sunna of the Prophet', as understood by the Iraqians, is not identical with, and not necessarily expressed by, traditions from the Prophet; it is simply the 'living tradition' of the school put under the aegis of the Prophet. This concept is shared by Auzā'ī, but not by the Medinese. It cannot be regarded as originally common to all ancient schools of law, and as between the Syrians and the Iraqians, the evidence points definitely to Iraq as its original home. In any case, it was the Iraqians and not the Medinese to whom the concept of 'sunna of the Prophet' was familiar before the time of Shāfi'ī. The common opinion to the contrary has taken at its face value a later fiction, some other aspects of which we have discussed already.¹

The Iraqians hardly use the term 'amal, 'practice', even where their doctrine endorses actual administrative procedure.² We have seen Abū Yūsuf inveigh against Auzā'ī's concept of practice, although his own idea of sunna comes down to the same. Shāfi'ī's Basrian opponent, when charged with making the 'practice' prevail over traditions from the Prophet, replaces this term in his own answer by sunna.³

However it be formulated, the Iraqian idea of 'living tradition' is essentially the same as that of the Medinese, and Shāfi'ī can say, addressing the Egyptian Medinese: 'Some of the Easterners have provided you with an argument and hold the same view as you' (Tr. III, 148, p. 242). This 'living tradition' is meant when an Iraqian opponent of Shāfi'ī says that there