ARGUMENTS FOR AND AGAINST TRADITIONS 41

traditions of this doubtful quality, whereas we only accept something that is beyond doubt, as the Koran is?' The interlocutor, who has become converted by Shāfi'ī's arguments, explains that there are two schools of thought amongst his former companions: some confine themselves strictly to the Koran, others accept only explanatory traditions on subjects mentioned in the Koran. On the other hand, the anti-traditionalists acknowledge the consensus on the ground that the Muslims, Allah willing, would not agree on any given doctrine unless they were right, and so their majority ('āmmahum) could not be mistaken as to the meaning of the Koran, even if individuals might be.¹

Those who reject the traditions altogether are the same as the ahl al-kalām, which is Shāfi'ī's term for the Mu'tazila.² This is made certain by Ikh. 29 ff., where the relevant point is that the ahl al-kalām, in rejecting the traditions altogether, are more consistent than the adherents of the ancient schools; an Iraqian opponent uses this argument against the Medinese (p. 33 f.), and Shāfi'ī has heard some of the ahl al-kalām use it against the Iraqians (p. 37). This identification is confirmed by the general attitude and the detailed arguments of the ahl al-kalām as they appear in the whole of Ibn Qutaiba's Ta'wil Mukhtalif al-Hadith. The ahl al-kalām are the extreme wing of the anti-traditionalists.

The moderate wing is represented by those who reject the khabar al-khāṣṣa, that is, traditions based on the authority of individual transmitters only.³ It was Shāfi'ī who, for polemic reasons, applied this name to them,⁴ and they do not, in fact, reject the khabar al-khāṣṣa on principle. Shāfi'ī discusses their doctrine in detail in Tr. IV, 254-62; the whole passage shows that they are identical with the followers of the ancient schools of law, who prefer the 'living tradition' of the school to individual traditions from the Prophet.⁵ The actual attitude of the ancient schools to 'isolated' traditions, which will be considered