Origines de la jurisprudence musulmane
Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence
Maison d'édition
Oxford At The Clarendon Press
Année de publication
1950 AH
Genres
44 ARGUMENTS FOR AND AGAINST TRADITIONS
Companions. This is the background of a passage (pp. 258 ff.) which, on the face of it, seems rather surprising in a context which treats of the anti-traditionist attitude of the ancient schools.
The Iraqian opponent, speaking for the ancient schools in general, explains that a sunna of the Prophet can be established in the ways (a) and (d) above, and further, if one Companion relates something from the Prophet and no other Companion contradicts him. Then one must conclude that he related it in the midst of the Companions and that they did not contradict him because they knew that he was right. So it can be considered as a tradition from the Companions in general. The same applies to their silence on a decision given by one of them.
This passage makes sense only if we regard the last words as operative, and take it as intended to justify the reliance on the opinions of individual Companions, as practised in the ancient schools of law. The kind of argument which the followers of the ancient schools use here in favour of traditions related by individual Companions from the Prophet, they use elsewhere in favour of Companions' opinions as against traditions from the Prophet.1 At the stage of discussion which Shafi'i has preserved, the followers of the ancient schools used the existence of traditions related by single Companions from the Prophet as an argument in order to justify their reliance on the opinions of the Companions themselves. But Shafi'i, in stating the case of the ancient schools polemically, shifted the emphasis to their implicit recognition of 'isolated' traditions from the Prophet.2
B. ARGUMENTS AGAINST TRADITIONS
FROM THE PROPHET
We now turn to the individual arguments that were brought forward against traditions from the Prophet.
The most sweeping argument occurs in Ikh. 366 ff. Here the representative of one of the two groups opposed to traditions addresses Shafi'i: 'You regard two things as grounds for the rejection of a tradition: the ignorance of an unreliable trans-
1 See below, p. 50.
2 The term 'sunna of the Prophet' meant for Shafi'i a formal tradition from the Prophet, but it was used by the others, the Iraqians in particular, in order to claim for their 'living tradition' the general authority of the Prophet; see below, p. 73 f.
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