AND PERSONAL OPINION 113

C. THE MEDINESE

Shāfiʿī charges the Medinese with arbitrary raʾy.¹ He does so polemically and without real justification in cases where they have other, and for them valid, reasons for their doctrine. But everything that is not based on a tradition from the Prophet is in the last resort raʾy for Shāfiʿī, and he calls even the opinions of Companions of the Prophet raʾy. Raʾy is, indeed, the foundation of a great part of the Medinese doctrine, and in Ikh. 197 Shāfiʿī calls the Medinese with whom he disputes "some scholars learned in traditions and raʾy.'

In the argument which Shāfiʿī puts into their mouth in Tr. III, 41, they give to the sunna higher authority than to raʾy; this becomes obvious if we take sunna in the old sense of "living tradition" of the school,² which superseded individual opinion. But the doctrine of the school is itself based on the opinion of the recognized scholars, and we find reference being made to what the scholars hold (ahl al-ʿilm yaraun) as a decisive argument.³ In this particular case, the opinion in question is a primitive analogical reasoning by which pregnancy is assimilated to illness. This old raʾy, which was originally to a great extent anonymous, as the consensus of Medina of which it formed a part was anonymous,⁴ was frequently ascribed to individual ancient authorities. So we find that Shāfiʿī, in the same particular case, singles out Qāsim b. Muḥammad as holding the opinion in question. These ascriptions cannot in general be considered authentic unless they are proved so, as the analysis of two typical examples will show.

Mud. iii. 34: Ibn Wahb—Ibn Lahiʿa—Khālid b. Abī ʿImrān—Qāsim b. Muḥammad and Sālim were of the opinion (raʾy) that the minor who is taken on a raid or who is born during it receives no share of the booty. This is simply the Medinese doctrine, formulated polemically against the opinion of Auzāʿī (Tr. IX, 10), and not a straightforward expression of opinion. It is, indeed, likely that Qāsim and Sālim held this opinion, but then this could also be said of their Medinese contemporaries.

Muw. iv. 40 = Tr. III, 77: Mālik—Yaḥyā b. Saʿīd—Ibn Musaiyib