SHĀFI'I AND LEGAL TRADITIONS 13

aside for anything but another tradition from him; men need the guidance of the Prophet because Allah has obliged them to follow him. What Shāfi‘ī has said ought to convince his interlocutor Rabī‘ that he must never reject a tradition from the Prophet except for another tradition from him, if both disagree.¹

The Medinese, then, and the ancient schools of law in general, had already used traditions from the Prophet as the basis of many decisions, but had often neglected them in favour of the reported practice or opinions of his Companions, not to mention their own established practice. Shāfi‘ī realized that this gave no consistent and convincing basis for legal decisions, and the only certain authority he could find was that of the Prophet. So he made the traditions from the Prophet, to the exclusion of everything else, the basis of his doctrine. This simple solution enabled him to find a way through the maze of conflicting traditions from the Prophet, the Companions, and other authorities.² But by restricting himself to traditions from the Prophet, which were in his time a purely accidental group, Shāfi‘ī cut himself off from the natural and continuous development of doctrine in the ancient schools of law.

According to Shāfi‘ī the traditions from the Prophet have to be accepted without questioning and reasoning: ‘If a tradition is authenticated as coming from the Prophet, we have to resign ourselves to it, and your talk and the talk of others about why and how is a mistake. . . . The question of how can only be applied to human opinions which are derivative and devoid of authority; if obligatory orders, by asking why, could be subjected to analogy or to the scrutiny of reason, there would be no end to arguing, and analogy itself would break down’ (Ikh. 339).

When confronted with two or more traditions from the Prophet which contradict one another Shāfi‘ī uses harmonizing interpretation. His Kitāb Ikhtilāf al-Ḥadīth is particularly devoted to this subject. If one knows two seemingly contradictory traditions and finds that they can be harmonized by distinguishing between their respective circumstances, one must do so (p. 271). Shāfi‘ī never considers two traditions from the Prophet contradictory, if there is a way of accepting them both; he does not invalidate a single one, because all are equally bind-