56 ARGUMENTS FOR AND AGAINST TRADITIONS

tion derived from other persons in a tradition related by Mu'tamir on the authority of his father, Sulaimān, from Ibn 'Abbās, who is reported to have said: 'Are you not afraid to say: "The Prophet said so-and-so, and N.N. said so-and-so"?'¹ Mu'tamir is the person in whom the isnāds of several other traditions of a traditionist bias converge. He or someone using his name must therefore be considered responsible for them. We need not go into the numerous other traditions of the same tendency, couched in more general terms, in the classical collections.²

Finally, to counter the more or less arbitrary interpretations by which the ancient schools of law tended to eliminate traditions, Shāfi'ī employed a consistent method of interpretation which he applied both to Koran and traditions and which he opposed explicitly to that used by his predecessors.³ It is based on the distinction between general ('āmm, jumla, mujmal) and particular or explanatory (khāss, mufassir) statements, a distinction which enables him to harmonize rulings apparently contradictory. A general ruling stated in general terms (jumla makhrajuhā 'āmm) may still envisage a special case (yurād biha l-khāss).⁴ But every ruling must be taken in its obvious or literal (zāhir) and unrestricted meaning unless there is an indication to the contrary on the authority of the Prophet or in the consensus of the scholars.⁵ In practice, both considerations work invariably in favour of the acceptance of traditions.⁶ Shāfi'ī devotes a considerable part of the Risāla and many passages in the Ikhtilāf al-Hadīth to the development of this theory of interpretation, and he co-ordinates it with his acceptance of traditions from single individuals. It must be considered as his personal achievement, although considerations of 'āmm, jumla, khāss, and zāhir were not unknown to the ancient schools of law.

Shāfi'ī's disciple Muzanī, in his Kitāb al-Amr wal-Nahy, takes up the theory of his master and applies it to the question of how far a command, or imperative, may be taken to express a per-