asked about the person who did not memorise Traditions of the Prophet - is he reliable (thiqah), can he teach 'ilm? He said, "God be praised, is it that every one memorises Hadith? Nay, knowledge is to be learnt from the reliable person even if he does not know a single Tradition." 39

Concerning adoption of Traditions, there are two references, the first one reported in Masa'il Abi 'Ubaidah. He was asked whether the questioner should follow the fatwa of the reliable person if he based it on a Hadith narrated from a Companion. He said, "If you recognized the truth you must follow it, otherwise you must not." He added, "You must not submit to a man who tells of all he has heard, but you must distinguish the reliable opinions, and ask who has more knowledge than he has." 40 As for referring to books for delivering legal opinions, Abu 'Ubaidah was asked about the case when a learned man says to another man, "This is my book, take it and transmit it, and deliver fatwas from its contents." He said, "The man is not allowed to deliver a legal opinion except what he has heard from the learned man, or states that he saw in a book so and so." 41 'Abdullah b. 'Abd al-'Aziz stated that the Traditions which were current among the Companions and the 'Successors' must be adopted, but those which were not well known (shawadh) must not be taken into account. 42

However, more rules concerning hadith appeared later in the work of Abu Ya'qub al-Warijlani, al-'Adl wa al-'insaf. Most of those rules are known in Sunni books on 'ilm al-hadith. It is assumed that Abu Ya'qub may have picked up some of them from his Sunni teachers in Cordova, and a number those rules would have been handed down to him from Ibadhi authorities of earlier times, such as Muhammad b. Mahbub, and his father Abu Sufyan, for it is reported that their books came into his hands. 43 It may be of some importance to mention here the rules laid by opinions, from which legal opinions can be delivered. The rules are that the writer should be a (waliy), the man who dictates should be a (waliy), two 'awliya' should inspect the dictation, and two other 'awliya' should inspect the writing. 44

AL-JAMI AL-SAHIH:

The work which contains the Ibadhi collection of hadith, in the real technical sense of the term, is al-Jami'i al-Sahih, or Musnad al-Rabi b. Habib. The original version of the book composed by al-Rabi' b. Habib is not in common use. The current version is that rearranged by Abu Ya'qub Yusuf b. Ibrahim al-Warijlani entitled Tartib al-Musnad.45 This latter copy contains additional narrations added by Abu Ya'qub. These additions occupy parts three and four of the current editions and contain the narrations from al-Rabi' on theological questions, all of which are included in part three. In part four, there are the