THE FUNCTION OF TRADITIONS 3

himself, although he still shows traces of the earlier doctrine by admitting traditions from the Companions of the Prophet, and opinions of their Successors and even later authorities as subsidiary arguments.

His predecessors and contemporaries, on the other hand, while certainly already adducing traditions from the Prophet, use them on the same level as they use traditions from the Companions and Successors, interpret them in the light of their own 'living tradition' and allow them to be superseded by it. Two generations before Shafi'i reference to traditions from Companions and Successors was the rule, to traditions from the Prophet himself the exception, and it was left to Shafi'i to make the exception his principle. We shall have to conclude that, generally and broadly speaking, traditions from Companions and Successors are earlier than those from the Prophet.

In the preceding paragraphs I have referred repeatedly to traditions from the Prophet and others. They are not identical with the sunna but provide its documentation, whether we take sunna with Shafi'i and the later theory as the model behaviour of the Prophet, or in its older meaning as the traditional usage of the community which is to be verified by reference to ancient authorities. All alleged information from the Prophet and others is couched in the form of single statements generally short, each preceded by a chain of transmitters (isnād) which is intended to guarantee its authenticity.¹ To serve this purpose the isnad must be uninterrupted and must lead to an original eye- or ear-witness, and all transmitters must be absolutely trustworthy. The criticism of traditions as practised by Muhammadan scholars was almost invariably restricted to a purely formal criticism of isnads on these lines.

The traditions, mainly from the Prophet, that passed the more or less severe tests of this kind applied to them, were collected in the third century A.H. in a number of works, six of which were later invested with particular authority and form together the classical corpus of orthodox Muhammadan tradition. They are the works of Bukhari, Muslim, Abu Dawud,