SUNNA, 'PRACTICE' AND 'LIVING TRADITION' 73

authority, whether he can adduce a precedent established by the Prophet or not. He has this feature in common with the Iraqians.¹

D. THE IRAQIANS

The Iraqians, in their view of sunna, no more think it necessarily based on traditions from the Prophet than do the Medinese.

Thus in Tr. II, 4 (f), in a tradition from 'Alī, representing an 'unsuccessful' Iraqian doctrine, sunna occurs in the sense of 'established religious practice'. And Tr. III, 148 (p. 249) makes the Iraqians say: 'We do this on account of the sunna [i.e. they give judgment on the defendant's refusal to take the oath when the plaintiff can produce no legal proof, and they do not demand from the plaintiff a confirmatory oath as do the Medinese]. There is no mention of the oath, or of the refusal to take it, in the Koran. This is a sunna which is not in the Koran, and it does not come into the category of evidence from witnesses [which is provided for by Koran ii. 282]. We hold that the Koran orders us to give judgment on the evidence of witnesses, either two men or one man and two women, and the refusal to take the oath does not come under this.'

The essential point is that the Iraqians use sunna as an argument, even when they can show no relevant tradition. But long before Shāfi'ī, they had coined the term 'sunna of the Prophet'. It appears in a number of Iraqian traditions.

Tr. II, 9 (b): Shāfi'ī—Abū Kāmil and others—Ḥammād b. Salama Baṣri—Thumāma [of Basra]—his grandfather Anas b. Mālik—his father Mālik gave him the copy of a decree of Abū Bakr on the zakat tax and said: 'This is the ordinance of Allah and the sunna of the Prophet.' A parallel version in § 9 (c) has: 'Abū Bakr gave him the sunna in writing.' This tradition can be dated to the time of Hammad b. Salama; the connexion between Hammad and Thumāma is very weak.²

Tr. II, 18 (a): Shafi'ī—a man—Shu'ba—Salama b. Suhail—Sha'bī—'Alī said [referring to an adulteress]: 'I flog her on the basis of the Koran, and lapidate her on the basis of the sunna of the Prophet.' The full text of this tradition³ shows that it depends on the wording of a group of traditions from the Prophet on the punishment