SUNNA, 'PRACTICE' AND 'LIVING TRADITION' 61

their own traditions with bid'a. This is not borne out by the ancient sources, which show the scholars prepared to accept the fact of local variants in the 'living tradition'.¹ At the very utmost, the insistence of the Medinese on their local practice and consensus² might imply a criticism of other local practices. But nothing seems to justify Shafi'i's reproach, addressed in the first line to the Iraqians, that they defend their bid'as with language so immoderate that he is unwilling to reproduce it (Ikh. 34)—unless it were that the followers of the ancient schools had called the recent traditions from the Prophet an innovation, which in fact they were. No doubt this would have seemed immoderate language to Shāfi'i, and he would be merely returning the attack.

B. THE MEDINESE

Shāfi'i addresses the Egyptian Medinese: 'You claim to establish the sunna in two ways: one is to find that the authorities among the Companions of the Prophet held an opinion that agrees with the doctrine in question, and the other is to find that men did not disagree on it; and you reject it [as not being the sunna] if you do not find a corresponding opinion on the part of the authorities or if you find that men disagree' (Tr. III, 148, p. 240).

This is borne out by many passages in the ancient Medinese texts, for instance, Muw. iii. 173 f., where Mālik quotes a mursal tradition on pre-emption, on the authority of the Successors Ibn Musaiyib and Abū Salama b. 'Abdalrahmān from the Prophet, and adds: 'To the same effect is the sunna on which there is no disagreement amongst us.' In order to show this, he mentions that he heard that Ibn Musaiyib and Sulaimān b. Yasār were asked whether there was a sunna [that is, a fixed rule] with regard to pre-emption, and both said yes, and gave the legal rule in question.³

The wording here and elsewhere implies that sunna for Mālik is not identical with the contents of traditions from the Prophet.