CHAPTER 6

ARGUMENTS FOR AND AGAINST

TRADITIONS

A. ADVERSARIES OF TRADITIONS IN GENERAL

IN the time of Shafi'i, traditions from the Prophet were already recognized as one of the material bases of Muhammadan law. Their position in the ancient schools of law was, as we have seen, much less certain. The early sources give ample evidence of the process by which traditions from the Prophet gained recognition, and of the opposition which their claims provoked. Some of this evidence has been collected by Goldziher and need not be duplicated here.¹ The new evidence, with which this chapter is concerned, shows that the hostility towards traditions came not only or even mainly from unorthodox circles, from 'philosophers, sceptics and heretics', but rather that it was the natural reaction of the early specialists on law against the introduction of a new element, a reaction traces of which survive in the attitude of the ancient schools of law. It follows that the traditions from the Prophet do not form, together with the Koran, the original basis of Muhammadan law, but an innovation begun at a time when some of its foundations already existed.

Shafi'i knows two groups of anti-traditionists: those who reject the traditions altogether, and those who reject the khabar al-khassa. We shall see² that the latter are simply the followers of the ancient schools of law. As regards the former, Tr. IV, 250-4, contains a discussion with a learned representative of them. Their arguments are that the Koran 'explains everything' (Koran, xvi. 89) and must not be interpreted in the light of traditions; no individual authority for the traditions is quite reliable, and a man may challenge traditions without becoming an unbeliever; how then can they serve as a guide to the uniformly plain meaning of the Koran and be put on the same footing as the Koran? 'Why do you', they ask Shafi'i, 'accept