SUNNA, 'PRACTICE' AND 'LIVING TRADITION' 67

name of traditions going back to the Prophet.¹ Their attack was well on its way when Shāfi'i appeared. He accepted their essential thesis and thereby cut himself off from the development of the doctrine in the ancient schools. This view of the development of the function of legal traditions is the only alternative to considering the doctrine of the ancient schools, as Shāfi'i does, a mass of inconsistencies and contradictions.

We have already encountered cases in which Medinese 'practice' reflects directly the actual custom.²

Shāfi'i discusses another significant example in Tr. III, 46. According to him, the Medinese allow for practical reasons the exchange of bullion for a smaller amount of coin of the same metal, so as to cover the minting expenses. This is a serious infringement of the general rules for the exchange of precious metals, and it is little wonder that no parallel exists in Muw., Muw. Shaib., and Mud., although Mud. iii. 107, 109, allows some little latitude in similar transactions. But Ibn 'Abdalbarr³ mentions it as a 'bad and discreditable doctrine' ascribed by a group of Mālikīs to Malik and Ibn Qāsim who, it is stated, make a concession for this transaction if there is no means of avoiding it. We must regard this decision not as a passing concession on the part of Mālik, but as the original doctrine of the Medinese, and its deliberate obliteration from most of the old sources as an indication of growing strictness in the enforcement of the prohibition of 'usury'. This strictness was advocated in traditions which were collected by Mālik in Muw. iii. 111 ff. but prevailed only after him.

As parallel cases, Shāfi'i mentions (Tr. III, 46) concessions of the Medinese to custom with regard to the sale of meat for meat in equal quantities by estimate without weighing, called by Mālik (Muw. iii. 127) 'our generally agreed practice', and of bread for bread, eggs for eggs, &c. (cf. Muw. iii. 122).

The Medinese in the generation before Mālik, in common with Auzā'ī (Tr. IX, 14), allowed soldiers to take food back from enemy country, without dividing it as part of the booty, and to consume it at home. The explicit reason given is that this was the usual custom. Several relevant traditions are to be found in Mud. iii. 38 f. Only Mālik (Muw. ii. 299), following his own opinion (ra'y), restricted the permission to very small amounts.