24 TRADITIONS IN THE ANCIENT SCHOOLS OF LAW

then is an established fact which is not disputed, but there is no evidence that he ordered it or acted upon it afterwards; and although Abū Bakr sent out many military expeditions, there is no evidence that he did so either, nor did ‘Umar’ (Ṭabarī, 87). And the Medinese interpret a tradition from the Prophet in the light of a judgment of ‘Umar, ‘because ‘Umar would not be unaware of, and would not act against, the orders of the Prophet’.¹ Opinions of a Companion prevail over what the same Companion may relate from the Prophet.² We also find traditions from the Prophet minimized or interpreted restrictively without the justification of traditions from Companions.³ On the whole we can say that the Medinese give preference to traditions from Companions over traditions from the Prophet. This attitude, which is reflected in an anecdote on Zuhri and Ṣāliḥ b. Kaisān in Ibn Sa‘d (ii2. 135), is of course unacceptable to Shāfi‘ī.

In his polemics against the Medinese, Shāfi‘ī repeatedly attacks the idea that the practice of the first Caliphs Abū Bakr, ‘Umar and ‘Uthmān, to whom he sometimes adds Ibn ‘Umar and even the later Umaiyad Caliph ‘Umar b. ‘Abdal‘azīz who is technically a Successor, might either confirm or weaken the authority of a tradition from the Prophet (Tr. III, 2 and often). We must not conclude from this that the Medinese doctrine was based consciously or to any considerable extent on a group of traditions from the first Caliphs as such. This is already disproved by the contents of Tr. III which contains traditions from Abū Bakr only in §§ 63-5 and from ‘Uthmān only in § 89, as opposed to traditions from ‘Umar in §§ 66-88 and from Ibn ‘Umar in §§ 111-47. Shāfi‘ī himself, within the limits which he assigned to traditions from Companions, considered the decisions of the first Caliphs more authoritative than traditions from other Companions,⁴ and he forced this concept of the practice of Abū Bakr, ‘Umar, and ‘Uthmān, a concept which was narrower than the corresponding idea of the Syrians,⁵ on the Medinese as a rationalization of their attitude to traditions from Companions, only in order