28 TRADITIONS IN THE ANCIENT SCHOOLS OF LAW

The Iraqian opponent repeatedly agrees with Shāfi‘ī that no one has any authority beside the Prophet. We have seen¹ that these statements must be taken with a certain reserve, but a passage such as Muw. Shaib. 357, where Shaibānī insists on the decisive role of a decision of the Prophet, shows that the Iraqians had indeed anticipated and explicitly formulated this essential thesis, and applied it occasionally. They are, however, still far from Shāfi‘ī’s unquestioning reliance on traditions from the Prophet alone.

Abū Yūsuf says in Tr. IX, 5: ‘Take the traditions that are generally known, and beware of those that are irregular (shādhdh)’; he quotes a tradition that the Prophet declared in the pulpit: ‘Traditions from me will spread; those that agree with the Koran are really from me, but what is related from me and contradicts the Koran is not from me’; further a tradition from ‘Alī (with an Iraqian isnād): ‘Traditions from the Prophet are to be interpreted in the most righteous and godfearing way’, and a tradition from ‘Umar (also with an Iraqian isnād), that he warned a group of Companions who were setting out for Kufa, to relate traditions from the Prophet only sparingly, because the people there were humming with the Koran like bees. ‘Umar accepted a tradition from the Prophet only on the evidence of two witnesses, and ‘Alī refused to accept traditions from the Prophet unless he had them confirmed by oath.

‘The wider the spread of transmission’, Abū Yūsuf says, ‘the easier it is to eliminate those traditions which are not recognized, or are not recognized by the specialists on law, or do not agree with Koran and sunna. Beware of irregular traditions and keep to those which are accepted by the community, recognized by the specialists on law, and in agreement with Koran and sunna; measure things by that standard; what differs from the Koran does not come from the Prophet, even if it is related from him’. Abū Yūsuf adds a tradition that the Prophet said in his last illness: ‘I allow only what Allah allows, and forbid only what Allah forbids; they ought not to shelter behind my authority’,² and concludes: ‘Make the Koran and the sunna which you know, your leader and guide; follow that and measure by it those problems which are not clear to you from Koran and sunna.’