TECHNICAL CRITICISMS OF TRADITIONS 37

began with the killing of the Umaiyad Caliph Walid b. Yazid (A.H. 126), towards the end of the Umaiyad dynasty, was a conventional date for the end of the good old time during which the sunna of the Prophet was still prevailing; as the usual date for the death of Ibn Sirin is A.H. 110, we must conclude that the attribution of this statement to him is spurious. In any case, there is no reason to suppose that the regular practice of using isnāds is older than the beginning of the second century A.H.¹

Shafi'i resigns himself to assuming the good faith of the transmitters, notwithstanding the existence of many errors of which he is aware. 'We are not much embarrassed', he says, 'by the fact that well-authenticated traditions disagree or are thought to disagree, and the specialists on traditions are not embarrassed by traditions that are likely to be erroneous and the like of which are not well authenticated' (Ikh. 365 f.). He is loath to face the fact of tadlis, which consists in dissembling or eliminating the names of discreditable transmitters from isnāds (Ris. 53); but he knows that Malik and Ibn 'Uyaina, two of his most highly esteemed authorities, practised tadlīs.² Shafi'i's lenient standards appear in Tr. III, 56, where Rabi' asks him: 'Did Ibn Zubair hear this from the Prophet?', and he replies: 'Yes, he remembered it from him; he was 9 years old when the Prophet died.'

Criticism of traditions on material grounds is not quite as exceptional in Shafi'i's writings as one would expect in view of Tr. III, 148 (p. 241), where Rabi' asks: 'Is it possible to throw doubt on any tradition?', and Shafi'i replies: 'Only if two contradictory traditions are related from the same man, then we follow one of them.' But Shafi'i recognizes such criticism cautiously in Ris. 55 where he says: 'In most cases the truthfulness or lack of truthfulness of a tradition can only be known through the truthfulness or lack of truthfulness of the trans-