CHAPTER 7

SUNNA, 'PRACTICE' AND 'LIVING

TRADITION'

THE classical theory of Muhammadan law defines sunna as the model behaviour of the Prophet.¹ This is the meaning in which Shafi'i uses the word; for him, 'sunna' and 'sunna of the Prophet' are synonymous. But sunna means, strictly speaking, nothing more than 'precedent', 'way of life'. Goldziher has shown that this originally pagan term was taken over and adapted by Islam,² and Margoliouth has concluded that sunna as a principle of law meant originally the ideal or normative usage of the community, and only later acquired the restricted meaning of precedents set by the Prophet.³ The aim of the present chapter is to analyse in detail the meaning in which sunna is used by Shafi'i and in the ancient schools of law—an analysis which will be found to confirm the conclusion of Margoliouth—and beyond this, to investigate the concepts which in the ancient schools occupied the place filled in the later system by the 'sunna of the Prophet'. The foremost of these concepts, which on one side are closely connected with the ancient meaning of sunna, and on the other merge into consensus, is the customary or 'generally agreed practice' ('amal, al-amr al-mujtama' 'alaih). Lacking an indigenous term for this group of concepts, we shall call them the 'living tradition' of the ancient schools, not by way of projecting a category of the later system, under another name, back into the early period, but in recognition of the fact that they are all inter-related and, in fact, interchangeable to such an extent that they cannot be isolated from one another.

A. GENERAL

Ibn Muqaffa', a secretary of state in late Umayyad and early 'Abbasid times, subjected the old idea of sunna to sharp criticism. Anticipating Shafi'i he realized that sunna as it was understood in his time, was based not on authentic precedents laid down by the Prophet and the first Caliphs, but to a great extent on administrative