Origins of Muḥammadan jurisprudence
Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence
Publisher
Oxford At The Clarendon Press
Publication Year
1950 AH
PRELIMINARY REMARKS 139
words, to replace the static picture of conflicting tendencies which has prevailed so far, by one showing the historical process.
Traditions regarding the biography of the Prophet (maghāzī, sīra) generally lack proper isnāds. Shāfi'ī differentiates between them and legal traditions on this account.1 On the special subject of the law of war, 'historical' traditions were already used by Auzā'ī to a great extent;2 but the gradual introduction of 'historical' material into legal discussions continued in the period between Auzā'ī and Shāfi'ī.3 This reception of 'historical' traditions into legal discussion went parallel with their acquiring increasingly elaborate isnāds.4 All this time, the body of 'historical' information was still growing, and both Abū Yūsuf and Shāfi'ī object to 'historical' traditions adduced by their opponents, because they are unknown to, or not accepted by, the specialists on maghāzī.5 This process was reciprocal, and we find traditions of a properly legal character, but with an 'historical' background, penetrating more or less successfully into the biography of the Prophet.6
1 Tr. III, 44; Tr. IX, 8, 9 (cf. Umm, iv. 69); Ris. 21 f.; Ikh. 388 f. Also Abū Yūsuf differentiates between sunna and sīra in Tr. IX. 6. 21.
2 See above, p. 34.
3 'Historical' traditions introduced by Mālik: Ṭabarī, 81, and Mud. iii. 7 f. (see also above, p. 23, n. 5, on Mālik’s imperfect knowledge of the biography of the Prophet); introduced by Abū Yūsuf: Tr. IX, 1, 11, 30, 36; introduced by Shaibānī: Siyar, iii. 94 (cf. Tr. IX, 25); ibid. iv. 238 (cf. Tr. IX, 39); introduced by Shāfiʿī: Tr. VIII, 12, 13; Tr. IX, 19, 23, 25, 39, 44; Umm, iv. 170, &c.
4 Compare Mālik in Mud. iii. 8, Abū Yūsuf in Tr. IX, 28 and the biographers of the Prophet (Ibn Hishām, 653, 872 f.; Wāqidī, 163, 369 f.; Ibn Saʿd, ii1. 41, 114), with the isnāds, through Nāfiʿ, in Umm, iv. 161, 174 and Mud. iii. 8.
5 Abū Yūsuf: Tr. IX, 10; Shāfiʿī: Tr. IX, 6; Umm, iv. 66.
6 e.g. details of the marriage of the Prophet to Maimūna (below, p. 153); the alleged temporary permission of the mutʿa marriage by the Prophet (below, p. 267); the alleged qunūt of the Prophet (below, p. 267 f.); episodes illustrating the effect of conversion to Islam on a previous marriage (below, p. 276). See further the tradition, put into circulation by the traditionists, on the prayer of the Prophet while incapacitated by an accident; this was opposed to the originally biographical tradition on his prayer during his last illness (Muw. i. 248; Muw. Shaib. 113; Mud. i. 81; Tr. III, 19; Ris. 36 f.; Ikh. 98 f., 136); the full isnāds of this last biographical tradition in the legal sources are secondary and borrowed from the other tradition.
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