IN THE GROWTH OF TRADITIONS 159

in it was created by 'Ubaidallāh b. 'Umar or a person using his name.

The common doctrine on property lost to the enemy and recaptured from them, of which the problem already discussed is a special case, was put under the aegis of Ibrāhīm Nakhaʿī and Mujāhid (Kharāj, 123). Shaibānī (Siyar, iii. 107) relates three divergent opinions which are ascribed to Zaid b. Thābit and Ibn Musayyib, to Ḥasan Baṣrī and Zuhrī, and to Abū Bakr¹ respectively. Shaibānī's contemporary Ibn Wahb (Mud. iii. 13), however, quotes the alleged opinions of Zaid b. Thābit, Sulaimān b. Yasār, Abū Bakr, ʿUbāda b. Ṣāmit, Yaḥyā b. Saʿīd, and Rabīʿa in favour of the common doctrine. The contradictions show that the names of Companions, Successors, and other ancient authorities were freely adduced in support of existing doctrines, and we cannot, until the contrary is proved, regard references to Successors as any more authentic than traditions from Companions and from the Prophet.²

Traditions are also adapted to the development of doctrine, as the following examples will show.

Tr. II, 18 (q): there are two versions of a tradition from 'Alī; the second, by an addition, has been made to conform with the later general doctrine.

A tradition which appears in its full form in Tr. III, 126 and in Muw. Shaib. 87, is progressively shortened in Muw. i. 142 and in Mud. i. 68, so as to bring it into line with the Medinese doctrine.

Shaibānī, in Tr. VIII, 16, relates a tradition from Ibn 'Abbās who, when consulted on the case of a man who had killed his brother accidentally, decided: 'The killer inherits nothing.' Another tradition, in Muw. iv. 44, refers to the case of a man who was killed by his father accidentally; 'Umar handed the whole of the weregeld over to the brother of the victim and said: "The Prophet said: "The killer receives nothing."'³ The import of the legal maxim is mitigated here, so as to make it compatible with that one of the two Medinese opinions which Mālik follows, to the effect that the person who has killed the de cuius accidentally, inherits other property but not weregeld.

The following examples will show how a critical analysis of traditions can elucidate the history of legal doctrines.

Khiyār al-Majlis is the right of option given to the parties to a sale