THE EVIDENCE OF ISNĀDS 169

have said: 'We impose the oath when there is only one witness; we found this doctrine in the papers of Sa'd' (Tr. III, 15). This information on Rabī'a is clearly not authentic.

In the classical collections the isnād of the tradition in favour of the Medinese doctrine has become complete and 'widely spread';¹ but Ibn Ḥanbal at one time still cast doubt on the tradition.²

We sometimes find that isnāds which consist of a rigid and formal chain of representatives of a school of law and project its doctrine back to some ancient authority, are duplicated by others which go back to the same authority by another way. This was intended as a confirmation of the doctrine of the school by seemingly independent evidence.

A Medinese example is: Ibn ʿUyaina—ʿAbdalraḥmān b. Qāsim—his father Qāsim b. Muḥammad—the opinions of ʿUthmān, Zayd b. Thābit and Marwān b. Ḥakam (Tr. III, 89 (a)). The interruption in the isnād above Qāsim was remedied, and ʿAbdalraḥmān b. Qāsim eliminated, in: Mālik—Yaḥyā b. Saʿīd—Qāsim b. Muḥammad—Furafiṣa b. ʿUmayr—ʿUthmān (Muw. ii. 151). Finally there appeared: Mālik—ʿAbdallāh b. Abī Bakr—ʿAbdallāh b. ʿĀmir b. Rabīʿa—ʿUthmān, with a composite anecdote (Muw. ii. 192).³

An Iraqian example is: Abū Ḥanīfa—Ḥammād—Ibrāhīm Nakhaʿī—ʿAlqama b. Qais and Aswad b. Yazīd—Ibn Masʿūd (Āthār Shaib. 22). This became: Muḥammad b. ʿUbaid—Muḥammad b. Isḥāq—ʿAbdalraḥmān b. Aswad—his father Aswad b. Yazīd—Ibn Masʿūd with Aswad and ʿAlqama (Tr. II, 19 (g)).⁴

This artificial growth of isnāds, together with the material growth of traditions in the pre-literary and in the literary period, shows that it would be idle to try to reconstruct the tendencies and characteristics of the doctrine of any particular Companion from the traditions in which he appears as the final authority or of which he is the first transmitter.⁵ Wherever the sources available enable us to judge, we find that the legal traditions from Companions are as little authentic as those from the Prophet. We can indeed recognize the existence of certain groups of legal traditions which go under the name of individual