170 THE EVIDENCE OF ISNĀDS

Companions; they are the products of schools of thought which put their doctrines under the authority of the Companions in question.¹ Even here we find that the names of 'Ali and of Ibn 'Umar were used both by the ancient Iraqian and Medinese schools of law and by their opponents.² On the other hand, the name of 'Umar was used both by the ancient Iraqians and Medinese, but this does not make the traditions related from him by both groups any more authentic. The use made by certain schools of the names of individual Companions as authorities for their doctrines accounts for the existence of common tendencies and characteristics, but it would be unwarranted to project these features back to the Companions themselves. It is significant that the earliest authorities of the Iraqians and of the Meccans, respectively, were originally not Ibn Mas'ūd and Ibn 'Abbās themselves, but the 'Companions of Ibn Mas'ūd' and the 'Companions of Ibn 'Abbās'. This makes it pointless to consider the Companions of the Prophet personally responsible for the large-scale circulation of spurious traditions.

There are numerous traditions which claim an additional guarantee of soundness by representing themselves as transmitted amongst members of one family, for instance from father to son (and grandson), from aunt to nephew, or from master to freedman. Whenever we come to analyse them, we find these family traditions spurious,³ and we are justified in considering the existence of a family isnad not an indication of authenticity but only a device for securing its appearance.

Muw. i. 108 and 111 gives two traditions whose family isnāds have identical lower parts (Malik -- Hisham -- his father 'Urwa). Both deal with the same problem, but there is a different woman in the generation of the Companions involved in each case. The version of p. 111 where the Prophet is not mentioned, contains an obvious confusion of persons (see Zurqānī, ad loc.), and it was passed over in silence by Shafi'i in Tr. III, 30; the version of p. 108 improves this by a change of persons and by introducing the Prophet, but it does not thereby become any more authentic.

The Iraqian and the different Medinese doctrine on a question of divorce are both ascribed to Zaid b. Thābit, the former with the