THE EVIDENCE OF ISNĀDS 171

usual Iraqian isnād: Abū Ḥanīfa—Ḥammād—Ibrāhīm (Āthār A.Y. 633; Āthār Shaib. 79), the latter with the isnād: Mālik—Saʿīd b. Sulaimān b. Zaid b. Thābit—Khārija b. Zaid—Zaid b. Thābit (Muw. iii. 37; Muw. Shaib. 254). The Iraqian isnād is mursal, and, as such, older than the Medinese family isnād. Both doctrines are harmonized in a tradition with the isnād Nāfiʿ—Ibn ʿUmar (Muw. and Muw. Shaib., loc. cit.).

Muw. iii. 38 gives two traditions on ‘Ā’isha’s interference in matters of marriage, both with the isnād Mālik-‘Abdalraḥmān b. Qāsim-his father Qāsim b. Muḥammad-Qāsim’s aunt ‘Ā’isha, but in one case with ‘Abdalraḥmān b. Abī Bakr and his wife, and in the other with Mundhir b. Zubair and his wife who was the daughter of ‘Abdalraḥmān b. Abī Bakr. Both are parallel but incompatible versions of the same anecdote; a legal point on a question of divorce is made in an additional remark which is out of place in the second version.

Zurqānī discusses the contradictions in the family isnāds of the several versions of a tradition in Muw. i. 39, regarding Mālik’s immediate authority ‘Amr b. Yaḥyā Māzinī; this tradition is a compromise between several doctrines.

Whereas late traditions, as we saw, were provided with first-class isnāds, relatively old traditions sometimes failed to develop satisfactory isnāds and were therefore passed over by Bukhārī and Muslim.¹

These results regarding the growth of isnāds enable us to envisage the case in which a tradition was put into circulation by a traditionist whom we may call N.N., or by a person who used his name, at a certain time. The tradition would normally be taken over by one or several transmitters, and the lower, real part of the isnād would branch out into several strands. The original promoter N.N. would have provided his tradition with an isnād reaching back to an authority such as a Companion or the Prophet, and this higher, fictitious part of the isnād would often acquire additional branches by the creation of improvements which would take their place beside the original chain of transmitters, or by the process which we have described as spread of isnāds. But N.N. would remain the (lowest) common link in the several strands of isnād (or at least in most of them, allowing for his being passed by and eliminated in additional strands of isnād which might have been introduced later).