THE ORIGIN OF LEGAL TRADITIONS 177

at the most generous estimate, only when Mālik was little more than a boy. It may even be questioned whether Mālik, whom Shāfi'ī charged elsewhere with concealing imperfections in his isnāds,¹ did not take over in written form traditions alleged to come from Nāfi'.²

As Nāfi' was a freedman of Ibn 'Umar, the isnād Nāfi'—Ibn 'Umar is a 'family isnād', a fact which, as we have seen, is generally an indication of the spurious character of the traditions in question.³ We saw further that Nāfi' often alternates with Sālim, 'Abdallāh b. Dīnār, and Zuhrī, in other words, that these transmitters of traditions from Ibn 'Umar appear at random.⁵ This makes us doubt whether the historical Nāfi' is responsible for everything that was ascribed to him in the following generation, and we shall find this doubt confirmed later in this chapter.

Wherever the sources available enable us to trace the development of doctrines, we find that the Nāfi' traditions, as a rule, express a secondary stage;⁶ we have noticed cases in which they are later than doctrines or traditions which can be dated in the time of 'Aṭā', Zuhrī, and Hishām b. 'Urwa respectively.⁷ Many Nāfi' traditions represent unsuccessful attempts at influencing the doctrine of the Medinese school, and Shāfi'ī in Tr. III discusses numerous examples of this kind from his own point of view which is biased in favour of the traditions. The very fact that the Medinese disagree to a considerable extent with alleged traditions of Nāfi' from their own authority Ibn 'Umar (or through Nāfi'—Ibn 'Umar from 'Umar or the Prophet), shows that these traditions are later than the established Medinese doctrine.⁸