OF MUHAMMADAN JURISPRUDENCE 195

in Medina only in Mālik’s time, and Mālik’s contemporary Darāwardī is the common transmitter in the isnāds of most traditions to this effect. These traditions, some of which are clearly counter-traditions, claim the authority of a number of Companions, including Ibn ʿAbbās and ʿĀʾisha, and of numerous old Medinese authorities of the generation of the Successors: all this is certainly spurious.

Divorce

The problem of the legal effects of a divorce pronounced as 'definite' (batta) was still unsettled in the generation preceding Mālik, and this uncertainty and several possible answers were projected back into earlier Umaiyad times in Medinese and Iraqian traditions.

The following two traditions are Medinese (Muw. iii. 36):

Mālik—Yahyā b. Saʿīd—Abū Bakr b. Muḥammad b. ʿAmr b. Ḥazm informed ʿUmar b. ʿAbdal'azīz that Abān b. ʿUthmān considered the word batta as producing a single [revocable] divorce, but ʿUmar b. ʿAbdal'azīz insisted that it exhausted all possibilities of divorce¹ [that is, was to be reckoned as a triple divorce].

Mālik—Zuhrī—Marwān b. Ḥakam decided that the word batta produced a triple [irrevocable] divorce.

The following tradition is Iraqian (Āthār Shaib. 74):

Abū Ḥanīfa—Ḥammād—Ibrāhīm Nakhaʿī—ʿUrwa b. Mughīra as governor of Kufa was perplexed by the term batta and asked Shuraiḥ. The latter quoted the opinion of ʿUmar that it produced a single revocable divorce, and the opinion of ʿAlī who considered it as producing a triple divorce; pressed for his own opinion, Shuraiḥ held that the use of batta was a reprehensible innovation, but that it produced either a triple or a single definite divorce, according to the intention of the speaker.⁴

This divorce with batta is a development from current practice and independent of the common ancient doctrine of Muhammadan law on divorce, a doctrine which is based on a not very obvious interpretation of Koran ii. 228-30.¹ Accord-