OF MUHAMMADAN JURISPRUDENCE 211

Muslim who died on a journey, the Koran itself (v. 106) declared the evidence of non-Muslims valid, and Ibn Abī Lailā decided accordingly,¹ again presumably in keeping with the ancient practice. Legal doctrine from Abū Ḥanīfa onwards, however, rejected the evidence of non-Muslims in this case, and Abū Yūsuf arbitrarily declared the Koranic passage to have been repealed by lxv. 2.

The Medinese rejected the evidence of non-Muslims altogether, even against one another (Mud. xiii. 7), and Shāfi'ī followed this, providing systematic reasons (Umm, vii. 38 ff.). This doctrine represents the full victory of the tendency to religious exclusiveness over the ancient practice.

If a man disappears and is not heard of, his wife must wait four years for him before she is free to undergo the 'idda and to remarry. The period of four years was based on an administrative regulation. Mālik and before him Rabī'a insisted that the government (sulṭan, imām) should fix the term of four years in every individual case (Mud. v. 130, 133). Rabī'a does not yet refer to any traditions, but uses the customary expressions 'we have heard' and 'it is said' for opinions that found general approval. In the time of Mālik, the doctrine had found expression in a tradition from 'Umar, transmitted by Yaḥyā b. Sa'īd,³ and Mālik regarded it as the 'practice'.

But some Medinese held that no matter when the first husband returned, he could reclaim his wife or demand the donatio propter nuptias back, and expressed their doctrine in two counter-traditions, one from 'Umar and the other from 'Uthmān.⁴ Others went still farther in their opposition to the government regulation, as Shāfi'ī relates, and contested the time limit of four years altogether by saying: 'This does not look like a decision of 'Umar.' But their opposition, based on a religious scruple, did not prevail, and Zurqānī (iii. 57) could represent the Medinese doctrine which perpetuated the administrative regulation, as perpetuating a consensus of the Companions and the concurring opinion of a number of Successors.