THE KORANIC ELEMENT 225

body of maxims contained in the Koran¹ —but to family law, the law of inheritance, and even cult and ritual. I have therefore chosen to speak of the Koranic element at this point of our inquiry into the transmission of legal doctrine, a point which corresponds to the zenith of the reception of Koranic norms into early Muhammadan law.

To start with problems which were based from the beginning on the Koran, we have already discussed the common ancient doctrine of divorce, and the problem of the evidence of non-Muslims.² Here are two more examples.

The Medinese hold that the definitely divorced wife who is not pregnant, can claim from her former husband only lodging during her period of waiting ('idda); the Iraqians give her also the right to board.³ The two doctrines are based on two variants of Koran lxv. 6, the Medinese on the textus receptus, the Iraqian on the reading of Ibn Mas'ūd.⁴ When the text of Ibn Mas'ūd was superseded in Iraq by the textus receptus during the reign of the Umaiyad Caliph 'Abdalmalik (A.H. 65-86), this basis of the Iraqian doctrine was forgotten, and Abū Ḥanifa was reduced to justifying it by an arbitrary interpretation of the textus receptus and by a tradition from 'Umar.

Koran ii. 234 fixes the 'idda of a widow at four months and ten days; Koran lxv. 4 makes the 'idda of a pregnant wife who becomes divorced end with her delivery. Nothing is said explicitly about the 'idda of a pregnant widow. The common ancient attitude was to consider her 'idda ended and to make her available for another marriage at her delivery, even though this might happen immediately after the death of her husband and long before the completion of four months and ten days.⁵ But there arose the demand, caused by the tendency to greater strictness, that she should keep the 'idda 'until the later of the two terms'; a demand which was expressed in traditions from 'Alī and from Ibn 'Abbās.⁶

This refinement succeeded neither in Iraq nor in Medina;