THE IRAQIANS 229

held this office for sixty years or more, and to have died between A.H. 76 and 99, presumably before the year 80, at a very great age. Lammens has pointed out the lack of historical information about him,¹ and Tyan has convincingly analysed his legend.² The opinions and traditions ascribed to him are spurious throughout and are the outcome of the general tendency to project the opinions current in the schools of law back to early authorities.³ They often represent secondary stages in the development of legal doctrines.⁴ Nor is it rare to find two contradictory opinions ascribed to Shuraiḥ.⁵

B. ḤASAN BAṢRĪ

In contrast to the vague personality of Shuraiḥ, the historical Ḥasan Baṣrī is well known as one of the foremost pious men of Basra in the second half of the first and at the beginning of the second century A.H. But he was neither a lawyer⁶ nor even a traditionist.⁷ The specialists on traditions held most of the uninterrupted isnāds in which he appeared to be spurious.⁸ The dogmatic treatise which Ḥasan wrote at the command of the Umayyad Caliph 'Abdalmalik, and which therefore cannot be later than the year 86,^' does not refer to any traditions from the Prophet or even from Companions.⁹

The legal opinions and traditions ascribed to Ḥasan are regularly shown, by closer investigation, not to be genuine.¹⁰ In later times, he was considered one of the main authorities of the Basrians; but too little is known of the doctrines of this ancient Iraqian school of law, for us to ascertain the importance which they may have ascribed to him.¹¹