THE IRAQIANS 231

Moreover, the opinions and traditions concerning details of positive law, which are ascribed to Sha'bī, cannot be regarded as authentic; they usually show indications of a later origin or are otherwise suspect.² We cannot therefore take on trust an occasional attribution to Sha'bī of what happens to correspond to the earliest Iraqian opinion;³ this doctrine was attributed to Sha'bī by the well-known transmitter Muṭarrif, who in another case ascribed to Sha'bī a later development of the Iraqian doctrine.⁴ Accordingly, when Sha'bī appears as the common link in isnāds of traditions which reflect the common Iraqian doctrine and in isnāds of legal 'puzzles' ascribed to 'Alī,⁵ we ought to consider not him but a person in the following generation responsible.

D. IBN MAS'ŪD AND HIS COMPANIONS

The cases of Shuraiḥ, Ḥasan Baṣrī, and Sha'bī are typical of the retrospective incorporation, in several ways, of ancient authorities into the tradition of a school of law. With Ibn Mas'ūd and his Companions we come to the main stream of the legal tradition of the ancient Iraqians and in particular the school of Kufa.

Ibn Mas'ūd, a Companion of the Prophet, lived in Kufa for a number of years and was later considered a main authority for the Kufian Iraqian doctrine.⁶ After what we have seen in the second part of this book,⁷ I need hardly elaborate the point that the legal traditions from Ibn Mas'ūd are not genuine and that his name is a label affixed to early Iraqian, and particularly Kufian teaching and reasoning.⁸ In one particular case, where the Iraqian doctrine is in fact based on a variant reading in Ibn Mas'ūd's text of the Koran, the school justifies it by