238 THE IRAQIANS

Ḥanīfa, ascribed to ʿAbdallāh b. al-Mubārak, another traditionist of the second century, we read: 'The loss of Ḥammād was grave enough, and our bereavement grievous, until he [Abū Ḥanīfa] saved us from the rejoicing of our enemies in our discomfiture, and showed great knowledge as his [Ḥammād’s] successor.'¹ Ḥammād is considered to have been the first in Iraq to teach law to a circle of disciples.²

Ḥammād is the first Iraqian lawyer whom we can regard as fully historical. We saw in Section E that most of the opinions transmitted by Ḥammād and attributed by him to Ibrāhīm are in fact not older than the time of Ḥammād himself. Even allowing for all cases in which his name may have been used by other persons, there remains the great bulk of doctrine, preserved mainly in Āthār A.Y. and Āthār Shaib., which must go back to Ḥammād himself and is nevertheless ascribed by him to Ibrāhīm. This retrospective involvement of a higher authority is of course a particular instance of the backward growth of isnāds which we have discussed before.³ It is, moreover, part of a literary convention which found particular favour in Iraq and by which a legal scholar or author put his own doctrine or work under the aegis of his master. Shaibānī, for instance, refers at the beginning of every chapter of his Jāmiʿ al-Ṣaghīr and at the beginning of his Kitāb al-Makhārij fī al-Ḥiyal to the final authority of Abū Ḥanīfa, as transmitted to him through Abū Yūsuf; this does not mean that the books in question were in any way based on works or lectures of Abū Ḥanīfa and Abū Yūsuf, but implies only the general relationship of pupil to master.⁴ We must take the standing reference of Ḥammād to Ibrāhīm as meaning the same.⁵

Ḥammād had considerable freedom in formulating his own doctrine which he then put under the authority of Ibrāhīm.⁶ Ibn Saʿd (vi. 232) identified Ḥammād’s own doctrine with