246 THE MEDINESE AND MECCANS

adduces in favour of the common Medinese doctrine,¹ and to Sulaimān b. Yasār in a statement on the consensus of Medina;² this last statement certainly represents a stage of doctrine earlier than Mālik. But the same Sulaimān b. Yasār appears also as the main transmitter of a counter-tradition against the common Medinese doctrine on the problem decided by Qāsim b. Muham- mad.³ It is apparent that the names of the ancient Medinese authorities were affixed at random to opinions which themselves may have been old.

B. ZUHRĪ

From Zuhrī onwards, there exists an ascertainable authentic element in the opinions ascribed to the authorities of Medina. Zuhrī died in A.H. 124, fifty-five years before the death of Mālik; their personal intercourse is therefore more likely than that between Mālik and Nāfi'.⁴ Those cases in which Mālik states explicitly that he asked Zuhrī or heard Zuhrī say some- thing, can unhesitatingly be regarded as genuine,⁵ and there are other opinions ascribed to Zuhrī which are obviously authentic.⁶

But towards the end of the second century A.H., Zuhrī had already been credited with many spurious and often contradictory opinions,⁷ and his name inserted in isnāds of traditions which did not yet exist in his time and from which fictitious statements on his supposed doctrine were abstracted. He appears as the common link in the isnāds of a number of traditions from the Prophet, from Companions and from Successors;⁸ Zuhrī himself was hardly responsible for the greater part of these traditions. The following examples are meant to illustrate the growth of spurious information about him.

The common ancient doctrine on what constitutes legal foster-parentship was unsuccessfully attacked in Medina.⁹ Counter-statements on the opinion of ancient Medinese authorities, in favour of the original doctrine, have a common link in their isnāds in Zuhrī