250 THE MEDINESE AND MECCANS

claim the sanction of the Prophet for the doctrine ascribed to him,¹ in the same way in which other traditions claim it for the doctrine ascribed to Ibn Masʿūd in Kufa.² In further agreement with the procedure of the Kufians who project their doctrine back not only to Ibn Masʿūd but to his Companions,³ we find Meccan opinions often attributed to the Companions of Ibn ʿAbbās as well as to Ibn ʿAbbās himself.⁴

The representative scholar of Mecca at the beginning of the second century A.H. was ʿAṭāʾ b. Abī Rabāḥ.⁵ He is the only Meccan lawyer whom we are able to grasp as an individual, although his companions and the Meccans in general are mentioned repeatedly and Shāfiʿī speaks of 'the majority (‘āmma) of the muftīs in Mecca' (Tr. III, 143).

Our information on ʿAṭāʾ is of the same character as that on his younger Medinese contemporary Zuhri: an authentic core overlaid by fictitious accretions in the course of the second century. Abū Ḥanīfa states he was present at the lectures of ʿAṭāʾ (Āthār A.Y. 833; Āthār Shaib. 57), but himself relates little from ʿAṭāʾ. Abū Yūsuf refers to ʿAṭāʾ as holding the same opinions as himself (Tr. I, 183, 185); these references are possibly authentic. Abū Yūsuf states that he heard an opinion of ʿAṭāʾ related to him personally by Ḥajjāj b. Arṭāt (Tr. I, 181); but the opinion in question is intermediate between the two extreme opinions held by Abū Ḥanīfa and by Ibn Abī Lailā, and it presupposes both; Ḥajjāj must be suspected of putting into circulation recently forged traditions.⁶

Probably genuine are the opinions related from ʿAṭāʾ on the khiyār al-majlis (above, p. 160), on the freedom of the manumitted slave to enter a walāʾ relationship with the consent of his former master (above, p. 173, n. 3), on two questions connected with the contract of mukātabah (below, p. 279 f.), and on the evidence given by women (Tr. I, 124); this last opinion is based on a strict analogy with the Koranic rules of evidence, and its tendency is contrary to that of a spurious opinion attributed to ʿAṭāʾ (above, p. 167).

Other opinions, presumably genuine, which are related from