256 THE TRADITIONISTS

is one aspect of the process by which Muhammadan law was created out of Umaiyad practice,¹ was by no means a distinctive interest of the traditionists; they were preceded in this by the ancient schools of law themselves.

The general tendency of the traditionists is the same as that of the opposition in Iraq and in Medina: a certain inclination towards strictness and rigorism, not without exceptions, however.² They endeavour to subordinate the legal subject-matter to moral considerations,³ but are also interested in purely legal issues such as the ancient Meccan custom of khiyār al-majlis.⁴ This concern with the legal sphere is not older than the second century A.H. It is reasonable to suppose that the differences of opinion which Ibn Qutaiba (p. 103) attests for them about the middle of the third century, existed already at an earlier period. From the time of Shāfi'ī onwards, we notice the growth of extravagant 'mythological' traditions sponsored by them, such as the tradition which declares a black dog to be a devil.⁵ This kind of tradition is common among those collected and defended by Ibn Qutaiba.

Shāfi'ī made the essential thesis of the traditionists prevail in legal theory, and their movement culminated in the classical collections of traditions of the third century A.H. The legal doctrine of Ibn Ḥanbal is purely traditionist. But the recognition which the traditionist principle won outside the Mu'tazila did not cause the Ḥanafīs and Mālikīs, who continued the ancient Iraqian and Medinese schools, to change their positive legal doctrine appreciably from what it had been at the beginning of the literary period.⁶