SHĪ'A LAW 263

practice which was ascribed to members of the ruling family in Medina was put under the aegis of ʿAlī in Iraq. Shiite imams appear occasionally in the isnāds of Medinese traditions in the Muw., and elsewhere, but these traditions do not express distinctive Shīʿa doctrines.

Masḥ ʿalā al-khuffayn. The masḥ ʿalā al-khuffayn, that is, the wiping of one's shoes instead of the washing of one's feet as part of the lesser ritual ablution under certain conditions, became a distinctive point of difference between the Shiites who rejected it, and the Sunnis who in opposition to them considered it as valid. This was not yet so in the second half of the second century A.H. Abū Ḥanīfa does not mention it in his creed (Fiqh Akbar), where he nevertheless refers to other points of difference from the Shiites. Mālik, according to Ibn Qāsim, allowed it only to the traveller; he had formerly allowed it also to the resident, but changed his opinion,³ moving towards a restriction of the masḥ. The Egyptian Medinese even said, in the words of Rabīʿ: "We do not like the masḥ, either for those in residence or for those travelling" (Tr. III, 60).

The only tradition from the Prophet, known to Mālik, in favour of the mash (Muw. i. 70) has a very faulty isnād, so much so that Zurqānī blames Mālik for two mistakes in it, and the editor Yaḥyā b. Yaḥyā for another; but that was its original condition, and the improvements by which its higher part was changed almost beyond recognition are later. Another Medinese tradition (loc. cit.) endeavours to defend the practice of masḥ: Mālik relates on the authority of Nāfiʿ and ʿAbdallāh b. Dīnār that Ibn ʿUmar came to Kūfa and disapproved of the masḥ which was practised by the governor Ṣaʿd b. Abī Waqqāṣ, a senior Companion of the Prophet; but Saʿd referred Ibn ʿUmar to his father, and ʿUmar declared it valid. This can be dated by its isnād to the generation preceding Mālik. These and other traditions, none of which shows any trace of anti-Shīʿa polemics, had not quite prevailed in Medina in the time of Mālik.

Shāfiʿī follows the tradition from the Prophet, acknowledges the masḥ as valid, and refutes the anti-traditionist argument that the Koran, by not mentioning the masḥ in the detailed