264 SHĪ'A LAW

instructions on the lesser ritual ablution, has repealed it.¹ This shows that the discussions about masḥ started between the traditionists and the adherents of the ancient Medinese school, and not between Sunnis and Shiites.

In his creed, Shāfiʿī passes over the masḥ although he declares the mutʿa (see below) to be forbidden.² The so-called Waṣīyat Abī Ḥanīfa, however—a creed which can be dated to the early third century A.H.—considers the masḥ to be wājib, that is, an institution whose acknowledgement is obligatory and whose rejection implies danger of unbelief.³ Only here does the masḥ become one of the essential differences between Sunnis and Shiites. The so-called Fiqh Akbar II, a creed of the fourth century, mitigates this uncompromising formula again and declares the masḥ to be a normative practice (sunna).⁴

In the time of Ibn ʿʿAbdalbarr, the Mālikī doctrine had definitely changed in favour of the masḥ, and Ibn ʿAbdalbarr and others endeavoured to minimize and explain away the authentic information on Mālik, with the help of spurious statements attributed to some of Mālik's ancient companions (Zurqānī, i. 70).

Umm al-walad. Both pre-Islamic Arab custom and the Koran recognized the right of the master to take his female slaves as concubines, and a slave woman who had borne a child to her master was called umm al-walad.⁵ The children born of these relationships, in order to become free and legitimate, had to be acknowledged by their father, the master, but this acknowledgement seems to have been regularly given. The position of the mother, however, was not privileged, and there is nothing in the Koran to show that the Prophet intended to introduce a change. Conditions in early Umaiyad times are reflected in an anecdote that Marwān b. Ḥakam ceded an umm al-walad of his own, together with her small daughter, to a freedman of his in recognition of his services (Aghānī, ix. 36).

Early Muḥammadan law showed, on one side, the tendency to give the umm al-walad her freedom because her children were