from the Prophet, and the thing has gone so far that on almost every disputed point there are absolutely conflicting prophetic utterances in circulation. It has even been held, and with some justification, that the entire body of normative tradition at present in existence was forged for a purpose. With this attitude of the Umayyads we shall have to deal at greater length later. It is sufficient now to note that the first real appearance of hadith in literature was in the Muwatta of Malik ibn Anas who died in A.H. 179.

Yet even this appearance is not so much of hadith for its own sake, as of usages bearing upon law and of the law that can be drawn from these usages. The book is a corpus iuris not a corpus traditionum. Its object was not so much to separate from the mass of traditions in circulation those which could be regarded as sound of origin and to unite them in a formal collection, as to build up a system of law based partly on tradition. The previous works dealing with law proper had been of a speculative character, had shown much subjective reliance on their own opinion on the part of the writers and had drawn little from the sacred usage of the Prophet and quoted few of his traditional sayings. Against that the book of Malik was a protest and formed a link between such law books pure and the collections of traditions pure with which we now come to deal.

To Malik the matn, or text, of a tradition had been the only thing of importance. To the isnad, or chain of authority running back to the Prophet, he had paid little attention. He, as we have seen, was

a lawyer and gathered traditions, not for their own sake but to use them in law. To others, the tradition was the thing, and too much care could not be given to its details and its authenticity. And the care was really called for. With the course of time and the growing demand, the supply of traditions had also grown until there was no doubt in the mind of anyone that an enormous proportion were simple forgeries. To weed out the sound ones, attention had to be given to the isnad; the names upon it had to be examined; the fact of their having been in intercourse to be determined; the possibility of the case in general to be tested. Thus there were formed real collections of supposedly sound traditions, which were called Musnads, because each tradition was musnad—propped; supported—against the Companions from whom it proceeded. In accordance with this also they were arranged according to the Companions. After the name of the Companion were given all the traditions leading back to him. One of the earliest and greatest of these books was the Musnad of Abmad ibn Hanbal, who died A.H. 241; of him more hereafter. This book has been printed recently at Cairo in six quarto volumes of 2,885 pages and is said to contain, about thirty thousand traditions going back to seven hundred Companions.

But another type of tradition-book was growing up, less mechanical in arrangement. It is the Musannaf, the arranged, classified—and in it the traditions are arranged in chapters according to their subject matter. The first Musannaf to make a permanent mark was the Sahih—sound—of al-Bukhari, who