jurisdiction of Islam was
extended, and numerous cases arose for decision in which no ruling
was provided by the Koran. For some time it was held necessary that a
tradition should be oral and not have been reduced to writing. When
the necessity of collecting and searching for the Traditions became
paramount, indefatigable research was displayed in the work. The most
trustworthy collection of traditions was compiled by Abu Abdullah
Muhammad, a native of Bokhara, who died in the Hijra year 256, or
nearly 250 years after Muhammad. He succeeded in amassing no fewer than
600,000 traditions, of which he selected only 7275 as trustworthy. The
authentic traditions of what the Prophet said and did were considered
practically as binding as the Koran, and any case might be decided by
a tradition bearing on it. The development of Moslem jurisdiction was
thus based not on the elucidation and exposition of broad principles
of law and equity, but on the record of the words and actions of
one man who had lived in a substantially less civilised society than
that existing in the countries to which Muhammadan law now came to be
applied. Such a state of things inevitably exercised a cramping effect
on the Moslem lawyers and acted as a bar to improvement. Thus, because
the Koran charged the Jews and Christians with having corrupted the
text of their sacred books, it was laid down that no Jew or Christian
could be accepted as a credible witness in a Moslem lawsuit; and since
the Prophet had forbidden the keeping of dogs except for certain
necessary purposes, it was ruled by one school that there was no
property in dogs, and that if a man killed a dog its owner had no
right to compensation. [330]

29. The schools of law.

After the Koran and Traditions the decisions of certain lawyers during
the early period of Islam were accepted as authoritative. Of them
four schools are recognised by the Sunnis in different countries,
those of the Imams Abu Hanifa, Shafei, Malik, and Hambal. In northern
India the school of Abu Hanifa is followed. He was born at Kufa,
the capital of Irak, in the Hijra year 80, when four of the Prophet's
Companions were still alive. He is the great oracle of jurisprudence,
and with his two pupils was the founder of the Hanifi code of law. In
southern India the Shafei school is followed. [331] The Shiahs have
separate collections of traditions and schools of law, and they say
that a Mujtahid or doctor of the law can s