SUNNITES, the name commonly given to orthodox Muslims, because in their rule of faith and manners the Sunna, or traditionary teaching of the Prophet, is added to the Koran. According to Islam the human mind is incapable of attain ing light in law or religion but through the Prophet, and all expressions of God's will are equally important. Reason and conscience are here of no value; memory is all. Hell fire is the award due alike to him that prays without being properly washed and to him that denies the word of the Prophet. Accordingly during the Prophet's life his counsel was eagerly and continually sought; and after his death his example and sayings were col lected as of infinite value. After the death of the four rightly guided caliphs, Abu Bekr, Omar, Othman, and Ali, in timate friends of the Prophet, fearful uncertainty arose and gradually occa sioned the four schools of the four ortho dox imams. The first of these was Abu Hanifa, born in Basra of a noble Per sian family. He taught in Kufa on the Euphrates. He logically deduced from the Koran all religion and law; for the Koran says (Sura 16: 91) "to thee we have sent down the book which clears up everything." Consequently, when the Koran says (S. 2: 20) "for you have I created the whole earth," it follows that to Muslims belongs all the property of unbelievers. Hence the propriety of piracy and aggressive war against them. In his school arose the famous legists of Irak, and his system, the most widely spread of the four, is now professed by the Turkish empire. He would never hold any office under government, fear ing the doom due according to prophetic tradition to every giver of a wrong de cision, namely, to be plunged into hell from a height of 40 days' journey. He died in 767 in prison, where the caliph had confined him for refusing to be cadi over the new capital Bagdad.
In 795 died Malik ibn Anas in his 84th year in Medina, where he was born and had lived all his days. There, surrounded by traditions of the Prophet, he had taught after the custom of Medina. Malik gathered from the Koran and from local traditions of Mohammed his "Mu wattaa," or "Beaten Path," a complete body of law and religion. His system was established in North Africa by African students, who found Medina the most convenient school, and in Spain by his Berber pupil Yahya 'bn Yahya. The third orthodox imam was Ash-Shafil of the Koraish tribe, and descended from the Prophet's grandfather, Abdul-Mflt talib. He was born, it is said, on the day of Abu Hanifa's death. He taught in Cairo, and there he died in 820. He was an eclectic, but leaned more to the tra ditionary precedents of his teacher Malik than to the deductive method of Abu Hanifa. His system prevailed in Egypt,
and was not uncommon E. It still flour ishes in the Asiatic islands.
The use of reason and Greek philos ophy had by this time wrought such lax ity in faith and in public and private con duct that rigid puritanism was a natural concomitant. Its exponent was Ibn Han bal, the fourth orthodox imam, who died in 855 in his native city Bagdad, beyond which his system never had much power. He was a pupil of Ash-Shafil, whose lec tures, however, he would never allow his own pupils to attend. Tradition and Sunna had now immensely increased, and by these alone the Hanbalites were guided. They are now almost extinct. The bulk of tradition had now made edit ing indispensable, and those huge masses of it began to appear under which the Muslim mind has been crushed to death. Abu Hanifa had used only 18 traditions, Malik 300. Ibn Hanbal used 30,000. These were mainly collected by his friends and pupils. One of these, the excellent Abu Daild Suleiman, traveling in many Muslim lands, collected 500,000, which he sifted down to 4,800. But of the six accepted collections the standard one was made by Al Bukhari, a friend and pupil of Ibn Main. He taught in Bagdad, and like the best Muslim theo logians was a Persian. He died in 870. Of the 600,000 traditions heard by him he admitted only 7,275, whereof the half are probably genuine. An edition by Krehl appeared at Leyden in 1862-1872, in three volumes. The collection by his Muslim pupil is better arranged, and is more used. The sources of tradition were Ayesha, the first four caliphs, and the six companions of the Prophet, of whom Abu Horaira, a manifest liar, was more prolific than any other. Through one of these channels to Mohammed the isnad or pedigree of every tradition had to be traceable. The matter is called Hadith, events, tradition, and is much more entertaining than the Koran. Be sides the legal and religious utterances of Mohammed, which are generally in one or two sentences, it embodies endless non sense about his life and miracles. What ever in the Hadith can he imitated or obeyed is Sunna, method: compulsory for guidance if connected with religion. Its object is to make needless all appeals to reason and conscience. In legislation it is much less used than formerly; but, like the Koran, it is infallible and unal. terable, and its only independent ex pounders are the four orthodox imams. Legislation merely means a declaration by the Sheikh-ul-Islam and his council of ulema or doctors that this or that agrees with the Koran or tradition. Re formation of law or religion from within is impossible.