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 attaining 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 collected as of infinite value. After the death of the four rightly guided caliphs, Abu Bekr, Omar, Othman, and Ali, intimate friends of the Prophet, fearful uncertainty arose and gradually occasioned the four schools of the four orthodox imâms. The first of these was Abu Hanîfa, born in Basra of a noble Persian 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 Irâk, 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, fearing the doom due according to prophetic tradition to every giver of a wrong decision, 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 Mâlik 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.
Mâlik gathered from the Koran and from local traditions of Mohammed his "Muwâttaa," or "Beaten Path," a complete body of law and religion. His system was established in North Africa by SUNNITES African students, who found Medina the most convenient school, and in Spain by his Berber pupil Yahya 'bn Yahya. The third orthodox imâm was Ash-Shâfiî of -Shafiî of the Koraish tribe, and descended from the Prophet's grandfather, Abdul-Mûttalib. He was born, it is said, on the day of Abu Hanîfa's death. He taught in Cairo, and there he died in 820. He was an eclectic, but leaned more to the traditionary precedents of his teacher Malik than to the deductive method of Abu Hanîfa. His system prevailed in Egypt , and was not uncommon E. It still flourishes in the Asiatic islands. The use of reason and Greek philosophy had by this time wrought such laxity in faith and in public and private conduct that rigid puritanism was a natural concomitant. Its exponent was Ibn Hanbal, the fourth orthodox imâm, who died in 855 in his native city Bagdad, beyond which his system never had much power.
He was a pupil of Ash- Shafiî, whose lectures, 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 editing indispensable, and those huge masses of it began to appear under which the Muslim mind has been crushed to death.
Abu Hanîfa had used only 18 traditions, Mâlik 300. Ibn Hanbal used 30,000.
These were mainly collected by his friends and pupils. One of these, the excellent Abu Daûd Suleimân, 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 Bukhârî, a friend and pupil of Ibn Main. He taught in Bagdad, and like the best Muslim theologians 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 Prop Prophet, of whom Abu Horaira, a manifest liar, was Horaira, a manifest liar, more prolific than any other. Through one of these channels to Mohammed the isnâd or pedigree of every tradition had had to be traceable. The matter is called Hadîth, events, tradition, and is much more entertaining than the Koran. Besides the legal and religious utterances of Mohammed, which are generally in one or two sentences, it embodies endless nonsense about his life and miracles . What ever in the Hadith can be imitated or obeyed is Sunna, method: compulsory for SUNSTROKE 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 expounders are the four orthodox imâms. Legislation merely means a declaration by the Sheikh-ul-Islâm and his council of ulemâ or doctors that this or that agrees with the Koran or tradition . Reformation of law or religion from within is impossible.
SUNSTROKE (otherwise called HEAT-