they had grounds to expect a gift as of favour, but possessed no legal title to a "share." Such are specimens of the way in which tradition, direct and by analogy, grew up. 

Each tradition is in a separate independent form. It consists simply in a statement of the Prophet's dictum or his act; in a question and his reply; or in the brief narrative of a conversation, or action which constitutes a precedent for all time to come. It is given, in the direct form of speech, on the authority of the Companion who tells the story; and the names in succession of every witness in the whole chain through whom it has been handed down, and who vouch for its authenticity, are carefully prefixed to it. In process of time this string of authorities becomes of immense length, until it stops at the period when (as we shall see) a written record. of the tradition and its authorities supersedes the system of oral communication. 

According to Sprenger, tradition was developed into a regular science by the civil wars which broke out upon the murder of Othmân. These, at any rate, imparted to it the powerful impulse of faction; and the force of that impulse will be understood if we remember that the prize in contest was no less than the Caliphate itself. Each party anathematised the other, and based its denunciations upon the authority of the Prophet. The faction that followed Aly held him and his successors in the Imâmship to be as infallible as the Prophet. Their opponents, on the other hand, acknowledged but two sources of infallible authority—the Coran, and the precept or practice of Mahomet. To place the certified precedents of their Prophet upon an authoritative basis, and to preserve them from the possibility of unauthorised additions, the Sunnies, or vast body of orthodox Moslems, reduced tradition to a fixed form, namely, the Sunna; by it and by the Coran alone they have ever been guided, and hence their name. 

The rapid and exuberant growth of tradition is truly marvellous. Sprenger thinks that the collection of traditions was not taken up as a regular profession till A.H. 40, or some thirty years after the Prophet's death. From the Companions who died before that time only such traditions were preserved as the contingencies and requirements of the day called forth in the way