of precedent and direction. But afterwards, while everybody continued more or less a tradition-monger, it became the special business of a numerous class to record from all quarters whatever recollections of the Prophet still lingered in the memory of the people. Mecca and Medina, of course, were specially ransacked, while every spot, however distant, was visited in the hope of meeting some one from whom the fragment of a reminiscence might be gleaned. We have consequently a much greater body of traditions from the Companions who survived to this busy time, than from those who died before it. Abu Horeira (d. A.H. 58), himself a Companion, collected no fewer than 3000 traditions regarding the Prophet, from the lips either of eye-witnesses or of those who had received them from eye-witnesses 

At such a distance of time there could be no great scrupulousness or exactitude either as to the expressions or the subject-matter thus handed down. Penetrated by an irresistible fanaticism, the traditionist" placed subjective truth far higher than objective." It was the ideal of the Prophet, and the glory of Islam, which tradition set forth, rather than any accurate and historical statement. At all events, it was only such reports as coincided with the spirit of Islam that maintained their currency; and hence we find tradition to be necessarily partial and one-sided. The strife of sect and party, it is true, acted to some extent as a check upon misstatement, but only in so far as sect and party were concerned. In the glorification of the Prophet and exaltation of Islam all were interested and all agreed. 

One cannot fail to be struck by the uniformity of style and construction which pervades the whole mass of tradition. The form and type throughout are one. Sprenger thinks this remarkable similarity to be the work of the professional traditionists who shaped and formularised, according to the recognised model, all traditional matter which fell into their hands. Thus, an imperfect fragment would be set in the frame of question and answer; or the prolix story of some aged descendant of a Companion would be compressed and as such dressed up in the traditional shape. Then, as new points of usage or law from time to time came forward for settlement, these, reduced into the proper interrogatory