ABSTRACT
The main conclusions of this study can be summarised as follows:
There is a large and extensive body of Qurʾanic material in the Muwaṭṭaʾ much of which is stated overdy but most of which is implied and taken for granted.
The Qurʾanic element is an integral part of early Islamic law as shown in the Muwaṭṭaʾ and not a later validation of it.
In terms of its application as law the Qurʾan is not separable from the sunna; rather, the Qurʾan is the impulse for the sunna and the sunna the demonstration of the Qurʾan.
This sunna is known (for the Madinans) from ʿamal rather than ḥadīth, similarly, where there is textual interpretation of the Qurʾan and the ḥadīth, it is against the background of ʿamal rather than simply from the texts.
The ḥadīth is thus illustrative rather than authoritative and the true understanding of ‘Qurʾan and sunna’ as sources of law is achieved (for the Madinans) not so much by studying the texts of the Qurʾan and the ḥadīth as by seeing what is done as ʿamal.
ʿAmal and sunna are not the same and cannot both be bracketed under the same translation of ‘practice’ or ‘living tradition’. Rather, just as sunna consists of Qurʾan in action with an additional element of ijtihād (in this instance of the Prophet), so too does ʿamal consist of Qurʾan and sunna in action with an additional element of ijtihād (in this instance of later authorities, whether Companions or Successors, caliphs or scholars).
As a subsidiary conclusion, we may note that the development of Islamic law in the first and second centuries AH shows two opposing tendencies: a tendency to divergence engendered by the ambiguities of language and/or the different possibilities of interpretation, and a tendency to unity apparent in the increasing marginalisation of earlier shādhdh views. That the madhhabs that have survived today are different, and yet in so many respects similar to each other, is the direct manifestation of these tendencies.
