28. The Traditions.
Next to the Korān in point of authority come the Traditions of the sayings and actions of the Prophet, which are known as Hadīs or Sunnah. These were eagerly collected as the jurisdiction of Islam was extended, and numerous cases arose for decision in which no ruling was provided by the Korān. For some time it was held necessary that a tradition should be oral and not have been reduced to writing. When the necessity of collecting and searching for the Traditions became paramount, indefatigable research was displayed in the work. The most trustworthy collection of traditions was compiled by Abu Abdullah Muhammad, a native of Bokhara, who died in the Hijra year 256, or nearly 250 years after Muhammad. He succeeded in amassing no fewer than 600,000 traditions, of which he selected only 7275 as trustworthy. The authentic traditions of what the Prophet said and did were considered practically as binding as the Korān, and any case might be decided by a tradition bearing on it. The development of Moslem jurisdiction was thus based not on the elucidation and exposition of broad principles of law and equity, but on the record of the words and actions of one man who had lived in a substantially less civilised society than that existing in the countries to which Muhammadan law now came to be applied. Such a state of things inevitably exercised a cramping effect on the Moslem lawyers and acted as a bar to improvement. Thus, because the Korān charged the Jews and Christians with having corrupted the text of their sacred books, it was laid down that no Jew or Christian could be accepted as a credible witness in a Moslem lawsuit; and since the Prophet had forbidden the keeping of dogs except for certain necessary purposes, it was ruled by one school that there was no property in dogs, and that if a man killed a dog its owner had no right to compensation.[32]