the precept. The whole individual, domestic, social, and political life
as it developed in the three centuries during which the simple Arabian
religion was adjusted to the complicated civilization of the great nations
of that time, that all life was theoretically justified by representing
it as the application of minute laws supposed to have been elaborated by
Mohammed by precept and example.

Thus tradition gives invaluable material for the knowledge of the conflict
of opinions in the first centuries, a strife the sharpness of which has
been blunted in later times by a most resourceful harmonistic method. But,
it is vain to endeavour to construct the life and teaching of Mohammed from
such spurious accounts; they cannot even afford us a reliable illustration
of his life in the form of "table talk," as an English scholar rather
naïvely tried to derive from them. In a collection of this sort, supported
by good external evidence, there would be attributed to the Prophet of
Mecca sayings from the Old and New Testament, wise saws from classical and
Arabian antiquity, prescriptions of Roman law and many other things, each
text of which was as authentic as its fellows.

Anyone who, warned by Goldziher and others, has realized how matters stand
in this respect, will be careful not to take the legislative tradition as
a direct instrument for the explanation of the Qorân. When, after a most
careful investigation of thousands of traditions which all appear equally
old, we have selected the oldest, then we shall see that we have before us
only witnesses of the first century of the Hijrah. The connecting threads
with the time of Mohammed must be supplied for a great part by imagination.

The historical or biographical tradition in the proper sense of the word
has only lately been submitted to a keener examination. It was known for a
long time that here too, besides theological and legendary elements,