Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/411

 380 throughout the East. A deputation from Al-ʿIrāḳ, canvassing the cause in the harmless garb of merchants, was arrested in Khorāsān and taken before "Khodheina." But he, listening to their feigned story, and accepting the guarantee of their friends, allowed them to go. And so the cause insidiously grew.

Year by year, tradition has up to this time been chronicling the death of aged men who having been in the society of Moḥammad, are dignified as his Companions. Such notices, by the lapse of time, now come to a natural close. In 89 the last two of these who lived in Syria died, one aged a hundred, the other, a "Companion who had seen the two Ḳiblas." Others survived in Al-ʿIrāḳ for a year or two later. But the last of all who had seen and known the Prophet, died at Mecca in the year 101. "Companions" always enjoyed special and high distinction in Muslim society. They would have done so under any circumstances, as having seen and conversed with Moḥammad himself. But a fresh value as time went on began to attach to their words. The Ḳorʾān, at first the sole guide in all concerns, social, legal, and spiritual, was gradually found inadequate for the novel wants of an ever-expanding Muslim world. The word and wont (Sunna) of the Prophet was now called in to supplement it. Collectors of tradition thus sprang up everywhere, who sought out "Companions" from the ends of the earth, and spent their lives in noting down their remembrance of incidents connected with the life of Moḥammad. Nothing, however trivial, came amiss; for every word and every act might form a precedent hereafter in social or legal obligation. The profession thus came to be one of high repute, and hundreds of thousands of traditions have been handed down of every shade of credibility, upon which to a great