 According to Schacht, (and other scholars) in the very first generations after the death of Muhammad, use of hadith from "Sahabah" ("companions" of Muhammad) and "Tabi‘un" ("successors" of the companions) "was the rule", while use of hadith of Muhammad himself by Muslims was "the exception".Schacht credits Al-Shafi‘i — founder of the Shafi'i school of "fiqh" (or "madh'hab") — with establishing the principle of the use of the hadith of the Muhammad for Islamic law, and emphasizing the inferiority of hadith of anyone else, saying hadiths 
"from other persons are of no account in the face of a tradition from the Prophet, whether they confirm or contradict it;
if the other persons had been aware of the tradition from the Prophet, they would have followed it".This led to "the almost complete neglect" of traditions from Companions and others.