such-and-such court, where there are several judges, then any judge among them to whom the letter reaches must act upon it.

A parallel to this in hadith is authorization to transmit from a person: it may be general or specific. A general authorization is for him to say, “I authorize everyone who hears my transmissions to transmit them from me.” A specific authorization is for him to say, “I authorize so-and-so, son of so-and-so, to transmit from me all that I have heard.” The point is that this is an established practice among judges and hadith transmitters alike: a matter may be general, or it may be specific.

When one judge’s letter reaches another judge, the latter must enforce it, because it is like a case that has come before him, and he may not refrain from dealing with it. Moreover, if he were permitted to refuse it, people’s judgments would be disrupted: one judge would write, and another would refuse. And if refusal were permitted, people would think ill of the judges, saying, “The judges do not trust one another; that is why each of them rejects the other’s letter to him.” Therefore, when a judge’s letter reaches another judge, he is obliged to act upon it. But if, hypothetically, the judge to whom it is addressed is unable to do so, he may refer it back to its originator.

His statement, “It is not accepted unless the writing judge has two witnesses attest to it: he reads it to them, then says, ‘Bear witness that this is my letter to so-and-so, son of so-and-so,’ and then hands it to them,” means that when a judge writes a letter to another judge, the following matters must be observed: