He also delivered judgment on the basis of the opinion of two trustworthy men (1) whenever no suitable arbiters (2) could be found among the families of the two spouses who were qualified for that task (3).

Abu ʿUmar said: “Yaḥyā ibn Yaḥyā was the imam of the people of his land—the one they emulated, to whom they looked, and upon whom they relied. He was reliable, intelligent, of excellent conduct and dignified bearing; in his outward demeanour he was likened to Mālik. He had, however, no particular expertise in hadith (4).”

I say: Indeed, he was not one of the foremost champions of that discipline; rather, he occupied a middle rank in it—may Allah have mercy on him.

Ibn al-Faraḍī said: “He issued legal verdicts in accordance with Mālik’s opinion; he was the leading imam of his time, the unrivalled figure of his country, and he was a man of sound judgment (5).”

Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar ibn Lubābah remarked: “The jurist of al-Andalus is ʿĪsā ibn Dīnār; its scholar is ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Ḥabīb; and its man of reason is Yaḥyā ibn Yaḥyā (6).”

Ibn al-Faraḍī further states in his History: “Yaḥyā ibn Yaḥyā was among those suspected of some involvement in the turmoil—that is, in rising up and censuring the ruler of al-Andalus (7).”

He therefore fled to Toledo, then sought safe-conduct, whereupon the emir al-Ḥakam, well known for that title, wrote for him: