Book of the Judiciary
Introduction
The office of judge is a communal obligation (farḍ kifāyah). The ruler is required to appoint a judge in every province, choosing the most outstanding person he can find in knowledge and God-fearingness. He must enjoin him to fear Allah, to seek justice, and to exert himself in establishing it, saying, for example, “I appoint you to adjudication,” or “I invest you with judicial authority,” and the like; if distance prevents a verbal appointment, he does so by letter.
A general judicial mandate comprises:
- settling disputes between litigants¹;
- restoring each party’s due rights from the other²;
- supervising the property of those lacking sound judgment, and placing under interdiction anyone who warrants it because of prodigality or bankruptcy;
- overseeing charitable endowments so that their conditions are fulfilled, and executing bequests³;
- contracting the marriage of a woman who has no guardian;
- carrying out the prescribed penalties (ḥudūd);
- leading the Friday—and the ‘Eid—prayer⁴;
- safeguarding the public welfare of his district by removing harm from roads, squares, and the like.
The ruler may grant him full oversight over the whole jurisdiction, or may limit him to particular matters within it, or to only one of the two spheres.
Ten qualifications are required of a judge: he must be of legal age, sane, male, free, Muslim, upright, able to hear, able to see, articulate, and capable of independent reasoning (mujtahid), even if only within his own school.
If two disputants appoint a man who possesses the qualifications of a judge, his ruling is binding in matters of property, the prescribed punishments, liʿān, and other issues.