When I saw him persisting in demanding this, I spoke sharply to him and said, “Stop this nonsense, get up, and go about your business. I never asked you to release me.” They had closed the upright door through which one passes to the trapdoor, so I said, “Open the door for me so that I can go down,” meaning that the discussion was over.
More than once he said to me, “Do you oppose the four schools of law?”
I replied, “I have said nothing except what agrees with the four schools of law. None of the judges has passed judgment against me except Ibn Makhlūf, and you were present that day. I said to him, ‘Are you judging alone, or together with these men?’
“He replied, ‘I alone.’
“I said to him, ‘You are my adversary. How, then, can you judge me?’
“He replied with such-and-such words, drawing out his voice, and withdrew into the corner. Then he said, ‘Get up! Get up!’
“They made me stand and ordered me taken to prison. My brothers and I then said repeatedly, ‘I will return and answer, even if you alone are the judge.’ But this was not accepted from me.
“Once they had taken me to prison, he issued the judgment he issued, placed on record what he placed on record, and gave the orders he gave in the sultan’s decree. Would any Jew or Christian—let alone a Muslim—say that this man was imprisoned according to religious law, much less according to the law of Muhammad ibn Abd Allāh? Even young children know, as a self-evident matter of the religion of Islam, that this contravenes the law of Muhammad ibn Abd Allāh. Yet this judge and his associates constantly say, ‘We did what we did according to the law of Muhammad ibn Abd Allāh.’”