restricted in this way, and one of the chief judges—may Allah strengthen them—in the protected city of Damascus delegates the aforementioned oversight to a qualified person, on the understanding that it is not restricted, may another judge prevent him from doing so, or obstruct some of what he has done, without grounds for objection?

He replied:

Nothing in the wording of the founder’s stipulation entails that oversight is exclusively reserved, without qualification, to a particular school of law. Such a restriction would mean that, if the town had only one judge, whose school differed from that followed by the town’s judge in the founder’s time, he would have no authority to oversee the endowment. This is invalid by the consensus of the Muslims.

Muslims have always established endowments, sometimes stipulating that oversight belongs to the judge and sometimes making no such stipulation in the endowment deed. That interpretation would nullify the operation of Islamic law concerning public endowments for which the ruler has appointed no specific administrator. As for private endowments, there is a well-known disagreement.

Moreover, the judge at the time an endowment is established may follow one school, while a later judge follows another. This has occurred in Iraq and elsewhere in the Muslim lands: chief judges have been appointed sometimes from the Hanafī school, sometimes from the Mālikī school, sometimes from the Shāfiʿī school, and sometimes from the Hanbalī school. Such a judge, in turn, sometimes appoints judges in outlying districts who follow his own school, and sometimes appoints those who follow a different school.

If the ruler stipulates that a judge must rule according to a particular school, or a judge imposes that stipulation upon his deputy, the stipulation is invalid. There are two juristic views on whether the appointment itself is thereby invalidated.