In this text Abū Bakr al-Jaṣṣāṣ (d. 370/980) and Abū Jaʿfar al-Ṭaḥāwī (d. 321/933) documents the Hanafī position—upheld by al-Shāfiʿī’s (d. 204/820) teacher Mālik (d. 179/795)—which maintained stricter criteria for the qualification of witnesses. Mālik held that the testimony of witnesses who displayed any degree of heresy should be rejected automatically. In Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts Ahmed El Shamsy contrasts Mālik’s position with that of his student Shāfiʿī who had more leniently maintained that heretical beliefs can only disqualify a witness if they have no precedent and have no basis in any possible interpretation of revelation.
This source is part of the Online Companion to the book Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts (ILSP/HUP 2017)—a collection of sources and other material used in and related to the book.