In this excerpt, Ibn al-Jawzī (d. 597/1201) relays cases in which a presiding judge revealed the falsity of the petitioner’s or defendant’s claim by employing shrewd investigative techniques to detect their guilt. For example, in one case the petitioner accused the defendant of failing to return money he had entrusted to him. The judge bade the petitioner to go to the mosque in Karkh where he claimed the money had been transferred and fetch a page of the …
This source is part of the Online Companion to the book Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts, ed. Intisar A. Rabb and Abigail Krasner Balbale (ILSP/HUP 2017)—a collection of primary sources and other material used in and related to the book.