These excerpts from Kindī’s book on governors and judges demonstrate that the appointment of a Ḥanafī judge in a traditionally Mālikī region such as Egypt could have serious repercussions on social life. In the case described by Kindī, Ismāʿīl b. al-Yasaʿ al-Kindī, a Ḥanafī of Iraqi origin, was appointed as judge in Egypt, where the population was not accustomed to this school of law and disliked it. Ismāʿīl al-Kindī adopted an oppressive attitude toward the population and abolished endowments (aḥbās). According to Kindī, the jurist Layth b. Saʿd confronted the judge about this decision and informed the caliph al-Mahdī, who promptly removed the qāḍīin response to Layth’s accusation that Ismāʿīl al-Kindī was harming the Sunna of the Prophet. In her chapter in Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts, Nahed Samour uses this source to illustrate the tensions between judges and jurisconsults belonging to different legal schools.
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.