In his collection of biographies of judges and governors in the early Islamic empire, the historian Kindī (d. 350/961) provides a history of qāḍīappointments in Egypt. His entry for Isḥāq b. al-Furāt contains several anecdotes, one of which indicates that Isḥāq was the first non-Arab of mawlābackground (tribal client or associate) to be appointed to the position of qāḍī; the appointment took place in 184/800. Kindī’s accounts suggest that in spite of his foreign status, Isḥāq was well regarded by his contemporaries, who recommended him for the position because of his astute scholarship of Islamic law and his mastery of the Arabic language. Moreover, he was deemed one of the most important associates of Mālik b. Anas, the founder of one of the four principal Sunnī schools of law. In his chapter in Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts, Mahmood Kooria uses this source to demonstrate the growing presence of non-Arab qāḍīs in early second/ninth-century Egypt. Nonetheless, the language spoken and used by these mawālī was Arabic, minimizing translation challenges within a Arab-dominated judicial system.
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 sources and other material used in and related to the book.