In this excerpt, the eminent Granadan jurist and chief qāḍī of the Nasrid capital Ibn ʿĀṣim (d. 829/1426) dictates that a husband who accuses his wife of adultery must be imprisoned until he swears the liʿānoath. This position harks back to an earlier negative judgment of the accusing husband by al-Bājī and Abū ʿUmar Ibn ʿAbd al-Malik, who argued that “he is a slanderer.” This precaution prevents the husband from abandoning his wife and leaving her with the burden of caring for the child. In her chapter on imprecatory oaths in Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts, DelfinaSerrano uses this source to demonstrate the potential of the liʿānprocedure to deter accusations of infidelity.
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.