In this excerpt from Quḍāt Qurṭuba, Khushanī (d. 361/971) describes a scene in which a woman appears before a certain judge Sulaymān b. Aswad al-Ghāfiqī (d. after 273/886), who was known for being both austere and prone to jesting, and says to him, “Look at your wretched one!” (meaning herself). The judge replies with a joke: “You are not my wretched one! My wretched one is Ibn ʿAmmār’s mule, which spends the whole day eating away at the bit at the door of the mosque!” The judge is referring to the starving mule of Ibn ʿAmmār, a professional witness, who keeps his mule with him at all times. In her chapter in Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts, MaribelFierro refers to this account in the course of a discussion of judges’ diverse personalities to show that there were judges who were both serious and humorous.
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.