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One of the core functions of the courts in the Ottoman Empire was to allow the government to keep its officials in check, and to allow subjects to challenge abuses of power. In this court case from Cairo in 1672, the commander of Muwaylīḥ fortress on the Hijaz coast, in what is now northern Saudi Arabia, is accused of aiding a pirate attack on a boat belonging to an Upper Egyptian merchant.

The merchant brought the lawsuit in al-Dīwān al-ʿĀlī, the council of the Ottoman governor of Egypt, which functioned as a sharīʿa court as well as an administrative council. When operating as a court, a qāḍī presided over the proceedings, as in any other sharīʿa court, but in many cases, such as this one, the governor attended as well.[1] The reason that the lawsuit was brought in Cairo is not only that the plaintiff was Egyptian. While the Ottoman Hijaz was governed by a semi-autonomous dynasty, its military administration was the responsibility of the governor of Egypt. Muḥammad Āghā, the fortress commander, was therefore subject to the jurisdiction of governor Ibrāhīm Pasha.

The military status of the defendant also helps explain the frustrating lack of a clear conclusion to this case. After the plaintiff provides evidence, the qāḍī finds Muḥammad Āghā guilty of aiding the pirate attack, but specifies no punishment or compensation. Instead, according to the document, he simply imposes “what the sharīʿa deems necessary.” As the defendant was a military officer, the qāḍī’s role in this case was simply to determine the facts and assign liability. Any penalties were likely decided by the military authorities, possibly by Ibrāhīm Pasha himself.

No registers of the Dīwān al-ʿĀlī survive from this period; the earliest extant register is from 1741. This case has survived in the form of a ḥujja, the certificate issued by the court to litigants at the conclusion of a case, a copy of which was made in the register. To be precise, the document is a certified copy of the ḥujja. It is now held at the Başbakanlık, the central Ottoman archives in Istanbul, which suggests that the case was sufficiently important to have been reported to the central government.

[1] On the function of the Dīwān al-ʿĀlī, see James E. Baldwin, Islamic Law and Empire in Ottoman Cairo (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017), 37-9, 63-71.

A Toledan man named Ibn Ḥātim was accused of being a heretic by sixty witnesses on the initiative of a fellow Toledan called Ibn Labīd al-Murābiṭ. The judge consulted with the local jurists, and following their legal opinions, he sentenced the accused to death. However, he granted the accused the right to challenge the witnesses (iʿdhār). Ibn Ḥātim escaped from Toledo and found refuge in the neighboring kingdom of Badajoz. Ibn Labīd went after him, carrying a copy of the judge’s sentence (tasjīl) along with the legal opinions of a number of non-Toledan jurists. In Badajoz, the ruler withdrew his support from Ibn Ḥātim, who fled again, this time to Cordoba. While in Cordoba, the “moral” police arrested Ibn Ḥātim, and the judge imprisoned him, giving him two months to prove his innocence. Unable to do so, Ibn Ḥātim was crucified alive. A number of legal issues arise in the course of this case: should the process of iʽdhār—the right to challenge witnesses—be granted to those accused of heresy (zandaqa)? Should refuge be granted to them? What happens with the estate or inheritance of an executed zindīq? Can a judge reverse a sentence given by another judge? The source is a collection of court cases by Andalusi scholar Ibn Sahl (d. 486/1093), and it is based on information directly available to the compiler, who was also a witness of most of the events described.

The plaintiff submitted that, on 24 June 2011, he and the defendant had entered into a murabahah financing agreement for a 2011 Daihatsu vehicle. Pursuant to the agreement, the plaintiff was to pay to the defendant IDR 198,060,000. This figure comprised the price of the vehicle, insurance, as well as other incidental costs. The parties agreed that the plaintiff would pay this sum in 52 monthly payments of IDR 3,301,000, which, for the first seven months, the plaintiff did. On the eighth month, however, a person borrowing the vehicle from the plaintiff did not return it, causing the plaintiff to report the vehicle stolen to the police. The plaintiff requested that the defendant grant him a grace period vis-à-vis repayments while the police conducted its investigation into the vehicle’s whereabouts. The defendant, however, reported the plaintiff to the police for dealing with the vehicle inappropriately by transferring it to a third party. (The defendant had perceived the vehicle to be a fiduciary security guarantee.) The plaintiff cited art 55 of Law No. 21 of 2008 on Shari’a Banking, claiming that the defendant should have instead sought to resolve the issue pursuant to shari’a principles, via deliberation (musyawarah), banking mediation, through the National Shari’a Arbitration Body (Badan Arbitrase Syariah Nasional – BASYARNAS), or, if necessary, the religious courts. Moreover, that the grounds invoked by the defendant in his police report repudiated the fiduciary principles of the agreement, and were contradictory to the principles of shari’a. In principle, the plaintiff argued, a murabahah agreement is a financing facility designed to benefit both parties. It is instigated by a capital holder (shahib al-mal) with another party in need via a sale-purchase transaction, clear that the sale price includes a profit for the capital holder and is to be repaid in cash or instalments (art 20(6) of Supreme Court Regulation No. 2 of 2008 on the Compilation of Shari’a Economy Laws). By repudiating the plaintiff’s request for a grace period, the plaintiff claimed that the defendant had, in fact, turned the agreement into a fiduciary security guarantee agreement. For pain and suffering, the plaintiff sought IDR 300 million.

Citing art 1338 of the Indonesian Civil Code (Kitab Undang-Undang Hukum Perdata), as well as the principle of Pacta Sunt Servanda (agreements must be kept), the defendant lodged an objection to the perceived absolute authority of the court to adjudicate the case. The defendant stated that both he and the plaintiff had agreed (in art 8(2) of their agreement) to resolve any disputes arising from the agreement before the Yogyakarta State Court (Pengadilan Negeri Yogyakarta), if initial deliberation proved unsuccessful. In other words, the parties had agreed to preclude the court from having jurisdiction over the case. To strengthen his claim regarding a civil court adjudicating a shari’a banking dispute, the defendant cited art 55(2) of Law No. 21 of 2008, including the Elucidation of art 55(2).

The defendant lodged three other objections:

1. that while the plaintiff had incorrectly filed his complaint against a Maman Suryanto, rather than the defendant, he still should have filed his complaint against the company represented by the defendant, rather than the defendant personally;
2. that the damages for pain and suffering sought by the plaintiff were not supported by sufficiently clear particulars and authentic evidence; and
3. that the plaintiff’s assertion that the defendant had transformed the agreement into a fiduciary guarantee agreement was premature in that it was contingent upon the police investigation into whether or not the plaintiff’s conduct constituted a criminal transfer of a fiduciary security guarantee (the vehicle), contrary to art 372 of the Indonesian Criminal Code (Kitab Undang-Undang Hukum Pidana) and art 36 of Law No. 42 of 1999 on Fiduciary Guarantees.

As part of his counterclaim, the defendant sought to have the court find that the plaintiff had defaulted on his repayments. The defendant claimed he had reminded the plaintiff several times, verbally and in writing, to make the eighth repayment, but the plaintiff had still defaulted. The defendant sought IDR 674,953,000 in material and immaterial loss, requested that the court guarantee this sum against the plaintiff’s current and future assets, as well as the Daihatsu vehicle, and sought an additional IDR 1 million for every day the plaintiff was late in making repayments.

First, the court noted that the defendant’s claim regarding the court’s judicial authority (or lack thereof) had been dismissed in an interlocutory decision on 17 June 2014. It assented to the defendant’s first objection, however, dismissing the case on the grounds that the defendant lacked the necessary legal standing, and that, therefore, the plaintiff should have submitted its claim against the company of the defendant, rather than against the defendant himself.