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Ibn Wahb (d. 197/812), an Egyptian student of Mālik (d. 179/795), probes the legal implications of communal bias among Christians and Jews in the commentary. He writes that the presence of enmity between Jews and Christians results in a prohibition of the sale of slaves from one group to the other, as well as the prohibition of members of one group testifying against individuals from the other. In 8:425, Ibn Abī Zayd (d. 386/996) examines the positions of jurists on the admissibility of non-Muslim testimony in court. He relays the strict view of Mālikī jurist Ibn al-Qāsim (d. 191/806), which affirms the view of Ibrāhīm al-Nakhaʿī (d. 96/715), that non-Muslim testimony is wholly barred on the basis of Quranic verse 65:2. Ibn al-Qāsim indicates that the earlier Quranic verse 5:106—which allowed non-Muslims to serve as witnesses for a Muslim’s last will—has been abrogated by the verse 65:2. Ahmed El Shamsy employs this source in Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts to address the broader legal implications of individual or communal biases' influence on the admissibility of courtroom testimony.

This source is part of the Online Companion to the book Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts (ILSP/HUP 2017)—a collection of sources and other material used in and related to the book.  

In this excerpt from his legal treatise, the Hanafī jurist al-Sarakhsī relays how the imperial grand judge Yaḥyā b. Aktham (d. 242/857) upheld the Ḥanafī position regarding the eligibility of non-Muslims to serve as witnesses. Yaḥyā was said to have permitted non-Muslim testimony against any other non-Muslims. He explained his position, writing that, “consulting the opinions of the earliest jurists, I have found no one forbidding the testimony of the protected people, except two [conflicting] opinions attributed to Rabīʿa.” Further, Sarakhsī relays the Ḥanafī criterion for witness eligibility which developed in a specific hierarchical framework. Muslims were placed above non-Muslims and, within that, locals above outsiders (dhimmī vs. ḥarbī). As Ahmed El Shamsy notes in Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts, this framework equates the right to give testimony with the right to demonstrate legal authority (wilāya) over another.

This source is part of the Online Companion to the book Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts (ILSP/HUP 2017)—a collection of sources and other material used in and related to the book.  

Abū Yūsuf (d. 182/798) records a statement attributed to the Caliph ʿUmar I (d. 23/644) on the legal standing of non-Muslims which considers "all of unbelief" to be a single community in contradistinction to the community of Muslim believers and concludes that “neither do we inherit from them, nor they from us.” In this respect, non-Muslim and Muslim communities operate under separate legal statuses. Abū Yūsuf also relates in the same text the noteworthy opinion of Ibrāhīm al-Nakhaʿī (d. 96/715), an Iraqi jurist and forebearer of the Hanafī school, regarding non-Muslim testimony.  Nakhaʿī opined that the verse of Q. 65:2 functioned to proscribe non-Muslim testimony and could be understood to abrogate the allowance of non-Muslim testimony in verse 5:106. Ibrāhīm’s opinion differed from that of Companion Abū Mūsā al-Ashʿarī (d. between 42/662 and 53/673), among others, who had relied on the Quranic verse 5:106 to specifically permit non-Muslims testimony to record the last will of a Muslim traveler who dies away from home. Ḥammād b. Salama (d. 167/784) distinguished all non-Muslims as one community discrete from Muslims in his argument that non-Muslims were permitted to testify against any other non-Muslims, regardless of confessional lines. Ahmed El Shamsy notes the legal premise of non-Muslims' and Muslims' separate legal status in Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts.

This source is part of the Online Companion to the book Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts (ILSP/HUP 2017)—a collection of sources and other material used in and related to the book. 

Herein, Ibn Rushd I (d. 520/1126) reviews the prohibition of cross-confessional testimony. He clarifies that cross-confessional testimony is specifically forbidden between Christian and Jews, due to the historical presence of enmity between the groups, but is generally permissible in other cases such as among Zoroastrians. In Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts, Ahmed El Shamsy surveys Ibn Rushd as a springboard to discussing the admissibility of testimony which might be prohibited on a case-by-case basis if enmity is known to exist.   

This source is part of the Online Companion to the book Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts (ILSP/HUP 2017)—a collection of sources and other material used in and related to the book.  

In this excerpt of his compendium of law-related ḥadīth reports, al-Ṣanʿānī (d.211/827) relays prophetic sources on various topics, among them an ambiguous ḥadīth on the criterion for witness eligibility, which states that, “No community may testify against another, except the community of Muḥammad.” Ahmed El Shamsy notes in Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts that this verse is legally ambiguous. Later authorities debate its correct interpretation. While it is widely agreed that non-Muslims are ineligible to serve as witnesses against Muslims, some argue that in certain circumstances a scripturalist (generally defined as Jews and Christians) might testify against another scripturalist. Notably, Ṣanʿānī is the only source which transmits this ḥadīth, and it is not included in the work of his contemporary Ibn Abī Shayba.

This source is part of the Online Companion to the book Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts (ILSP/HUP 2017)—a collection of sources and other material used in and related to the book.