MUSLIMS: THE COMMUNITYtook a remuneration for each case he judged. The survival of the
nonofficial aspect of the qii{it as ~akam may be seen in the claims that
Masriiq ibn al-Ajda' (d. 683) was qii{it in Kufa but accepted no pay
and that al-I:Iasan al-Ba~ri took no payment for his judgments. All
the same, it was the activity of these judges, whether official or not,
that established matters of procedure in early Islamic law, as may be
seen in Shurayl,t's scrupulous refusal to be both judge and witness in
the same case.^38
The location of judgment in the masjid was natural since it served
as a community center for Muslims. But this may have been influenced
by the practice in pre-Islamic Makka of administering justice at the
place called the Dar Nadwa beside the Ka'ba and may have been
encouraged by the practices of the other communities in Iraq. The
famous case of 'An's judgment from the minbar of the masjid in
Madina may provide a precedent. At Kufa, Shurayl,t gave judgment
in the masjid, but if it was rainy or cloudy he judged cases at home.
'Abdullah ibn I:Iabib as-Sulami (d. bet. 690 and 693) gave judgment
at his own place of worship. In the early eighth century, Abii 'Amr
ibn Sharal,til ash-Sha'bi gave judgment in the corner of the masjid at
Kufa near the elephant gate (Ar. biib al-{fI).39
The position of the qiicjf as administrator of the religious law for
the Islamic community fits the general pattern of religious justice which
already existed in Iraq in the late Sas ani an period. The prototype might
be said to be a combination of the pre-Islamic ~akam with the Magian
priest, the rabbi, or the bishop, but the only conscious comparison
Muslims made themselves was to the Magian priest. This may have
been because Magians and Muslims both held political power, and
the Magian priest and the qiicjf were both in a closer official relation-
ship to the state than the judges of other communities. But this com-
parison also reflects a growing recognition of the primarily religious
jurisdiction of the qiicjf. Muslim ibn Yasar said that if Abii Qilaba of
Basra (d. 722-23) were Persian, he would be mobadh mobadhiin, that
is qiicjf al-qucjiit, and a qiicjf in Egypt was compared to a hirbadh.
When the qii{it of Baghdad became supreme judge (qii{it al-qucjiit)
38 Balacihuri, Futu!J, p. 355; Ibn Khallikan, Biographical Dictionary, 1,620; Ibn Sa'd,
Tabaqiit, VI, 55-56, 94-95; VII(l), 66, 125; Tii;, p. 161; H. Lammens, Etudes sur le
regne du calife omaiyade Mo'awia le< (1908), p. 435; Tyan, "I:Iakam," El(2), Ill, 72;
idem, Organisation judiciaire, pp. 75, 76, 117.
39Diez, "Mas4i.id," pp. 317, 349; Ibn Sa'd, Tabaqiit, VI, 92, 97, 121, 175-76;
Mawardi, Ahkiim as-sultiiniyya, p. 74; Tyan, Organisation judiciaire, p. 277.