of the qadhis.  The laws of marriage, family, and inheritance remained, however, their inalienable territory; and a number of other matters, in which too great a religious interest was involved to leave them to the caprice of the governors or to the customary law outside Islam, were usually included.  But as the qadhis were appointed by the governors, they were obliged in the exercise of their office to give due consideration to the wishes of their constituents; and moreover they were often tainted by what was regarded in Mohammedan countries as inseparable from government employment:  bribery.

On this account, the canonists, although it was from their ranks that the officials of the qadhi court were to be drawn, considered no words too strong to express their contempt for the office of qadhi.  In handbooks of the Law of all times, the qadhis “of our time" are represented as unscrupulous beings, whose unreliable judgments were chiefly dictated by their greed.  Such an opinion would not have acquired full force, if it had not been ascribed to Mohammed; in fact, the Prophet, according to a tradition, had said that out of three qadhis two are destined to Hell.  Anecdotes of famous scholars who could not be prevailed upon by imprisonment or castigation to accept the office of qadhis are innumerable.  Those who succumbed to the temptation forfeited the respect of the circle to which they had belonged.

I once witnessed a case of this kind, and the former friends of the qadhi did not spare him their bitter reproaches.  He remarked that the judge, whose duty it was to maintain the divine law, verily held a noble office.  They refuted this by saying that this defence was admissible only for earlier and better times, but not for “the qadhis of our time.”  To which he cuttingly replied “And ye, are ye canonists of the better, the ancient time?” In truth, the students of sacred science are just as much “of our time” as the qadhis.  Even in the eleventh century the great theologian Ghazali counted them all equal.[1] Not a few of them give their authoritative advice according to the wishes of the highest bidder or of him who has the greatest influence, hustle for income from pious institutions, and vie with each other in a revel of casuistic subtleties.  But among those scholars there are and always have been some who, in poverty and simplicity, devote their life to the study of Allah’s law with the sole object of pleasing him; among the qadhis such are not easily to be found.  Amongst the other state officials the title of qadhi may count as a spiritual one, and the public may to a certain extent share this reverence; but in the eyes of the pious and of the canonists such glory is only reflected from the clerical robe, in which the worldling disguises himself.

[Footnote 1:  Ghazali, Ihya, book i., ch. 6, quotes the words of a pious scholar of the olden time:  “The ‘ulama’ will (on the Day of judgment) be gathered amongst the prophets, but the qadhis amongst the temporal rulers.”  Ghazali adds “alike with these qadhis are all those canonists who make use of their learning for worldly purposes.”]