Judges. The exercise of legal and judicial decision making was at first in the hands of Muslim political rulers representing the khalifah, who in turn represented the authority of the Prophet. The Prophet had exercised the judicial function in his own community exclusively by himself; his initial role on arriving in Madinah had been as judge for the disparate communities of that oasis (Quran 4: 58; 5: 42-43, 48-49). Under the khalifahs, judges were originally legal advisers to the governors. When the governors became too busy with other affairs to handle legal cases themselves and when caseloads increased in proportion to the growing number of Muslims and the multiplication of legal problems in a society that was becoming more complex, the governors transferred jurisdiction over legal cases to the legal advisers completely. The legal advisers who became judges were people who were learned...