Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - Mohammedanism (1916).djvu/106

 Rh 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 Islâm, were usually included. But as the qâdhîs 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 qâdhî court were to be drawn, considered no words too strong to express their contempt for the office of qâdhî. In handbooks of the Law of all times, the qâdhîs “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 qâdhîs two are destined to Hell. Anecdotes of famous scholars who could not be prevailed upon by imprisonment or castigation to accept the office of qâdhî 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 qâdhi did not spare him