In his commentary on the legal treatise of his teacher Shāfiʿī, Muzanī (d. 264/878) appears to uphold his teacher’s cautious stance on allowing translation in the courtroom. Following Shāfiʿī verbatim, Muzanī warns of the dangers of litigation in a foreign language and asserts the need for two trustworthy individuals to serve as both translators and witnesses in any case involving a litigant speaking a foreign tongue. In his chapter in Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts, Mahmood Kooria uses the example of Muzanī to show that Shāfiʿī’s opinion on translation and litigation in a foreign language went almost unchallenged throughout the ninth and tenth centuries.
This source is part of the Online Companion to the book Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts, ed. Intisar A. Rabb and Abigail Krasner Balbale(ILSP/HUP 2017)—a collection of sources and other material used in and related to the book.