In this excerpt from his book of admonitions, Samarqandī details what will happen when divine judgment takes place: the resurrected will face God, who will ask them about what they did “letter by letter” (ḥarfan ḥarfan). In addition, Samarqandī provides several other names for the Day of Resurrection, including “the Day of Discussion” (yawm al-munāqasha), “the Day of Reckoning” (yawm al-muḥāsaba), and “the Day of Interrogation” (yawm al-musāʾala). In his chapter comparing earthly justice with heavenly justice in the early Islamic imagination in Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts, Christian Lange uses this source to draw parallels between judicial procedures in the heavenly court and those in the earthly court, pointing to Samarqandī’s description of various forms of verbal interaction between God and the resurrected. Samarqandī also presents a tradition in which God says to the resurrected that He has given them advice, so if they see good actions recorded in their registers they should praise God; if they find something else, they have no one to blame but themselves. On the basis of these passages, Lange argues that God’s judgment relies on the consultation of written evidence. He notes, however, that the full admission of written evidence by jurists in earthly courts was a later development in Islamic history.
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 primary sources and other material used in and related to the book.