In this excerpt from Quḍāt Qurṭuba, the Andalusian scholar Khushanī (d. 361/971) reports an anecdote about the judge of Cordoba, Yaḥyā b. Maʿmar (d. 229/843), who, during a religious festival in Cordoba, ordered his assistants to move his carpet forward so that the notables (ashrāf al-nās) and the officials of the Umayyad administration (khidmat al-sulṭān) who had hurried to take up positions near the carpet were left behind. His action prompted admiration and much talk as a clever trick with which Yaḥyā b. Maʿmar outwitted the powerful in favor of average Muslims.In another version of the same account reported by Qāḍī ʿĪyāḍ in hisTartīb al-madārik, the judge, by surrounding himself with people more interested in the religious duty he was performing than in his person, effectively rid himself of his opponents, who fell victim to the cleverness of the trick. In her chapter in Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts, Maribel Fierro makes reference to the two versions of the anecdote to emphasize the comedic nature of the judge’s actions and the scene as a whole, and to develop the character of the judge.
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.