In these excerptsfromQuḍāt Qurṭuba, Khushanī shows that judges could accept or condone joking and impious conduct. Khushanī discusses the judge al-Aʿshā, who not only liked joking but also took a lenient view of sinful behavior such as wine drinking. Khushanī points out that al-Aʿshā was not alone in holding this view: other scholars who served as judges were also described has having held the same attitudes. In her chapter in Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts, Maribel Fierro uses these passages to demonstrate that an inclination to endorse fun and condone impious behavior did not prevent a scholar from being accepted and respected as judge, nor from acting accordingly in court.
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.