In this excerpt, ʿAbd al-Karīm Zaydān (d. 2014), an Iraqi scholar, gives a summary of the Ẓāhirī, Shāfiʿī, Ḥanbalī, Ḥanafī, and Mālikī viewpoints on the question of judicial knowledge—that is, whether it is permissible for a judge to rule according to his own knowledge in court—and evaluates their merits. In his chapter on circumstantial evidence in Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts, Hossein Modarressi cites this source to demonstrate the range of opinions held by Sunnī jurists on this issue.