ABSTRACT
The earliest works of Islamic law reflect both oral and literate influences in their scant references to the qualifications required for proper legal judgments. On the one hand, there is evidence that correct judgment was considered to be somehow spiritually guided. Malik cites the following approvingly:
[It was] related to me from Yahya ibn Sa?id from Sa?id ibn alMusayyab that ?Umar ibn al-Khattab [the second caliph] had a dispute brought to him between a Muslim and a Jew. ?Umar thought that the Jew was in the right and gave judgement in his favor. The Jew said to him, “By Allah! you have judged correctly!” So ?Umar ibn al-Khattab struck him with his whip and said, “How can you be sure?” The Jew said to him, “We find that there is no judge who judges correctly but that there is an angel on his right side and an angel on his left side who guide him and give him success in the truth as long as he is with the truth. When he leaves the truth, they rise and leave him.”1
