Muwatta, Book of Judgements (aqdiya)

The Book of Judgments (Aqdiya) is the twenty-second book of the Muwatta in the transmission of Yahya ibn Yahya al-Laythi from Malik ibn Anas, in the edition of Bashshar Awwad Ma'ruf (1997), in the second volume. It occupies pages 259 to 307 in the PDF pagination, and contains 111 numbered texts (2103–2213) in forty-one chapters. It concerns judgment and the means of proof: testimony and oath, and the rulings on pledge, hire, destruction of property, restitution, paternity and lost property. ^{1 2}

• Encouragement to judge by the truth, and on testimony and oath (2103–2122): the judge who rules by the truth, testimony and the testimony of one who has been punished for false accusation, and the oath with a single witness and its limits. ^{1 3}
• Claims, testimony of children, oaths on the pulpit and the closing of a pledge (2123–2142): what is judged in a claim, the testimony of children among themselves in wounds, breaking an oath on the pulpit, and rulings on pledges. ^{3 4}
• Hire, destruction, apostasy, paternity and the outcast (2143–2160): hiring a riding animal and misusing it, compelling women, the destruction of animals and food, the ruling on an apostate, on a man found with his wife by another man, on the outcast, and on the attribution of a child. ^{4 5}
• Paternity, the umm walad, cultivation, water, shared use, division, strays and charity (2161–2213): inheritance of a child acknowledged later, umm walad, reviving dead land, water, shared use, division of property, wild animals, defects, bee-hive honey, life gifts (umra), lost property, strayed animals, and a living person's charity on behalf of the dead. ^{5 2}

Malik rules by what the people of Medina practised, says "the matter with us" and "the Sunna" where a ruling is needed, returns disputes that the judge and the litigants cannot settle to evidence and oath, and distinguishes what is proved by one witness with an oath from what is proved only by two men. ^{3 6}

The editor quotes Ibn Abd al-Barr on whether the hadith of pre-emption is connected or cut off, on the hadith of the woman who was forced, and on the hadith of the single witness with an oath. He points out that many hadiths of the book are cut off in the transmissions of the Muwatta, and prefers most of these cases. ^{6 7}

Each text of the book has its own record. It names the highest narrator and the chapter, gives the substance of the report in the museum's own wording, and records the editor's takhrij where it is needed. See Judgment for the places where its rulings appear in the book. ¹