Muḥammad b. Muzaffar b. Bakrān al-Ḥāmiwī Abū Bakr al-Shāshī. He was born in the year 400 AH. He learned fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) in his own town. Then, in the year 417 AH, he performed the ḥajj. He came to Baghdad. He studied fiqh from Abū Ṭayyib al-Ṭabarī. There he also learned ḥadīth. He testified in the assembly of Ibn al-Damīgānī. Ibn al-Damīgānī accepted his testimony. Qāḍī Abū Bakr secluded himself in his mosque for forty-five years. There he recited the Qurʾān to people, taught, and instructed in fiqh. When al-Damīgānī passed away, the vizier Abū Shujāʿ recommended him, and the caliph al-Muqtaḍī appointed him to the judiciary. He was the most virtuous and chaste of people. He did not accept gifts from the sultan or from others. He never changed his clothes or food. He did not take a salary for his judicial office. He left no deputy in his place. He personally resolved the cases. He showed no favoritism to any creature. When there was no bayyina (clear evidence), but the accusations had corroborating circumstances that justified them, he would beat some deniers so that they would confess their crimes. He himself said that Imām al-Shāfiʿī had statements indicating this. On this subject, he also composed a book. Ibn ʿUkayl supported his rulings based on circumstantial evidence and cited the following verse as proof:
“If the shirt is torn from the front, then she has told the truth, and he is one of the liars.” (Yūsuf 12:26).
Among the great fuqahāʾ (jurists) and disputants, Mušattep b. Aḥmad b. ʿUsāma al-Fargānī did not accept his testimony because he wore silk clothes and gold rings. The plaintiff said, “The sultan and his vizier Niẓām al-Mulk also wear silk clothes and gold rings,” to which Qāḍī Abū Bakr al-Shāshī replied:
“I swear by Allah, if the sultan and his vizier were to testify before me for a bundle of beans, I would reject their testimony as well.”
Once a virtuous jurist from his own madhhab testified before him, but when he did not accept his testimony, the jurist asked him:
– “My testimony is accepted by all judges, so why do you not accept it?”
– “I do not accept your testimony because I saw you naked washing yourself in the bathhouse without covering your ʿawra (intimate parts). For this reason, I will not accept it.”
Qāḍī Abū Bakr al-Shāshī died at the age of eighty-eight on Tuesday, the tenth of Shaʿbān of that year. He was buried near the grave of Ibn Shurayḥ.