Is There a ‘Jury’ in Islamic Law? - The Twelve-Witness Lafīfiyya Testimony - and the Limits of Judicial Discretion

Sep 21, 2026

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Legal historian John Makdisi argues that the English jury may originate in the lafīfiyya, a testimony of twelve ordinary Muslims whose concurring statements are treated as probative in Maghribi Islamic law. The article analyzes how Mālikī jurists developed the lafīfiyya as regional judicial practice (ʿamal) with conditions tied to qarāʾin and tawātur, contingent on a qāḍī’s assessment. Using early twentieth-century Moroccan sharīʿa case records, it shows judicial discretion balancing social reliability and doctrinal coherence by applying a threshold of logical plausibility rather than accepting testimony as binding fact. It concludes with a more contingent view of Islamic adjudicative practice that integrates textual discourse and social temporality.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages45

Reading Time1 h 53 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Introduction

Lafīfiyya and the “English jury” hypothesis

Mālikī juristic conception of lafīfiyya

Judicial application in Moroccan sharīʿa courts

Discretion and logical plausibility threshold

Conclusion

Utrecht University Repository | Title | Is There a ‘Jury’ in Islamic Law? The Twelve-Witness Lafīfiyya Testimony and the Limits of Judicial Discretion | | --- | --- | | Authors | Schriber, Ari | | Published in | Studia Islamica | | Publication Date | 2025-05-21 | | Link | [https://dspace.library. uu. nl/handle/1874/476978](https://dspace.library. uu. nl/handle/1874/476978) | | Citation | Schriber, A 2025 , ' Is There a ‘Jury’ in Islamic Law? The Twelve-Witness Lafīfiyya Testimony and the Limits of Judicial Discretion ' , Studia Islamica , vol. 120 , no. 1 , pp. 65-108. [https://doi.org/10.1163/19585705-12341511](https://doi.org/10.1163/19585705-12341511) | | Versions / License | Publisher version | | Rights | [https://www. uu. nl/en/university-library/license-and-reuse-conditions](https://www. uu. nl/en/university-library/license-and-reuse-conditions) | Studia Islamica 120 (2025) 65-108 [brill.com/si](brill.com/si) Is There a ‘Jury’ in Islamic Law? The Twelve-Witness Lafīfiyya Testimony and the Limits of Judicial Discretion Ari Schriber | ORCID: 0000-0002-5805-6942 Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Utrecht University, The Netherlands [a.d.schriber@uu.nl](a.d.schriber@uu.nl) Published online 21 May 2025 Abstract Legal historian John Makdisi provocatively argued that the “English jury” may originate in the so-called lafīfiyya: a testimony of twelve ordinary Muslims whose concurring statements are considered probative in Islamic law of the Maghrib. This article examines the juristic conception and judicial application ofthe lafīfiyya. It first demonstrates how jurists of the Mālikī school (maḏhab) of Islamic law elaborated the lafīfiyya as regional “judicial practice”( ʿamal) with stipulations that invoked wellestablished Islamic legal concepts like circumstantial evidence (qarāʾin) and quorum (tawātur)–concepts contingent on a qāḍī’s assessment of them. The second part of the paper uses sharīʿa court case records from the first half of twentieth-century Morocco to examine judicial treatment of the lafīfiyya in practice. I argue that qāḍīs varyingly balanced their invocation of social discretion and textual stipulation to ensure that the lafiyya remained both socially reliable and doctrinally coherent. I focus especially on discretionary judicial assessment of social and/or logical “implausibility” of lafīfiyya testimonies through three overarching instances: urban vs. rural witnesses, testimonial identification and knowledge, and circumstances of bearing witness. In all cases, I show that Moroccan qāḍīs did not necessarily accept the witnesses’ statements as binding fact as a jury; rather, they preserved the lafīfiyya’s normative validity by upholding the threshold of logical plausibility. Ultimately, I leverage this discussion to argue for a more contingent understanding of Islamic adjudicative practice inclusive of both textual discourse and social temporality. Published with license by Koninklijke Brill BV | doi:10.1163/19585705-12341511 © Ari Schriber, 2025 | ISSN: 0585-5292 (print) 1958-5705 (online) This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license. 66 Schriber Keywords Islamic law – testimony – evidence – Mālikī school – sharīʿa courts – Maghrib – Morocco Résumé L’historien du droit John Makdisi a soutenu un brin provocateur que le « jury anglais » pourrait trouver son origine dans ce quel’on appelle lafīfiyya : un témoignage de douzemusulmans ordinaires dont les déclarations concordantes sont considérées commeprobantes dans le droit islamique du Maghreb. Cet article examine la conception juridique et l’application judiciaire de la lafīfiyya. Il montre d’abord comment les juristes de l’école malikite de droit islamique ont élaboré la lafīfiyya en tant que « pratique judiciaire » ( ʿamal) régionale avec des stipulations qui invoquent des concepts juridiques islamiques bien établis comme lapreuve circonstancielle (qarāʾin) et le quorum (tawā

FAQs

What does the lafīfiyya refer to in Islamic legal discourse?

It refers to a testimony composed of twelve ordinary Muslims whose concurring statements are treated as probative in the Maghrib under certain juristic understandings.

How do Mālikī jurists conceptualize the lafīfiyya?

Mālikī jurists elaborated it as regional judicial practice (ʿamal) with stipulations drawing on legal concepts such as circumstantial evidence (qarāʾin) and quorum (tawātur) contingent on a qāḍī’s evaluation.

How did Moroccan qāḍīs treat lafīfiyya testimony in practice?

They did not always treat witnesses’ statements as binding fact as a jury would; instead, they preserved normative validity by upholding a threshold of logical plausibility.

Sep 21, 2026

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