Judgement on one witness and the claimant's oath

Judgement on one witness and an oath means the judge rules for a claimant who brings a single witness and swears with him to his right. Al-Shafi'i opens the Book of Claims and Evidence in al-Umm with it, setting out where it applies and where it does not, and then gives a chapter on "the disagreement over the oath with a witness". ^{1 2}

Al-Shafi'i holds that the Prophet ruled on an oath with one witness only in what is owned as property passing from hand to hand, such as wealth belonging to one party that passes to the other. ³ So a claimant does not swear alongside two women, since for him women's testimony is accepted only together with a man except in matters men do not see, and the one who swears is not a witness. ¹ Nor does a man swear with his witness who claims marriage to a woman, since a husband does not own the woman's person as property is owned, but marriage only makes lawful to him what was forbidden; nor a woman who brings a witness to her divorce; nor a slave who brings a witness that his master freed him or contracted his freedom, since he does not own of himself what his master owned. ^{1 3} The same holds for hadd penalties and retaliation, and for one who brings a witness that he is an executor or agent, since executorship and agency give him no ownership. ^{3 4} But one who brings a witness against a man holding a slave that the slave is his may swear and take him, as may one who brings a witness that a man seized his umm al-walad and her child. ^{2 5}

Al-Shafi'i calls rejecting it despite its being established "a disagreement in which he went to excess", since the opponent rejected a sunna and accepted opinions that would have been lighter to reject. ² He argues that the opponent makes a seller swear categorically that he sold a slave free of the habit of running away, which the seller can know only on the balance of likelihood, so what the opponent accepts in oaths and testimony goes further than what he denies. ⁶

Testimony.