Al-Mu'tadid's decree on returning the residue of inheritances to blood kin

With ten days of Jumada I left in 283 AH, al-Mu'tadid ordered letters sent to every province requiring that the surplus (radd) of inheritance shares be returned to the blood relatives (dhawu al-arham). The letters were carried out and read from the pulpits. The cause was that he asked the judges for a ruling. Abu Khazim, the judge, and Ali ibn Muhammad ibn Abi al-Shawarib wrote that the surplus should go to the blood relatives, and they stated that this was the consensus of the Companions, including Umar, Ali, Ibn Mas'ud and others. Zayd ibn Thabit alone differed, holding that it should go to the public treasury, and no one else followed him in this. Yusuf ibn Ya'qub issued a ruling in line with Zayd's view. Al-Mu'tadid ordered that what Abu Khazim had written be acted upon and Yusuf's ruling set aside, and he wrote to that effect to the provinces. ¹

The episode shows a legal ruling being made at the court of al-Mu'tadid: a collective consultation of the judges, two conflicting opinions (one attributed to the majority of the Companions and the other to Zayd ibn Thabit), and a letter read from the pulpits, so that the jurists' opinion became the ruler's command across the provinces. ¹