In the following list the earliest qāḍīs are enumerated under the provinces or urban areas where they allegedly held office. The geographical names are arranged in alphabetical order and in each centre the qāḍīs are listed in roughly chronological order (in as far as this could be ascertained). It will be noticed that sometimes also judges who lived during the second half of the third/ninth century will be listed, this in contrast to the procedure followed in Chapter 2. I thought it better at times to include a late judge than no judge at all. The circumstances of these late judges may, after all, give an idea of how their predecessors (if any) had gone about their business.

I certainly do not claim that I unearthed all the qāḍīs to be found in the sources, but I did find a great many more than in the admirable study on the development of the Shāfi'ite madhhab which claims to include also many of the earliest judges belonging to other madhāhib (Heinz Halm, Die Ausbreitung der šāfi'tischen Rechts-schule von den Anfängen bis zum 8./14. Jahrhundert, Wiesbaden 1974, in Beihefte zum Tübinger Atlas des vorderen Orients, Reihe B, no. 4, henceforth quoted as Halm). It will appear that I have even been fortunate in locating qāḍīs for cities that are not even listed in Halm.