Forms and Functions of Legal Discourse Intertextuality in Works of Jewish and Islamic Law and Literature – Quotations, Allusions, References, and Plagiarism

The significance of the concept of ‘testimony’ permeates Islamic jurisprudence and it is invoked in Arabic literary texts as well. Islamic law emphasises the role of trustworthy legal witnesses in establishing the facts of any legal case and has developed a sophisticated system of ascertaining the integrity of witnesses and weighing the evidence offered by witnesses deemed acceptable. Indeed, within the context of examining the trustworthiness of legal witnesses, Muslim jurists sometimes explicitly discuss poets and poetry, not surprisingly in view of the fact that the Qurʾān characterises poets as mendacious, and many ḥadīṯs also stress the negative values attached to poetry. Truth versus lying (kaḏib) were also a preoccupation of Arabic literary critics and authors in assessing literary works, and popular attitudes in the pre-modern (and to some extent also the modern) Arab world have also tended to view literary fiction as a kind of mendacity. On the other hand, authentic verse lines would be not-quite-figuratively conceptualised as acceptable evidence (šawāhid) for linguistic accuracy, and the notion of ‘testimony’ could be used figuratively as a poetic conceit. More to the point, literary texts might serve as evidence for prosecuting certain types of offenders (e.g. supposed apostates or blasphemers), and certain genres in particular (especially hiǧāʾ and ġazal) have often been interpreted by jurists as cases of calumny that substantiate legal charges of false testimony (qaḏf). Offering a copious source of intertextual references at the interface of law and literature, legal discussions of the problem of potential qaḏf in poetry are the focus of this paper and can help clarify the various ways in which literary texts would be approached and handled by Muslim jurists.