Art. XIII.—The Mohammedan Law of Evidence in Connection with the Administration of Justice to Foreigners

Extract

In a paper read to the Royal Asiatic Society towards the close of last session, I gave some account of the Mohammedan law of evidence in connection with the administration of justice in India. I now propose to offer a few observations on the same subject in its bearings on the administration of justice to foreigners in Mohammedan countries. As I shall have to contrast the notions of evidence which such persons may be supposed to derive from the laws of their own countries, with the Mohammedan system, and it may be convenient to run the contrast between only two systems at the same time, I will take our own countrymen as a type of foreigners in general, and I will assume that the ideas of evidence which they carry with them to other countries are the same as those which are prevalent in their own, and are derived from the practice of our courts of justice.