The story of the supreme judge Yahya Ibn Al-Aktham:

 

Firstly: tyrannical rulers are the source of corruption even if they claimed to be reformers (the Abbasid caliph Al-Maamoun as an example of this):

   In a previous chapter in PART I of this book, we have referred to the conversation between the Abbasid caliph Al-Maamoun and the judge Bishr Ibn Al-Waleed, and how the caliph had lamented the injustices committed by judges in his era. It is noteworthy that the supreme judge during the reign of Al-Maamoun was a man named Yahya Ibn Al-Aktham, whose grave injustices were the talk of people of Baghdad at the time  (Al-Muntazim, 10/61-62). We assert here in this chapter the fact that political tyranny is the cause and root of the injustices, promiscuity, deviation, corruption, and venal nature of judges. In other words, tyrannical rulers are the primary culpable ones who caused the loss of justice in their State, and who caused their cronies, statesmen, viziers, henchmen, scribes, governors, judges, etc. to tyrannize and commit injustices instead of achieving justice. In fact, the caliph Al-Maamoun, who in this story laments the loss if justice in his State and blames judges for this, was an inveterate liar and a hypocrite who loved to overpraise himself before his courtiers and retinue members and historians who would write about him in his presence. This occurred so many times that he once overpraised himself as a lover of pardoning and forgiveness to the extent that he feared God will not reward him for it as he loved forgiveness for its own sake! This hypocrite of a caliph put to death in 200 A.H. a man named Yahya Ibn Amer Ibn Ismail because he preached and sermonized A-Maamoun and told him that since justice was lost, he deserved to be deemed and titled as Prince/Emir of Disbelievers, not Prince/Emir of Believers (Al-Muntazim, 10/65 and 86). In fact, the caliph Al-Maamoun, who praised himself repeatedly as a patient man who debates with scholars within an atmosphere of freedom and equality, imposed his own view on all men in his empire regarding the Quran as a 'created' item, and wrote his written will to his successor, Al-Motassim, to go on imposing this theological view and to go on persecuting those who disagree with that strange opinion, after his death. Among the injustices of Al-Maamoun was his keeping the supreme judge, Yahya Ibn Al-Aktham, in his post despite his being scandalized as the most famous well-known homosexual immoral rake in the Abbasid Era, though homosexual practices are sinful in the Quran. In fact, Yahya Ibn Al-Aktham invoked the wrath of Al-Maamoun, shortly before the death of the latter, only for one reason: when Yahya Ibn Al-Aktham disagreed with the caliph regarding the view that the Quran is 'created'. This means that Al-Maamoun himself was the root and source of all corruption during his reign, not because of his character traits (indeed, he was never promiscuous or lacked morals) but because of tyrannical rule and absolute power he inherited and praised. Indeed, absolute power and authority within tyrannical rule are necessarily and inevitably leading to corruption on all levels, including the judicial authority. In 218 A.H., Al-Maamoun was in the city of Al-Raqa, from where he sent a letter to one of his men, namely Ishaq Ibn Ibrahim, to force all narrators of hadiths, scholars, and judges to declare their belief in the idea that the Quran was 'created' while declaring those who opposed such view as infidels and heretics. When Al-Maamoun was dying in bed in Al-Raqa, he dictated his scribe to write his last will to his successor and brother, Al-Motassim, about many missions to perform and to complete, among them was to go on imposing the view on everyone that the Quran is 'created'. This last will of Al-Maamoun included also that the leader of Al-Mu'tazala philosophers and thinkers, Ibn Abou Dawood, must be nearer and closer to Al-Motassim among his palace retinue members, and this thinker/leader was the one who invented the fatwa that the Quran is 'created' and made Al-Maamoun impose such a view on all Sunnite scholars and judges, and this caused Al-Maamoun to give Yahya Ibn Al-Aktham the sack and to tell Al-Motassim to reject and curse Ibn Al-Aktham who mistreated people when he was appointed as a supreme judge (History of Al-Tabari, 8/631 and 647-649). This shows Al-Maamoun as if he was never pleased with injustices and deviations of Yahya Ibn Al-Aktham and that he urged Al-Motassim to fire him because of his corruption and taking bribes. This attitude of Al-Maamoun was not true; he kept Yahya Ibn Al-Aktham in his job as the supreme judge of Baghdad for many years and overlooked his corruption, promiscuity, venal attitude, and mistreatment of people, but he was infuriated when Yahya Ibn Al-Aktham disagreed with him in the notion of the Quran being 'created', and this led the furious Al-Maamoun to claim in his death bed that he (suddenly) discovered the corruption and injustices of Ibn Al-Aktham. In fact, few lines without details are mentioned about injustices of Ibn Al-Aktham as the supreme judge of Baghdad, but his biography in history books focused on his homosexuality (telling that he was a homosexual who played the 'active' role with hairless effeminate male youths). We write here in this chapter about his based on the lines written about him in  "History of Baghdad" (14 volumes) by Al-Baghdadi who died in 463 A.H., who lived nearer to the era of Ibn Al-Aktham (160 – 242 A.H.), and lines authored by Ibn Al-Jawzy who died in 597 A.H. and who copied lines in his book Al-Muntazim (18 volumes) about Ibn Al-Aktham from Al-Baghdadi, and what Al-Tabari in his "History of Al-Tabari" (10 volumes) has mentioned within few lines about Ibn Al-Aktham in 8/622, 625, 649, and 652 and 9/188, 190, 197, and 233.  We remind readers here that promiscuity and immorality were widespread and among the social norms and habits at that time during the Abbasid Era, and even Al-Maamoun complained that most judges accepted bribes and bought many female slaves, concubines, and enslaved young boys to serve their carnal lusts and appetites, and all judges were controlled and governed by the supreme judge of Baghdad at the time: Ibn Al-Aktham. The only difference between him and the other judges that they were not as famous as he was and never scandalized and exposed like him, as Ibn Al-Aktham was on spotlight most of his life. Another difference was that judges had sex, secretly and never bragged of it, with male effeminate slaves/boys as well as female slaves/concubines, whereas Ibn Al-Aktham never approached women sexually, as he preferred young hairless effeminate lads only, whether they were enslaved or not.     

 

Secondly: homosexuality as a dominant social habit in the culture of the Abbasid Era, not just linked to Ibn Al-Aktham:

  It is a historical fact that homosexuality spread among the known and less-known Sunnite imams and sheikhs of fiqh and religious scholars during the Abbasid Era, and no one felt ashamed of that or felt that it was a disgrace to talk and write (in verse and prose) about sexual orientation in public. This is one of the major differences between the Abbasid Era and our modern era as Arabs; many Sunnite clergymen in our modern age are addicted to gay sex but in secret and would not show it in public, while keeping the appearance of piety in the media, whereas Sunnite clergymen of the Abbasid Era were more frank and outspoken. Let us quote below some facts of history about this issue.

1- Until the era of the Umayyad caliph Al-Waleed Ibn Abdul-Malik (died in 96 A.H.), no one talked in public about homosexual practices, as this caliph had purportedly said that if it had not been for God mentioning in the Quran the story of the people of Lot, he would not have known that such homosexual practices are possible  (Al-Siyouti, p. 358).

2- In general, promiscuity and sexual immorality used to occur by encouragement of clergymen, sheikhs, and religious scholars of fiqh serving the Umayyad dynasty, so that people would be busy having sex and making love without having the time and spirit of rebellion or revolting against the Umayyads. It is a historical fact that when the Umayyad dynasty members assassinated (by poison) the pious and just caliph Omar Ibn Abdul-Aziz Ibn Marwan to get rid of him after he ruled for short period of time (two years and five months from 99 to 101 A.H.), his successor and son of his paternal uncle Yazeed Ibn Abdul-Malik admired the ways of his predecessor Omar Ibn Abdul-Aziz and desired to imitate him. But the rest of the Umayyad dynasty, who feared another just pious ruler who would cause the collapse of their caliphate and authority, enlisted the help of 40 of their hired religious scholars to urge Yazeed to lead a promiscuous life and to get busy with having sex with so many female slaves and concubines. These corrupt sheikhs asserted to the young caliph, Yazeed, that caliphs will never be judged or tormented by God in the Hereafter for their sins! Thus, Yazeed spent his caliphate years in wine-drinking and having sex daily until he died in 105 A.H., thus he was tempted by corrupt religious scholars who made him lose his life in this world and the next (Al-Siyouti, p. 392 and 393). Later on, his son Al-Waleed Ibn Yazeed, became a caliph in 125 A.H., and succeeded his uncle the caliph Hisham Ibn Abdul-Malik. The caliph Al-Waleed Ibn Yazeed was a young promiscuous young man addicted to excessive wine-drinking habits, and he usually desired women who were widows of his father and mothers of his siblings and actually forced these women to serve him in bed. This young caliph who died in 126 A.H. after ruling for one year, was actually murdered; he was also an atheist, as he announced his desire to visit the Kaaba Mosque during the pilgrimage season to drink wine on top of the roof of the Kaaba, but he could not do so after he entered Mecca as he feared that zealous people might kill him for desecrating the Kaaba. People hate such a rake of a caliph who neglected his duties as a ruler, and because he put to death the tribal leader Khaled Al-Qasry of Yemen, those Yemenite tribes revolted against him and this revolt ended up in the murder of the Umayyad caliph Al-Waleed Ibn Yazeed, and his Yemenite murderers cut off his head and put it in a spear to roam streets with it, announcing to people the murder of the tyrant. When his brother Suleiman Ibn Yazeed saw such a scene, he told people in public that his murdered brother deserved it, as he was promiscuous and wine-drinking atheist and that he once tried to convince Suleiman to have sex with his while Suleiman would be playing the passive role and Al-Waleed Ibn Yazeed the active role! This was the very first mention of homosexual practices in the history accounts of the Muhammadans (Al-Tabari, 7/210, 231, 246, and 251), (Al-Muntazim, 7/236 and 249), and (Al-Siyouti, p. 399). 

3- During the Abbasid Era, homosexual practices were no longer rare cases, but it spread like an epidemic for those looking for more levels of ''different'' carnal pleasures. The Abbasid poet Abou Nawwas was known for his erotic poems that glorify and idealizes gay sex with men, and some Abbasid caliphs preferred men to women in bed in a sort of addiction that made people ridicule those caliphs. The first of homosexual caliphs who liked to have sex with effeminate boys and lads instead of women was Muhammad Al-Amin, son and successor or Harun Al-Rasheed, who ruled for 4 years, 8 months, and 5 days (193 – 197 A.H.). Because people usually imitate the social and sexual habits of their rulers, homosexuality became part of normal social habits that were considered ''legitimate'' and ''ordinary'' during the Abbasid Era, and slave-traders would procure lads and boys and train them how to sexually please their potential masters, and some of these effeminate lads would work within prostitution as rent boys in taverns and pubs in Baghdad and other cities, as we know from the writings of the Arab philosopher Al-Jahiz. This means that before the emergence of the homosexual promiscuous judge Ibn Al-Aktham, the homosexuality of the caliph Al-Amin, son of Harun Al-Rasheed and his wife Zubayda, was the talk of every town during his reign, and he was known for buying many lads and effeminate boys from slave merchants at high prices, and he would spend hours with them day and night whether he was resting, eating, drinking, ruling, sleeping, playing, etc. and his seraglio had no women, female slaves, or concubines at all. In fact, history tells us that Al-Amin fell in love with his favorite effeminate lad, named Kawthar, and a poet had composed these lines about such a period during the Abbasid caliphate:

The caliphate seems to be lost by the injustice of a grand-vizier,

The promiscuity of the caliph, and the ignorance of advisors

The homoerotic manners of the caliph are very strange

And more strange still are those of the grand-vizier

The caliph has the active role, the grand-vizier the passive one

This is why affairs of the caliphate are upside down!

 

 When the homosexual caliph Al-Amin was assassinated, his  murderer (and elder half-brother) Al-Maamoun succeeded him, and when he appointed the homosexual judge Yahya Ibn Al-Aktham as the supreme judge, people were busy with his story as a rake and as an unjust and unfair judge and forgot about the homoerotic stories and adventures of Al-Amin (Al-Tabari, 8/508) and (Al-Siyouti, p. 301).  

4- After the death of Yahya Ibn Al-Aktham, another religious scholar was known for his homosexuality, namely, the judge Muhammad Ibn Dawood Al-Dhahiry (died in 297 A.H.), whose father was Dawood Ibn Ali Al-Dhahiry, a famous judge and scholar of Sunnite fiqh in Iraq, who established Al-Dhahiry doctrine the focused on the literal sense and outer face-value of religious Sunnite texts and the Quranic verses and refused to interpret them in any way using ijtihad thinking. This father noticed the diligence and intelligence of his son, M. Ibn Dawood, and the son succeeded his late father in being a religious scholar of fiqh who issued fatwas and a judge who issued verdicts. Even in his young age, M. Ibn Dawood in Baghdad led all groups of narrators of hadiths in Iraq. In the book titled "History of Baghdad" (14 volumes) by Al-Khateeb Al-Baghdadi, we read the biography of M. Ibn Dawood within his history of Baghdad and its people (see 5/256 No. 2750). This 14-volume book is a seminal authoritative one in history of the Abbasid Era and its figures from the year in which the Abbasid caliphate was established until the 5th century A.H., and authors of other books copied from it many facts and biographies (including the one of M. Ibn Dawood), such as Ibn Al-Jawzy in his book titled "Al-Muntazim", Ibn Katheer in his "History of Ibn Katheer", Al-Safady in his "Al-Wafi Bil-Waffeyyat", Al-Dhahaby in his "Al-Eibar", Ibn Khalkan in his "Waffeyyat Al-Aayan", Ibn Emad Al-Hanbali in his "Shazarat Al-Dhahab", and Ibn Al-Nadeem in his "Al-Fihrest". We read in the book titled "History of Baghdad" that M. Ibn Dawood fell in love with a rich adolescent effeminate lad from Persian city of Isfahan, named M. Ibn Jamei, nicknamed Ibn Zukhruf, and Ibn Zukhruf used to spend money lavishly on Ibn Dawood, and this was the first time that a 'passive' homosexual would spend money on his 'active' homosexual paramour, not the other way round as typically in this era. It was said that at one time, Ibn Zukhruf went to the public bath, and when he got out of it and went home, he saw his reflection on a mirror to admire his own physical beauty for a while, then he covered his face with a silk handkerchief. When Ibn Dawood came to him by night, he was surprised to see him covering his face with a silk handkerchief and asked him for why he did so. When Ibn Zukhruf told Ibn Dawood that he admired his own reflection in the mirror so much, after he got out of the public bath, that he decided not to allow anyone to see his face before his paramour, Ibn Dawood fainted out of love and desire. Once Ibn Dawood was at his office where he held councils as a judge to issue verdicts and fatwas and to narrate hadiths, and a man presented him a parchment containing a question written in poetical lines of verse:

O Ibn Dawood! You honorable judge and scholar of Iraq

Give me your view on those whose eyelids wound their paramours

Are they to be wounded with spears in retribution for love

Or spilling of the blood of their paramours is allowed?

M. Ibn Dawood wrote this reply to the man, also in lines of poetry:

How could my humble person give you a fatwa

While I was slain by darts of ardent desire and parting?

But I would say that slain by union with the beloved is better

For me than being slain by being distanced from the beloved 

  We know from historical accounts that Ibn Dawood romantically and physically loved Ibn Zukhruf until his death, as this gay love brought about his early death. As Ibn Dawood was in his death-bed, he was visited by his friend Naftaweih the well-known Arabic grammarian, to ask about his health, and Ibn Dawood told him that his excessive sex with his loved one was the cause of his physical sickness and ailments that would send him to an early grave. 

5- If this was the case before, during, and after the lifetime and era of Ibn Al-Aktham, what about his contemporaries among religious scholars? Similar to Ibn Al-Aktham in homosexuality was another scholar and narrator of hadiths named Muhammad Ibn Munazer (died in 198 A.H.), who was at first a very pious ascetic hermit and worshipper dwelling for consecutive days inside the mosque, but once he fell in love with a pretty, polite, richly dressed youth named Abdul-Majid Ibn Abdul-Wahab, who returned his sentiments and loved him back, M. Ibn Munazer bid farewell to asceticism and piety and led a promiscuous life with his beloved (Al-Muntazim, 10/71). This was during the Abbasid Era. 

6- During the Mameluke Era, the Sufi religion dominated the religious and social spheres, and homosexuality turned from socially acceptable practices into religious duty with its own legislations! Sufis at the time considered heterosexual and homosexual physical love as a way to be at union with God! more details on that will appear in our Mameluke Sufism encyclopedia that will be published on our website.  

 

Thirdly: Yahya Ibn Al-Aktham (died in 243 A.H.) as an example of manipulating the position of judges to serve the whims of religious scholars:

1- Who was Ibn Al-Aktham: his full name was Yahya Ibn Al-Aktham Ibn Muhammad Ibn Kutun Ibn Samaan Al-Tamimi whose great-grandfather was Al-Aktham Ibn Seify, and he narrated many hadiths quoted by Al-Bokhary, Al-Fadl Ibn Moussa Ibn Al-Shaybany, and other authors.

2- His power and authority during the reign of the caliph Al-Maamoun: Ibn Al-Aktham grew in fame as an erudite judge and as a religious scholar of fiqh, who was very sharp and intelligent with deep knowledge, and Al-Maamoun drew him closer in his palace court as one of his favorite retinue members, and soon afterwards, the caliph appointed him as the supreme judge of Baghdad and he thus controlled all the judicial authority in the Abbasid Empire, and all viziers and governors used to seek his views on almost everything related to political affairs and governance of the Empire, as his opinions were valued and honored as more important than the caliph's, because of his full power and authority, to the extent that people used to say that no one was deemed more powerful and redoubtable than caliphs except two men: Ibn Dawood and Ibn Al-Aktham.  

3- Corruption of Ibn Al-Aktham in the judicial authority:

A) At one point, the supreme judge Ibn Al-Aktham offered a complaint to the caliph Al-Maamoun against the judge Bishr Ibn Al-Waleed, asserting that he did not obey orders and verdicts of the supreme judge of Baghdad. In fact, Ibn Al-Aktham was so favored by Al-Maamoun that he made him closer to him than his own sons, and he made Ibn Al-Aktham seated beside him on the divan (i.e., oriental settee), and commanded Bishr to be brought to his presence in the palace. When interrogated about the content of the complaint, Bishr asserted to Al-Maamoun that people of Khorasan, in Persia, cry and bewail the injustices of Ibn Al-Aktham there and that he was a man of ill-repute there. Once he heard this, Al-Maamoun was furious and ordered Bishr out of his sight at once. When Ibn Al-Aktham then asked the caliph to give Bishr the sack, Al-Maamoun stubbornly refused because Bishr never criticized the caliph either in private or in public.    

B) A poet once composed a satirical poem to ridicule Ibn Al-Aktham, accusing him of being a homosexual sinner, and to attack and verbally abuse Abbasid dynasty as well. This poem was so popular and people spread it until some lines of it reached the ears of Al-Maamoun, who decided to joke with his dear and close friend Ibn Al-Aktham by asking him about the poet who chanted this line of verse:

A judge who would inflict penalties on all fornicators

But leaves those accused of buggery go free with impunity

Ibn Al-Aktham replied the caliph, his friend, that the cursed poet was a rogue named Ahmad Ibn Abou Naeem, who had chanted these lines as well within the same poem:

Our caliph takes bribes, and our judge sleeps with males

And evil and corruption reign supreme in the whole lands

Injustices will never come to an end in our lifetimes

Except when the unjust Abbasid rule collapses

Al-Maamoun felt mortified and fell silent for a while, and then said that he would make sure that this poet was to be questioned whether he was the composer of this poem or not. Indeed, the whole poem is ascribed by some historians to a known poet at the time named Abou Sakhra Al-Rayyashy, and we quote this poem below because it is a social historical portrait depicting the injustices during the reign of Al-Maamoun, though arts and economy flourished in his reign:

The vicissitudes of time and its calamities drove me 

To open my mouth at last, after long periods of silence

For patience has run thin and I cannot bear it anymore

Why our ill-fated stars have decreed on all of us

That the worst of people would control all nations

No nation would ever prosper, while it remains silent

When conditions are upside down on all levels

How people would allow the unjust Yahya to be their judge?

Yahya can never be a fair judge among us at all

A judge who would inflict penalties on all fornicators

But leaves those accused of buggery go free with impunity

A judge who would shamelessly issue a verdict to gratify

Hairless adolescent lads, and infuriate the older men

Thus, one cannot wonder why justice and gratitude are lost

Our caliph takes bribes, and our judge sleeps with males

And evil and corruption reign supreme in the whole lands

Injustices will never come to an end in our lifetimes

Except when the unjust Abbasid rule collapses

 Of course, this poem expresses the ages of tyranny within the history of the Muhammadans until now, from the Abbasids to the Saudi royal family members.

 4- Ibn Al-Aktham within the judicial authority after the death of Al-Maamoun: we have mentioned how Al-Maamoun in his death bed wrote his last will to his successor, Al-Motassim, to dismiss Ibn Al-Aktham from his post because the latter refused to acknowledge in public that the Quran is 'created'. The dismissed Ibn Al-Aktham remained obscure and his name is never mentioned in history lines about the reign of Al-Motassim. Ibn Al-Aktham  was again in the limelight during the reign of the successor of Al-Motassim, the caliph Al-Motawakil, who favored and gave full power and authority to Sunnite scholars of fiqh and narrators of hadiths while he persecuted and dismissed from his palace court all Al-Mu'tazala philosophers and thinkers. Among the dismissed ones of Al-Mu'tazala group was the judge Ibn Abou Dawood, who got the same in 237 A.H., whereas Ibn Al-Aktham was appointed again as the supreme judge of Baghdad (Al-Tabari 9/188-189). Yet, when the corruption and injustices of Ibn Al-Aktham increased, Al-Motawakil had to dismiss him and give him the sake later on, while confiscating all his money and hidden treasures in 240 A.H., the same year when Ibn Abou Dawood died (Al-Tabari 9/197).

5- Ibn Al-Aktham and his being known for his homosexuality: historical accounts about Ibn Al-Aktham tell us the story that he once saw two very attractive male youths, who were brothers, entering into his court seeking a fatwa from him as a supreme judge, and Ibn Al-Aktham (who was over 80 years old at the time!) chanted these lines of poetry as a result of his sexual desire for the two young brothers:

O my two visitors who are like two moons!

May God grant you peace and happiness!

Why do you come to me while I can no longer

'Get it up' to make love legally or illegally

I feel so sad that I have nothing but words

To express my admiration to your beauty!

And then, Ibn Al-Aktham made each of the two brothers sit beside him as he groped their lithe bodies jokingly, leering at them lustfully, treating them kindly, and talking to them with sweetness and clemency until they posed their question and received his fatwa, for free, and then they left him. Of course, this disgraceful lascivious behavior of an 80-year-old judge brought blame to his person and stature and made people question his being fit for the position of the supreme judge of Baghdad, as people spread and repeated his lines of verse, driving the caliph Al-Motawakil to give him the sake to preserve the awe and dignity of the judicial authority of the Abbasid caliphate. This was in contrast to the fact that the virile and strong Ibn Al-Aktham was allowed in his manhood during the reign of Al-Maamoun to say and do anything he liked, while Al-Maamoun favored him, sided with him, and overlooked anything negative linked to him. Yet, Ibn Al-Jawzy attempted to defend Ibn Al-Aktham when he records this situation about him, by asserting that it was OK to express admiration in verse as long as one does not commit the actual sin itself, as per views of the imam revered and followed by Ibn Al-Jawzy, Ahmed Ibn Hanbal. We tend to think that Ibn Al-Jawzy here defended Ibn Al-Aktham (and quoted Ibn Hanbal to support his view) only because Ibn Al-Aktham supported Ibn Hanbal at one time as both men were vehement and vociferous in their refusal to accept the notion that the Quran is 'created', a faulty notion advocated and propagated by the caliphs Al-Maamoun, Al-Motassim, and Al-Wathiq. Another story asserts the corruption of Ibn Al-Aktham and his stubborn stance against the needy, even the blind people among them; when Ibn Al-Aktham assumed the responsibility and management of distributing donations of the caliph for the blind ones, they kept going to him and he kept dismissing them empty-handed. Yet, they chased him as he left the mosque and when he entered to the court to hold the trials and sessions, and when they whined for the donations granted to them by the caliph, Ibn Al-Aktham asserted that he had no money for them, but when they shouted and refused to leave the court to let him begin his work, he commanded the incarceration of all the blind ones who chased him because they disturbed the court sessions and also because they accused him of being as bad as Abou Saeed, a man known for his having sex with other young effeminate men in a low-class district in Baghdad. At that night, the blind prisoners wailed and shouted until Al-Maamoun heard them and asked about their complaint. Yet, the caliph did nothing to them as he thought they deserved their being punished for insulting the supreme judge of Baghdad. This story asserts the dominant climate of injustices as Ibn Al-Aktham desired to confiscate the money of the poor to himself and he manipulated his authority against them when they demanded their rights. Injustice reigned supreme as Al-Maamoun did nothing to stop the corrupt Ibn Al-Aktham. Despite his being unjust and unfair and despite his being filthily rich, Ibn Al-Aktham was a very jealous man who envies those who surpassed him in Sunnite fiqh knowledge and hadiths, as he feared they might replace him in his favored position as a retinue member at the palace of Al-Maamoun. Such envy drove him to test men at the palace about fiqh, hadiths, Kalam philosophy of Al-Mu'tazala, Arabic grammar, etc. and he would try to prove them wrong and lacking knowledge before Al-Maamoun to belittle and refute them. At one time, a very sharp, intelligent, erudite man of great knowledge and memory from Khorasan, Persia, was annoyed with too many questions  testing him by Ibn Al-Aktham before Al-Maamoun in the palace as he held a meeting, and when Ibn Al-Aktham tried to test the knowledge of this man in hadiths to prove him lacking in knowledge, the Persian man told him about a hadith that Ali Ibn Abou Talib at one time was ordered by Muhammad to stone to death a homosexual man for his debauchery. Ibn Al-Aktham had to remain silent for the rest of the meeting; he knew that there was no hadith at all carrying that meaning, because Arabs in the 7th century Arabia did not have homosexuals at all, but he realized that the Persian man authored and improvised such a hadith on the spot to silence him as he felt the tedium of being grilled with silly questions. Another story about Ibn Al-Aktham is when he visited the city of Al-Mosul, and when a very pretty young man came to him to complain how his elder brothers deprived him of his due share of inheritance, Ibn Al-Aktham leered lustfully at the young man as he fancied him very much, and he forgot his dignified position and stature as the supreme judge and began to chant courtly love poems to this young man, praising his physical beauty and inviting him to spend a night of love in his bed. because Ibn Al-Aktham was known for his homosexuality all over Iraq and for his using his authority and money to seduce or force young men to satisfy his carnal lusts, the mother of this young man took him away to Baghdad and left Al-Mosul at once. When this mother offered the same complained to Ibn Al-Aktham in Baghdad about her being deprived, like her youngest son, from her share of inheritance by her older sons, he refused stubbornly to issue a verdict in her case unless the complaint would be offered by her youngest pretty son alone! Hence, people all over Iraq felt afraid that their young sons might be seduced or raped by the supreme judge who used all his power, money, and authority to satisfy his sexual desires and whims, especially those who needed his help and aid in any verdict or fatwa. This is ascertained by another story; when the caliph dismissed and gave the sack to the judge of Basra, named Ismail Ibn Hammad, people of Basra wept, bid him farewell, and saw him off before he returned to Baghdad, because they admired his fairness and justice and the fact that he never took or asked for any bribes, and they praised him as the one who never put to death any of the dwellers of Basra and never took any money from them. Ismail Ibn Hammad added to their words, jokingly, that he never raped their sons, and he meant by his words to verbally abuse and criticize indirectly the supreme judge Ibn Al-Aktham. Ismail Ibn Hammad died in 212 A.H., and he was the grandson of the imam Abou Hanifa and was a religious scholar who followed his grandfather's' doctrine of fiqh. When Ismail Ibn Hammad was appointed as a judge in one city in 194 A.H. and in Basra in 210 A.H. after Ibn Al-Aktham was fired from his post. This story of the Basra people seeing off Ismail Ibn Hammad with love and tears means that Ibn Al-Aktham used to seduce young men of Basra, among other cities of course! This means that Ibn Al-Aktham manipulated his money, power, authority, stature, position, and high connections to satisfy his carnal appetites in any city under his control; what about young apprentices/disciples who learned from him the law and Sunnite sharia legislations to work as sheikhs, clergymen and judges later on?! Many men desired his help and mediation to get jobs or to get written authorizations, permissions, or any help from the well-off class members; what if such disciples or seekers of help included attractive young men?! Surely, Ibn Al-Aktham seduced many disciples in the privacy of his own house. This story tells us what Ibn Al-Aktham used to do in public with some of his disciples and scribes who happened to be attractive young men, as he courted them with physical-love poems in public, while groping their bodies shamelessly in the presence of other people, and this at one time embarrassed an attractive young man, a scribe named Zeidan, as Ibn Al-Aktham pinched his cheek, and when the indignant scribe threw the pen and tried to move away, Ibn Al-Aktham stopped him and commanded with all his authority and threats that he must sit and write the following lines of poetry:

He is indeed a walking moon, whom I groped and infuriated!

Feeling offended, the beauty tried to escape me, but in vain!

He must hide his rosy cheeks so as not to arouse people

Who would not help but to lustfully pinch and grope him!

Such a beauty kills lovers, divert hermits, and torture judges!

 If this was the type of behavior Ibn Al-Aktham used to do with those under his influence, exercising no restraint at all regarding his homosexual desire, we can easily imagine what he used to do in privacy of his house when alone with a very attractive young man! By the way, among the prominent pupils/disciples who learned hadiths from Ibn Al-Aktham at his house was one who became one of the holy deities of the Sunnites past and present: the Persian young man named Al-Bokhary. We can easily imagine Ibn Al-Aktham groping and managing to seduce and/or rape the young Al-Bokhary!  

6- Sunnite scholars' stances against and in defense of Ibn Al-Aktham:

A) Some Sunnite scholars, sheikhs, and clergymen attacked Ibn Al-Aktham very harshly, as Ibn Al-Jawzy mentions some of their views of Ibn Al-Aktham as being an inveterate liar, charlatan, ignoramus, fabricator of hadiths improvised sometimes by him on the spot, envious and jealous, etc. We notice that no one of these Sunnite fiqh scholars criticized the homosexuality of Ibn Al-Aktham at all, because it was not stigmatized at the time despite being prohibited in the Quran. By the way, at the time, the promiscuity of any heterosexual and homosexual man never hindered him from being a judge, a scholar of fiqh and theology, or a narrator of hadiths. In fact, homosexual debaucheries were a social norm at the time during the Abbasid Era and part of the accepted phenomena and behaviors that left a mark on the literature of the period as well as on the views and fatwas of theological scholars of Sunnite, Shiite, and Sufi religions, as deities of these religions emerged and lived in the Abbasid Era, and at the same time, Europe did not know homosexuality as yet. Let Salafists take pride in their Abbasid deities and 'infallible' ancestors!     

B) Yet, some other Sunnite scholars, sheikhs, and clergymen of the Ibn Hanbal doctrine overpraised and lauded Ibn Al-Aktham, after his death, by fabricating hadiths about him (and ascribed these hadiths/myths typically to Prophet Muhammad!) to elevate his stature as a supreme judge who narrated hadiths; they did this because he stood and sided by the Ibn Hanbal view of refusing to declare that the Quran is 'created' and as he declared that those adopting such view must repent or put to death! They ascribed a false hadith to Muhammad, along with a series of dead narrators among historical figures, that God told him that He would not like to torment in Hell a man who died after reaching the age of 80! Thus, Ibn Al-Aktham was said to have appeared in visions/dreams seen by those Sunnite scholars, telling to them that God has pardoned his homosexual debaucheries by virtue of such a hadith! Such a Sunnite myth was propagated to relieve and ease the pangs of conscience of the unjust tyrannical criminals who reached the age of 80 and still consumed their ill-gotten money, we suppose! Another hadith narrative, along with its series of narrators, tells us about another myth linked to Ibn Al-Aktham seen in a dream/vision of a Sunnite sheikh, telling him that if it had not been for his white hair of his beard and head, and his death after the age of 80, God would have tormented him in Hell for eternity for his promiscuity, and thus, Ibn Al-Aktham was carried to Paradise, as Prophet Muhammad told a hadith that God would not torment in Hell anyone who dies after reaching the senile age of 80 while being a Muslim, however sinful he had been in his younger years! Of course, such a narrative is indeed very insulting to God and to Prophet Muhammad.        

 

  In a nutshell, we provide the following facts of history as a reminder.

1- The tyrannical caliph Al-Maamoun was to blame for the corruption of the supreme judge Yahya Ibn Al-Aktham. 

2- Ibn Al-Aktham was known for his manipulation of his position as a judge to satisfy his homosexual whims, and there are so many people who followed his footsteps from the Abbasid Era to the era of oil-rich Gulf monarchies. 

3- Homosexuality was tolerated widely by Sunnite religious scholars during the Abbasid Era as it became a social custom and habit practiced by some of the caliphs and religious scholars as well as the masses and the ordinary people, and even some narrators/fabricators of hadiths ascribed to Muhammad tried to justify homosexual practices by claiming to be inspired by God to indulge their carnal lusts and authoring hadiths to make gay relations legal within Islam! These corrupt promiscuous scholars of Sunnite fiqh thus paved the way to Sufi sheikhs later on during the Mameluke Era who claimed that men having sex with other men are performing a religious act of worship to draw themselves nearer to God!    

 

Lastly:

1- Where is Islam in all these historical accounts and narratives?!

2- May God curse all the unjust ones!