Abu l-Daw'

Four members of three generations of the Banū Rajā held the office of al-shaykh al-faqīh al-qāḍī of Palermo with jurisdiction over the local Muslim community between 1123 and 1161.

It is a record of court case between Count Roger's cousin, Muriella of Petterrana, and an Arab landowner, Abū Maḍar ibn al-Biththirrānī, over the possession of a mill.

[4] Al-Maqrīzī gives Abū l-Ḍawʾ the title of al-kātib al-inshāʾ, secretary of correspondence, which was one of the highest offices in contemporary Fatimid Egypt.

It is possible that this dīwān was overseen by Abū l-Ḍawʾ, since the 1123 court has some characteristics of a maẓālim tribunal and this would be consistent with the office of al-kātib al-inshāʾ as it was in Fatimid Egypt.

Although his public activity is only evidenced for the brief period 1123–26, the poem he wrote on the death of Roger's son proved he had some proximity to the royal court as late as the mid-1140s.

The first extract is from an exchange of verses with the faqīh (jurist) ʿĪsā ibn ʿAbd al-Munʿim al-Ṣiqillī, who had asked to borrow a book.

The third and longest extract, which is also the most historically interesting and the most beautiful,[c] is seventeen verses from a lament on the death of "the son of Roger the Frank, lord of Sicily".