In the cases analyzed in chapters one and two, the plaintiff and defendant were specific individuals who lived in or near Fez and were members of the urban bourgeoisie. In each instance, the case was settled in a timely manner and resulted in the issuance of a ḥukm or judgment. But the apparatus of Marīnid justice extended to rural communities living in the countryside outside of Fez and it included alternative means of dispute resolution.

In the present chapter, we will examine a dispute between two rural communities on the banks of a wadi in the Middle Atlas mountains, approximately 40 km south of Fez. We will follow these two communities in and out of the Marīnid courts as they attempted to resolve competing Claims to vital water resources over nearly 150 years. During this period a series of qāḍīs and muftis were called upon to deal with the interplay of Islamic law, on the one hand, and the changes in economic, climatic, and environmental conditions, on the other.