Instances of Conflict between Fiction and Circumstantial Evidence in Iranian Civil Law

Trial is one of the most important approaches for the issue of the conflict between fiction and circumstantial evidence in Islamic law. According to the rule "burden of proof rests upon the claimant and the oath upon who denies", it is upon the claimant to prove the claim and provide evidence. According to a provided criterion, the claimant is the one whose pledge is in conflict with the fiction and circumstantial evidence. In the course of trial, some assumptions may be made of which the fiction and circumstantial evidence are against each other. In this case, the issue of the priority of one over the other is raised. Therefore, rectifying and explaining this matter play a key role in issuing an accurate judgment in courts. In Islamic jurisprudential and legal texts, there is disagreement over the priority of fiction or circumstantial evidence. As a whole, it can be said that if the appearance of evidences is appointed by the legislator, it precedes the fiction and if it is documented by the ruling custom, domination and so forth, some prioritize fiction over circumstantial evidence while others prefer fiction over circumstantial evidence. It seems that in such cases one cannot resort to a general rule, but what matters is that the lawyer or the judge settles a dispute in the light of the characteristics and conditions of the dispute and his/her own knowledge and internal confidence.