Changes of Ḥisba under the Seljuqs

Changes in the office of !isba under the Seljuqs Christian Lange ! The market inspector (mu!tasib), as censor of morals and prosecutor of offenses perpetrated in the bazaars and streets of the Muslim city, has been called the ‘guardian of the public space’ in medieval Islam.1 His primary sphere of influence, the market-place, was adjoined, on one side, by the Muslim city-dwellers’ households, into which his authority could at times extend. On the other side, it bordered on the awe-inspiring citadel of the prince, conspicuous reminder of the ruler’s dominion over the urban landscape; it was from here that the mu!tasib’s power ultimately derived.2 The mu!tasib thus negotiated between the claims to the inviolability of Muslim households on the one hand, and the dictates of government on the other. Whoever defined the rights and duties of the mu!tasib had a share in drawing the line that separated the private from the public. As I suggest in this contribution, while the Seljuqs adopted and continued features of Abbasid, Buyid and Ghaznavid state organisation, the office of !isba underwent developments which gave it a new and distinctly Seljuq profile. The changes in !isba introduced under the Seljuqs reflect a new type of relationship between state and society, particularly with regard to the configuration of public and private space, in the territories under Seljuq control.3 Two prototypes of mu!tasibs: The saint and the scatologist Under the Umayyads and the early Abbasid caliphs, the market inspector (then called "#!ib, or $#mil al-s%q) was primarily responsible for checking the accuracy of scales and measures, and the quality of foodstuff sold in the market.4 In !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I would like to thank Deborah Tor for reading and commenting on an earlier draft of this paper. 1 Yaron Klein, ‘Between Public and Private: An Examination of &isba Literature’, Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic Review 7 (2006), 42. 2 Christian Lange, ‘&isba and the Problem of Overlapping Jurisdictions: An Introduction to, and Translation of, &isba Diplomas in Qalqashand"’s 'ub! al-a$sh#’, Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic Review 7 (2006), 95-6. 3 For the purpose of this study, I’m operating with a minimal definition of the public sphere as the sphere of influence for governmental authority. See Dictionary of the Social Sciences, ed. Craig Calhoun (Oxford, 2002), 392. Since my focus here is on the relationship between the Seljuq state and the private sphere of ‘ordinary’ Muslim individuals and families, I leave aside the notion that there existed, in addition to the sphere of governmental authority, a number of other competing public spheres formed, for example, by the networks of $ulam#( and/or local nobles. For an exploration of this topic in the Seljuq context, see Daphna Ephrat’s contribution to this volume. For a general discussion of the applicability and potential usefulness of the categories of a private and a public sphere in the study of premodern Islamic societies, see also Christian Lange and Maribel Fierro, ‘Spatial, Ritual and Representational Aspects of Public Violence in Islamic Societies (1st—19th Centuries CE)’, in Public Violence in Islamic Societies: Power, Discipline, and the Construction of the Public Sphere, 7th—19th Centuries CE, eds. Christian Lange and Maribel Fierro (Edinburgh, 2009), 1-23. 4 Ronald P. Buckley, ‘The Muhtasib’, Arabica 39 (1992), 62. Cf. Ab# l-Faraj $Abd alRa!m%n Ibn al-Jawz", 'ifat al-"afwa, ed. M. F%kh#r" (Beirut, 1979/1399), III, 301, for ! the course of the 3rd/9th century, the religious dimension of the market inspector’s office, as censor of public morals performing the Qur&%nic injunction (3:104) of alamr bi-l-ma$r%f wa-l-nahy $an al-munkar (‘commanding right and forbidding wrong’), became more prominent, and it is from this time onwards that he is no longer called "#!ib or $#mil al-s%q, but mu!tasib.5 At least in theory, it was now established that the mu!tasib should be a man of piety and, preferably, also of religious learning. &isba came to be considered a religious office, a wa)*fa d*niyya, as it continued to be known in later centuries.6 When in 318/930, the caliph al-Muqtadir wanted to appoint a police chief ("#!ib al-shur+a) to the position of mu!tasib in Baghdad, the powerful general Mu&nis al-Mu'affar insisted on the man’s dismissal because he was neither a judge or in any other way connected with the religious establishment.7 In the collective memory of later generations, the mu!tasib of the 4th/10th century who epitomised the ideal of the pious and learned mu!tasib was Ab# Sa$"d al-(asan b. A!mad al-I)*akhr" (d. 328/940), who served both as mu!tasib in Baghdad and as judge in Qum.8 Ibn al-Nad"m (fl. 377/987) refers to al-I)*akhr" as a chief (ra(s) in the madhhab of al-Sh%fi$".9 He is credited with the opinion that mu!tasibs should be allowed to exercise their own ijtih#d in legal matters, which de facto requires them to be trained jurists.10 His hagiographers praise his practice as mu!tasib of publicly burning musical instruments; he is also said to have ridden around on his !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! the q#,* and mu!tasib Ab# $Abd al-Ra!m%n $+)im b. Sulaym%n al-A!wal (d. 141 or 2/758 or 9), a mawl# of the Ban# Tam"m, who was ‘in charge of the !isba over scales and weights in K#fa’. 5 The active participle mu!tasib is derived from the verb i!tasaba, the meaning of which Lane renders as ‘to seek a reward from God in the world to come’. See Edward William Lane, An Arabic-English Lexicon (London, 1863), s.v. !-s-b. On the changing nature of the office, see further Ernst Klingmöller, ‘Agoranomos and Mutasib: Zum Funktionswandel eines Amtes in islamischer Zeit’, in Fs. Erwin Seidl (Cologne, 1975), 88-98. 6 A!mad b. $Al" al-Qalqashand", 'ub! al-a$sh# f* "in#$at al-insh#( (Cairo, 1918-22), XI, 211, XI, 212-3, XII, 63 (with examples from Fatimid, Ayyubid and Mamluk times); Mu!ammad b. Mu!ammad Ibn al-Ukhuwwa, Ma$#lim al-qurba f* a!k#m al-!isba, ed. R. Levy (Cambridge, 1938), 13. 7 Adam Mez, The Renaissance of Islam, tr. S. Kh. Bukhsh and D. S. Margoliouth (London, 1975), 416. 8 On al-I)*akhr", see T%j al-D"n al-Subk", -abaq#t al-sh#fi$iyya al-kubr#, eds. M. M. al,an%!" and $A. M. al-(ilw (Cairo, n. d.), I, 109, III, 230-53. According to al-Subk", alI)*akhr" was one of the luminaries of the Sh%fi$" school and wrote a book on adab alq#,*, among other works. Al-M%ward" (d. 450-1058) mentions al-I)*akhr"’s opinion on !isba-related issues a number of times throughout his chapter on the office. See idem, al-A!k#m al-sul+#niyya (Cairo, 1380/1960), 241, 243, 251. As a legal scholar, alI)*akhr" acquired fame for issueing a fatw# calling for the execution of the Sabean community on the grounds of their worship of stars. See -al%! al-D"n Khal"l b. Aybak al--afad", al-W#f* bi-l-wafay#t, eds. A. al-Arna&#* and T. Mu!ammad (Beirut, 1420/2000), XI, 287. See also Christopher Melchert, The Formation of the Sunni Schools of Law, 9th-10th Centuries C.E. (Leiden, 1997), xvi, 91, 103n. 9 Ibn al-Nad"m, Fihrist, ed. Flügel (Leipzig, 1871), 213. 10 M%ward", al-A!k#m al-sul+#niyya, 241. Al-M%ward" himself leaned toward the view that the mu!tasib should not exercise ijtih#d. See ibid., 256, stating that the judge has a superior (a!aqq) right to adjudicate cases which require ijtih#d. mule through the markets of Baghdad, simultaneously praying and performing acts of !isba.11 However, under the Buyids, from the second half of the 4th/10th century and up until the arrival of the Seljuqs, the nature of !isba changed.12 Mu!tasibs were no longer appointed on the authority of the caliph or his vizier but on that of the Chief Emir (am*r al-umar#(),13 thus largely divesting the office of its sacral character. The administrative manual entitled Siyar al-mul%k, written by an experienced but rather low ranking clerk soon after the Buyid ascent to power,14 states, in extremely vague terms, that the mu!tasib should ‘look favorably upon jurisprudence’ (yak%nu qad na)ara f* l-fiqhi na)aran !asanan), and that he should associate ("a!iba) with judges, ma)#lim officials and jurists.15 A few decades later, a diploma of investiture for the mu!tasib penned by the celebrated Buyid vizier al--%!ib Ibn $Abb%d (d. 385/995) makes no mention of any religious qualifications whatsoever of the office holder.16 What is more, for all we know, mu!tasibs of the Buyid period, unlike the saintly figure of al-I)*akhr", were not exactly paragons of religious learning or, for that matter, of virtue. The example that comes most readily to mind is that of the mu!tasib Ibn al-(ajj%j (ca. 330-91/941-1001), who is better known as the author of a large œuvre of obscene and often scatological poetry (sukhf). Ibn al-(ajj%j, a Shi$i, enjoyed the tutelage and protection of a prominent member of the Persian administrative elite, the Director of the Royal Chancery (s#!ib diw#n al-insh#() Ab# Is!%q al--%bi& (d. 384/994). He became mu!tasib in Baghdad during the vizierate of Ibn Baqiyya (r. 362-67/972-78), by appointment of the Chief Emir $Izz al-Dawla Bakhtiy%r (r. 356-67/967-78).17 There was some tension, to say the least, between Ibn al-(ajj%j’s claim to censorship of public morals and the kind of poetry he produced. His poems offer, for example, descriptions of his visits to prostitutes in the market of al-Karkh.18 Ibn al-(ajj%j’s poetic imagination, the delight he takes in wallowing in !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 11 Ab# l-Fid%& Ism%$"l b. $Umar Ibn Kath"r, al-Bid#ya wa-l-nih#ya (Beirut, 1966), XI, 218. Al-Q%." al-Tan#kh" (d. 384/994) tells stories of a few vigorous and uncorruptible men who worked during his lifetime as mu!tasibs in Ba)ra and Ahw%s. See the anecdotes in al-Tan#kh", Nishw#r al-mu!#dara, ed. Margoliouth (London, 1921-2), I, 163-4. While it is possible that al-Tan#kh" means to obliquely criticise Baghdad by contrasting it with the other cities of Iraq, a more marked decline of the office may have set in in the second half of the Buyid reign. 13 Heribert Busse notes that under the Buyids, police authority passed from the vizier (who acted on behalf of the caliph), to the Chief Emir or, in the provinces, to the $#mil. See idem, Chalif und Großkönig: Die Buyiden im Iraq (Beirut, 1969), 321. See also Buckley, ‘The Muhtasib’, 69. 14 J. Sadan, ‘A New Source of the B#yid Period’, Israel Oriental Studies 9 (1979), 361-3. 15 Ibid., 373. 16 Al--%!ib Ibn $Abb%d, Ras#(il, ed. $A. $Azz%m (Cairo, 1366/[1946 or 7]), 39-41. 17 See Joel Kraemer, Humanism in the Renaissance of Islam: The Cultural Revival during the Buyid Age (Leiden, 1986), 199. 18 Sinan Antoon, ‘The Poetics of the Obscene: Ibn al-(ajj%j and Sukhf’ (PhD Harvard, 2006), 207-11. Ironically, the Mamluk !isba manual of Ibn al-Ukhuwwa enjoins mu!tasibs to prevent the youth from reading Ibn al-(ajj%j’s poems. In a poem dedicated to the desirability of unlawful sexual intercourse Ibn al-(ajj%j states: ‘My friends and brethren I give you advice, / seeking no price from my advice to you. / 12 dirt, in painting images of grotesquely inflated, deformed and ugly bodies, appears to reflect the chaos of urban life under the Buyids, and it has indeed been suggested that, despite the cultural flowering of the period, there was a general erosion of the structures that held society together.19 Few other mu!tasibs from the Buyid period are known,20 most likely because they tended to be neither religious scholars nor judges and therefore did not make it into the later biographical literature. Before the arrival of the Buyids, in early 4th/10th-century Iraq, !isba was considered the third-highest rank among the government officials (a"!#b aldaw#w*n), after the provincial governors ($umm#l) and the judges (qu,#t).21 However, no such taxonomies seem to have applied under the Buyids. As for Western scholarship on the Buyid period, neither Heribert Busse nor John Donohue, in their surveys of Buyid state organisation, discuss the mu!tasib’s office, or bother to mention it at all.22 Not even Adam Mez, the indefatigable collector of stories of Muslim social life in the 4th/10th and 5th/11th centuries, reports anything about !isba other than that Ibn al-(ajj%j occupied the post.23 This would indeed seem to suggest that the office was not very highly regarded under the Buyids.24 The Sh%fi$" al-M%ward" (d. 450/1058), writing toward the end of the Buyid period, devotes the last chapter of his al-A!k#m al-sul+#niyya to !isba, detailing the considerable power enjoyed by the mu!tasib vis-à-vis other state officials. However, his account reflects an ideal rather than providing an accurate description of !isba in his day. As alM%ward" himself admits, !isba had fallen into disrepute because it had been given to people whose only objective it was ‘to profit and get bribes’.25 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Get up, let us pledge that you and I / never ever do something that is lawful.’ The translation is by Antoon, ‘The Poetics of the Obscene’, 216. 19 For a trenchant analysis of the social logic of Ibn al-(ajj%j’s poetry, see ibid., 22850. 20 No mu!tasib of the Buyid period is mentioned in al-Subk"’s -abaq#t al-Sh#fi$iyya alkubr#. Al--afad"’s al-W#f* bi-l-wafay#t contains nine biographies of mu!tasibs from the century before the rise of the Seljuqs, but Ibn al-(ajj%j is the only Buyid mu!tasib among them. Al--afad" also mentions one Ab# l-(asan $Al" b. A!mad al-Jurj%n" alMu!tasib (d. 366/976), a !ad*th transmitter who lived in N"s%b#r, but it is not actually clear that his name ‘al-Mu!tasib’ refers to him having held the office of !isba. See -afad", W#f*, XX, 86. 21 See the list of formal addresses (mukh#+ab#t) written by the vizier Ibn al-Fur%t (d. 312/924), reported in Hil%l b. al-Mu!assin al--%bi$, al-Wuzar#(, ed. $A. A. Fur%j (Cairo, 1958), 172-6. This list must have been written between 309/921 and 312/924, since it mentions the mu!tasib Ibr%h"m b. Ba*!a, who was appointed in 309/921 and died three years later. On Ibn Ba*!%, see Willem Floor, ‘The Office of Muhtasib in Iran’, Iranian Studies 18 (1985), 61. 22 Busse, Chalif und Großkönig; John Donohue, The Buwayhid Dynasty in Iraq 334 H./945 to 403 H./1012: Shaping Institutions for the Future (Leiden, 2003). 23 Mez, Renaissance, 269. 24 The situation may have been different in the West, although there is some variation in scholarly assessments of the importance of !isba, for example, under the Fatimids. Cf. below, n51. 25 Floor, ‘Office of Muhtasib’, 62. Ibn al-(ajj%j appears to have had his share in this. It is said that his fellow poets envied him more for his lucrative post as mu!tasib than for his poetry. See Mez, Renaissance, 269. In other words, when the Seljuqs took over the task of governing from the Buyids, the office of !isba was in some need of revitalisation. Two prototypes of !isba were known to the newly arrived rulers and their administrative advisers: that of the pious and learned jurist al-I)*akhr", and that of Ibn al-(ajj%j, the corrupt libertine.26 The Seljuqs, however, decided to channel !isba in a new direction altogether. This change came about gradually, but it can plausibly be argued that by the end of the Seljuq period, that is, toward the end of the 6th/12th century, a novel type of mu!tasib had emerged in the lands under Seljuq control. Mu!tasibs and the religious elite under the Seljuqs It is worth noting that past scholarship has doubted that !isba under the Seljuqs changed at all. According to Willem Floor, author of a study dedicated to the history of the office in the lands of Iran, Seljuq mu!tasibs were not in the least different from Buyid ones.27 According to Floor, mu!tasibs in Seljuq times continued to be greatly disliked by the populace; like their Buyid predecessors, they did little to prevent public nuisances such as begging and prostitution, and eating and sleeping in mosques.28 A more nuanced view shall be proffered here, namely, that the Seljuqs made !isba undergo some significant developments, not only giving the office back some of its former reputation, but also by adding to its importance and authority. The Seljuq administration connected !isba to new functions and gave it new, previously unknown powers. The first question one must ask to test this hypothesis concerns the relationship between mu!tasibs and the $ulam#( in the time of the so-called ‘Sunni revival’. Prosopographical works would appear to promise an indication as to whether !isba under the Seljuqs was predominantly occupied by those connected to the (Sunni) religious elite or by people without affiliation to religious learning.29 For mu!tasibs in the Seljuq period, however, prosopographical information is not easy to come by. Three monumental 8th/14th-century works containing biographical materials, al-Dhahab"’s (d. 748/1348) T#r*kh al-Isl#m, al--afad"’s (d. 764/1363) al-W#f* bi-l-wafay#t and T%j al-D"n al-Subk"’s (d. ca. 771/1370) -abaq#t al-Sh#fi$iyya al-kubr# mention a mere eighteen mu!tasibs of the Seljuq period.30 From these eighteen !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 26 Note that al-I)*akhr" and Ibn al-(ajj%j, in addition to the Medinese N%fi$ b. $Abd alRa!m%n al-Muqri& (d. 59/678 or 9), are the only mu!tasibs to find mention in Ibn Khallik%n’s Wafay#t al-a$y#n, albeit not on account of their having occupied the post of !isba. See Ibn Khallik%n, Wafay#t al-a$y#n, tr. G. de Slane (New York and London, 1842-71), I, 374-5 (al-I)*akhr"), 448-50 (Ibn al-(ajj%j). 27 Floor, ‘Office of Muhtasib’, 63-4. 28 Ibid. A similar, if more nuanced view is offered by John Donohue, who states that ‘[f]rom a superficial point of view, it can be said that the Seljuks repeated the Buwayhid experience with only minor modifications of the institutions the Buwayhids had shaped’. See idem, The Buwayhid Dynasty, xv. Note, however, that Donohue does not discuss !isba in his book. 29 Research on !isba, for example in the Mamluk era, has begun to make use of prosopography. See Kristen Stilt, ‘Price Setting and Hoarding in Mamluk Egypt: The Lessons of Legal Realism for Islamic Legal Studies’, in The Law Applied: Contextualizing the Islamic Shari’a, eds. P. Bearman, W. Heinrichs, and B. G. Weiss (London, 2008), 5778. 30 Cf. Vanessa van Renterghem, Les élites baghdadiennes (PhD Paris-Sorbonne, 2004), II, 214 (Table 14-2). Van Renterghem counts seventeen mu!tasibs in Seljuq Baghdad, mu!tasibs, four held the position of Islamic judge (q#,*) at one point in their career, another seven were trained jurists (faq*hs), and one was a popular preacher. Six are listed with no obvious religious qualification.31 On the basis of this ratio (12:6), one could indeed infer that most Seljuq mu!tasibs were men of religion, or even that the office was gradually (re-)islamised under the Seljuqs. Other evidence would also seem to support this. The first Seljuq-period mu!tasib mentioned in the biographical dictionaries is one Mu!ammad Ibn al-Daj%j" (‘the son of the man from [Nahr] alDaj%j’), who died at Baghdad in 463/1071. His name suggests that he issued from a rather low (Shi$i?) merchant stratum with no direct connections to the $ulam#(.32 According to al--afad", he was ‘not praised’ (lam yum!ad) and therefore deposed from his office.33 Contrast this with how al--afad" praises the conduct of a mu!tasib in Baghdad some fifty years later, a Sh%fi$" faq*h and mu!addith.34 However, one obvious problem of the biographical sources is that they focus almost exclusively on the class of people who produced them, that is, the $ulam#( themselves.35 It can be assumed, therefore, that the proportion of mu!tasibs with credentials as $ulam#( to those without was more balanced than is indicated by the two-to-one ratio one gleans from al-Dhahab", al--afad" and al-Subk". A further problem is that the biographical dictionaries relevant for the study of Seljuq history are almost entirely centered on Baghdad. The Abbasid caliphs, who continued to reside in the city throughout the Seljuq period, appointed their own mu!tasibs. They were generally keen to strike a posture of conformity with shar*$a, not least in order to differentiate themselves from the Seljuq sultans and atabegs, who lacked in religious legitimacy despite their efforts to portray themselves as the champions of Sunnism. The caliphs may therefore have been more inclined than the sultans to appoint religious scholars to the office of !isba, a tendency which can be said to have culminated in the mu!tasib-like powers enjoyed by the celebrated Ibn al-Jawz" (d. 597/1200), and the appointment of his son Mu!y" al-D"n (d. 656/1258) and his !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! but hers is a much more in-depth analysis of the sources than I can offer here. Her list of Seljuq mu!tasibs is based on the chronicles of Ibn al-Jawz", Ibn al-Ath"r, Ibn Kath"r, Ibn al-Najj%r, Sib* Ibn al-Jawz", Ibn al-Dubayth", and al-Qurash"; but she misses al--afad"’s W#f*. 31 Shams al-D"n Mu!ammad b. A!mad al-Dhahab", T#r*kh al-Isl#m, ed. $U. $A. Tadmur" (Beirut, 1404/1987), XXXII, 87, XXXIV, 302, XXXV, 216, XXXVII, 61, 222, XL, 296; -afad", W#f*, IV, 101, V, 105, VI, 244, VII, 9, 172, VIII, 78, 79, XVIII, 9, 30, XXII, 85; Subk", -abaq#t, VII, 333. 32 Nahr al-Daj%j was a neighbourhood in al-Karkh in West Baghdad, named after the canal running through it, the banks of which used to be occupied by the poulterers. See Guy Le Strange, Baghdad During the $Abbasid Caliphate (London, 1924), 53. 33 -afad", W#f*, IV, 101. Mu!ammad Ibn al-Daj%j" seems to be identical with the mu!tasib Sa$d al-$Ajam" mentioned in van Renthergem, Les élites, I, 471, II, 214, of whom she says that ‘en 461/1071, une émeute populaire conduisit au d*w#n un group de (anbalites, quie exigèrent du calife qu’il démit le mu!tasib jugé injuste; le calife accéda à leur requête’, citing Sib* b. al-Jawz", Mir(#t al-zam#n f* ta(r*kh al-a$y#n, ed. Ali Sevim, 173-9. 34 Ab# l-$Abb%s A!mad b. Mu!ammad Ibn al-Naq"b al-Shahrast%n" al-Baghd%d", born in Tikrit, studied and eventually taught Sh%fi$" fiqh in Baghdad, and was then appointed to the position of mu!tasib in 537/1142. See -afad", W#f*, VIII, 79. 35 Cf. Stephen Humphreys, Islamic History: A Framework for Inquiry (Minneapolis, 1988), 187. grandson $Abd al-Ra!m%n (d. 656/1258) to the office of !isba in Baghdad.36 Other genres of literature, however, offer a different picture. The Siy#satn#ma37 declares that !isba should be given to ‘one of the nobility or else to a eunuch or an old Turk, who, having no respect for anybody, would be feared by nobles and commoners alike’.38 This passage bluntly demands that mu!tasibs must not be recruited from among the $ulam#(. Appointment deeds for mu!tasibs in the Seljuq and post-Seljuq periods point in the same direction. The $Atabat al-kataba, a collection of thirty-eight chancery documents in Persian written between 528/1134 and 548/1153 at the court of the Great Seljuq Sanjar (r. 490-552/1097-1157) at Merv, contains one such appointment deed, concerning the office of !isba in Mazandaran province. It is dedicated to a certain Aw!ad al-D"n, who is praised for his knowledge of the ‘ways of shar*$a (rus%m-i shar*$at)’ and for his piety; but he does not seem to be a faq*h.39 None of the existent chancery documents dealing with !isba from the Seljuq apanage kingdom of Kirman or from the Khwarizmshah, Rum Seljuq and Ayyubid periods suggest that mu!tasibs (while always enjoined to protect shar*$a and be pious) were trained jurists or religious scholars. In consequence, it is safe to assume that the practice of appointing ‘old Turks’ and men without a madrasa rubberstamp to the office of !isba continued into the second half of the Seljuq period.40 Let us note, also, that poets from the Seljuq period were rather acerbic in their assessment of mu!tasibs’ commitment to the precepts of religion. S#zan"-yi Samarqand" (d. 569/1173), a worthy successor to Ibn al-(ajj%j as an obscene poet, revels in accusing mu!tasibs of sexual depravity, especially sodomy (liw#+).41 Al-Zamakhshar" (d. 538/1144) seems to be complaining against the excesses of the mu!tasibs of his time when he bitterly exlaims: ‘If you do not command right, can’t you at least refrain from destroying it? And if you do not !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 36 On Ibn al-Jawz"’s connection with !isba, see below. Both Mu!y" al-D"n and $Abd alRa!m%n Ibn al-Jawz" were killed in the Mongol sack of Baghdad. See -afad", W#f*, XXIX, 104-5 (for Mu!y" l-D"n), XVIII, 187 (for $Abd al-Ra!m%n). 37 For contributions casting doubt on the attribution to Ni'%m al-Mulk, see Erika Glassen, Der mittlere Weg: Studien zur Religionspolitik und Religiosität der späteren Abbasiden-Zeit (Wiesbaden, 1981), 122ff.; M. Simidchieva, ‘Siy#sat-n#me Revisited: the Question of Authenticity’, in Proceedings of the Second European Conference on Iranian Studies, ed. B. G. Fragner et al. (Rome, 1995), 657-74; Alexey Khismatulin, ‘The Art of Medieval Counterfeiting: The Siyar al-Mul%k (the Siy#sat-N#ma) by Ni'%m al-Mulk and the “Full” Version of the Na"*!at al-Mul%k by al-Ghaz%l"’, Manuscripta Orientalia 14,1 (2008), 3-31. 38 Ni'%m al-Mulk, Siy#satn#ma, ed. H. Darke (Tehran, 1962), 56. 39 Mu&ayyad al-Dawla Bad"$ Juvayn", $Atabat al-kataba, eds. M. Qazw"n" and $A. Iqb%l (Tehran, 1329sh./[1950]), 82-3. Note, however, that another appointment deed for a q#,* also bestows on the same man the prerogative to act as mu!tasib. See ibid., 52. 40 In the biographical literature, one occasionally reads of mu!tasibs of the postSeljuq period who lacked religious training. A case in point is Fakhr al-D"n Ibn Mad#d% Mu!ammad b. Ab" Bakr b. $Abb%s al-Am"r (d. 669/1270-1), who was first the mu!tasib of ‘al-Jaz"ra al-$Umariyya’, then moved to M%rd"n and was mu!tasib there, but then left the office and became a travelling merchant. See -afad", W#f*, II, 190-1. 41 Quoted in $Al" Akbar Dekhoda, Lughatn#meh (Tehran, 1946-), s.v. mu!tasib: dar-i dakhl-i har shi!na % mu!tasib-r# / gush#da-ast t# hast iz#rat-i gush#da. forbid wrong, can’t you at least refrain from committing it?’42 Jam%l al-D"n alI)fah%n" (d. 588/1192 or 3), who also worked as a goldsmith in the bazaar of Isfahan, likens a crow to a mu!tasib, vainly puffed up in a black robe (+aylas#n) and cawing $amr-i ma$r%f.43 In later Persian literature, the moral corruption of mu!tasibs became a trope. Ni'%m", in the late 6th/12th century, warns his readers not to get entangled with mu!tasibs, lest they feel the whip of a demon (dirra-yi Ibl*s-v#r);44 a century later, Sa$d" (d. 691/1292) castigates the bigotry of mu!tasibs, who drink wine but punish others for it, or walk around ‘bare-assed’ (k%n-birahna) while telling prostitutes to veil their faces.45 Needless to say, such accusations of deviance do not prove our point; to infer from them that mu!tasibs in Seljuq and post-Seljuq Iraq and Iran were not clerics would be naïve. However, when Seljuq poets do have something positive to say about mu!tasibs it is usually not on account of their piety but of their efficiency as a state-appointed police force. For example, San%&" (d. 525/1131), in a piece of panegyric poetry, praises mu!tasibs for offering a degree of security in times when ‘the city is filled with thieves, and streets are filled with riffraff’.46 In sum, while a certain number of mu!tasibs under the Seljuqs, and especially in Baghdad under the Abbasid caliphs, appear to have been close to $ulam#( circles, it would be hasty to infer from this that the office was (re-)islamised. Not only is the biographical literature, as has been noted, tendentiously selective, but chancery documents do not support this idea. The existence of a number of faq*hs and judges among the mu!tasibs of the Seljuq period may also result from the Seljuq administration’s attempt to draft $ulam#( into government service—a process which remains disputed among historians—, so that mu!tasibs may have had a religious background without, however, representing the interests of the $ulam#( networks. The Seljuqs’s ‘politics of knowledge’ are a contentious topic in Seljuq studies, with some scholars leaning toward the view that the $ulam#( largely caved in to government manipulation,47 while others hold that they managed to uphold a certain autonomy vis-à-vis the state authorities and that government and religious elite formed largely separate networks of authority.48 The sources consulted for this article, while not providing a clear-cut answer to this vexed question, give more support to the latter view; what they do reveal quite clearly, however, is that the nature and functions of !isba changed, as it became more closely attached to the higher echelons of government. That the office acquired a more prominent place in the Seljuq administrative apparatus is already announced in the Siy#satn#ma, which stresses the close !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 42 Ma!m#d b. $Umar al-Zamakhshar", A+w#q al-dhahab, ed. C. Barbier de Meynard (Paris, 1876), 180. 43 Jam%l al-D"n I)fah%n", Div#n, ed. W. Dastgerdi (Tehran, 1362sh./[1983 or 4]), 129: z#gh b# +aylas#n ch% mu!tasib* ki amr-i ma$r%f #shk#r# kard. I owe this reference to David Durand-Guèdy. On al-I)fah%n"’s life and career, cf. EIR, s.v. Jam%l al-D"n Mo!ammad b. $Al" E)fah%ni, XIV, 436-8 (D. Durand-Guèdy). 44 Quoted in Dekhoda, Lughatn#meh, s.v. z*nh#r. 45 Ibid., s.v. mu!tasib, birahna. 46 Ibid., s.v. k%y. 47 Omid Safi, The Politics of Knowledge in Premodern Islam: Negotiating Ideology and Religious Inquiry (Chapel Hill, 2006), 90-7. 48 Daphna Ephrat, A Learned Society in a Period of Transition: The Sunni $Ulama( of Eleventh-Century Baghdad (Albany, 2000), 16, 126-36, 152-3. relationship between the king and mu!tasib and urges the ruler to lend the mu!tasib full support (dast-i % qav* d#rad).49 It is recommended that the ruler appoint a mu!tasib to every town of the empire because !isba is ‘one of the foundations of the kingdom’.50 Even if this statement is hyperbolic, it would be difficult to argue that !isba had enjoyed a similarly high regard under the Buyids.51 As is suggested here, Seljuq rule transformed the office of !isba into a key tool in the government’s effort to widen its sphere of influence, and to achieve comprehensive physical control over the cities under its sway. It was no doubt a welcome side effect that by investing in the religious duty of al-amr bi-l-ma$r%f the Seljuqs also buttressed their claim to being legitimate Islamic rulers. In addition to Ni'%m al-Mulk’s statement to this effect, the elevated political rank of the mu!tasib can be seen in Seljuq panegyrics. It is striking that Seljuq poets such as Anvar" (d. ca. 560/1164) and Kh%qan" (d. 595/1199) do not hesitate to describe the ruler himself as ‘the mu!tasib of the kingdom’.52 Mutatis mutandis, the mu!tasib is seen as having a share in the power of the sultan. By meting out justice he instils comfort (and indeed fear) in the hearts of the subjects, pacifying the realm by his use of coercive force. In this context the link with the concept of siy#sa (‘good government’, but also ‘[capital] punishment’, as in Pers. siy#sat kardan, ‘to execute’) is significant. Under the Seljuqs, the royal ideology of siy#sa proposed that severe punishment by the king was a vital ingredient of good government.53 This idea claimed the noblest of all pedigrees: $Umar b. al-Kha**%b was often portrayed as a kind of proto-mu!tasib, carrying around with him the mu!tasib’s tool par excellence, the switch (dirra).54 San%&" thus could beg his patron to ‘put the world right like !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 49 Ni'%m al-Mulk, Siy#satn#ma, 56. Ibid. 51 The rank of the mu!tasib in 5th/11th-century Egypt was likewise low. See Yaacov Lev, ‘The Suppression of Crime, the Supervision of Markets, and Urban Society in the Egyptian Capital during the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries’, Mediterranean Historical Review 3 (1988), 76, quoting an incident from 414/1024 reported in alMusabbi!"’s chronicle, where a rather low-ranking d*w#n official, the Chief of the Office of Salaries (d*w#n al-tart*b), rejects the offer to become mu!tasib of Cairo because he considers this to be below his dignity. On the other hand Roland P. Buckley, The Book of the Islamic Market Inspector: Nih%yat al-Rutba f" ,alab al-(isba (The Utmost Authority in the Pursuit of (isba) by $Abd al-Ra!m#n b. Na"r al-Shayzar* (Oxford, 1999), 8-9, states that the mu!tasib under the Fatimids became a ‘grand dignitary’. No doubt this was the case under the Mamluks, when the Egyptian mu!tasib was considered to be fifth in rank of all the judicial posts. See ibid., 10, referring to Qalqashand", 'ub!, IV, 34-5. 52 Dekhoda, Lughatn#meh, s.v. mu!tasib*: in"#f-i t% mi"r-*st ki dar rasta-yi % d*w / na)m az jihat-i mu!tasib* d#da duk#n-r# (Anvar"). Cf. ibid., s.v. mu!tasib (Kh%q%n"). 53 Kayka&#s b. Iskandar b. Q%b#s, Q#b%sn#meh, ed. R. Levy (London, 1951), 10, 55. Cf. Ann K.S. Lambton, State and Government in Medieval Islam (Oxford, 1981), 124; Christian Lange, Justice, Punishment and the Medieval Muslim Imagination (Cambridge, 2008), 42-4. 54 In the old days, according to (Pseudo-)Ghaz%l", it was enough for a ruler like $Umar to carry a simple whip on his shoulder to deter people from evil actions. However, ‘the sultans of today must rely on punishment (siy#sat) and awe (haybat).’ See (Pseudo-)Ghaz%l", Na"*!at al-mul%k, ed. J. Hum%&" (Tehran, 1361/[1982]), 148. 50 $Umar with his dirra (y# chun $Umar bi-dirra jah#n-r# qar#r dih).’55 Such comparisons suggest that in Seljuq times, the authority of the sultan was extended to the mu!tasib, who came to be more closely tied to the ruler than perhaps ever before. In fact, absolute state power and !isba became synonyms. Some may still have felt that they were entitled to perform !isba, vigilante-like and based simply on the authority of their virtuousness and learning. But such challenges to government were quickly suppressed. Around 506/1112, the (anaf" jurist Mu!ammad b. Ya!y% al-Zab"d" (d. 555/1160) was banished by the governor of Damascus because he had behaved like a mu!tasib in public, commanding right and forbidding evil.56 The mu!tasib and punishment under the Seljuqs The Seljuq mu!tasib, given his important share in the ruler’s claim to lawful violence, was a crucial state agent, instrumental in ensuring the smooth running of the régime’s repressive state apparatus. It is worth recalling that Seljuq rulers and their troops retained much of the old nomadic lifestyle, often pitching their tents in front of the city gates rather than seeking residence inside the city walls. &isba, the most characteristically urban administrative function in medieval Islamic society, served them as a prosthesis to reach intra muros, and thus to stamp their authority on the cities in their domain.57 This appropriation of the office by the new military overlords is reflected in the fact that the Seljuq mu!tasib became increasingly involved in the administration of punishment, whether by way of ‘statutory punishment’ (!add) or ‘discretionary punishment’ (ta$z*r), as the literature on the subject produced by government officials suggests.58 Limited power to punish offenders had been given to Buyid mu!tasibs. According to the Buyid Siyar al-mul%k, the mu!tasib could ‘discipline’ (addaba) !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 55 Quoted in Dekhoda, Lughatn#meh, s.v. dirra. $Abd al-Q%dir b. Mu!ammad Ibn Ab" l-Waf%&, al-Jaw#hir al-mu,iyya f* +abaq#t al&anafiyya (Hyderabad, 1332/[1914]), II, 142.13, quoted in Michael Cook, Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought (Cambridge, 2000), 316. 57 Cf. David Durand-Gu dy’s comment in his contribution to this volume that early Seljuq rulers ‘sought to bypass old local solidarities’ by ‘monopolizing local and imperial offices’. – It may be that !isba, shorn of its local links of solidarity, exacerbated the decline of Iranian urban culture that set in in the 5th/11th century, as described by Richard Bulliet. See Richard Bulliet, Islam: The View from the Edge (New York, 1994), 129-44. 58 I exempt from the following analysis the normative !isba literature written by the $ulam#, who at times, though not always, occupied an oppositional stance vis-à-vis the state. It is not surprising to see that in the theoretical literature produced by the $ulam#(, the mu!tasib is given extensive powers of prosecution and punishment. This served to delineate the office against other offices of prosecution which had no grounding in religious concepts such as i!tis#b and al-amr bi-l-ma$r%f. The 3rd/9thcentury !isba manual written by the Zayd" Im%m al-N%)ir li-l-(aqq al-(asan b. $Al" al-U*r#sh (d. 304/917), for example, gives the mu!tasib the power to inflict !add punishment on wine-drinkers, and to punish with ta$z*r Muslim slanderers. See R. B. Serjeant, ‘A Zayd" Manual of (isba of the 3rd Century (H)’, RSO 28 (1953), 29. In alShayzar"’s (fl. late 6th/12th) !isba manual, the mu!tasib is instructed to punish offenders with ta$z*r; the text even details the appropriate procedure for stoning fornicators. See $Abd al-Ra!m%n b. Na)r al-Shayzar", Nihy#hat al-rutba, ed. S. B. al$Ar"n" (Cairo, 1365/1946), 9, 108-9. 56 fraudulent merchants.59 The administration of corporal punishment, however, rested squarely with the chief of police ("#!ib al-shur+a): He had to be familiar with all different kinds of penalties ($uq%b#t, !ud%d) and when to implement them, proactive in prosecuting crime (jin#y#t), meticulous in his supervision of the local prisons, and careful to carry out punishment in public so that both commoners and the elite would witness it.60 Some decades later, in the sijill written by the Buyid vizier al--%!ib Ibn $Abb%d, the mu!tasib is enjoined to take care of ‘the common good of all’ (ma"la!at al-k#ffa) by showing hardness (ghil)a) toward the malefactors (ahl al-fus%q). He is explicitly encouraged to imprison offenders and discipline those who are misguided (ta(d*bu man taghurru nafsuhu). However, Ibn $Abb%ds’s diploma is very clear that the preferred method is to admonish people rather than to punish them physically.61 No reference is made in the Buyid insh#( documents to the mu!tasib’s power to mete out severe corporal punishments, whether as ta$z*r or !add.62 There is a marked difference, then, to a story told in approving fashion in the Seljuq Siy#satn#ma, in which the mu!tasib of Ghazna publicly flogs a powerful emir and army general for riding through the streets in a state of drunkenness.63 While the !isba diploma in the $Atabat al-kataba is a bit vague on the issue of the mu!tasib’s participation in the prosecution of crime—he is merely told to keep ‘corrupt people’ (ahl-i fas#d) in check64—a Rum Seljuq !isba diploma (from Konya) instructs the mu!tasib to threaten criminals (mujrim#n) with punishment according to their crimes.65 In Wa*w%*’s (d. ca. 578/1182) appointment letter the preferred term for the mu!tasib’s punishment is still ta(d*b rather than ta$z*r; but there is also an injunction to uphold the !ud%d of God’s law, as they are specified in revelation.66 The mu!tasib’s share in ta$z*r and in !add punishment comes out very clearly in a !isba diploma written by $Im%d al-D"n al-K%tib al-I)fah%n" (d. 597/1201), which instructs the mu!tasib to inflict both types of punishment, in addition to supervising !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 59 Sadan, ‘New Source’, 373. Ibid., 367-8, 370-1. 61 Ibn $Abb%d, Ras#(il, 39-41. 62 Note, however, that ta$z*r as a distinct legal category only emerged in the early Seljuq period. See my Justice, Punishment and the Medieval Muslim Imagination, 215-24. 63 Ni'%m al-Mulk, Siy#satn#ma, 53-4. Flogging by the mu!tasib is explicitly mentioned in Ghaznavid sources. See Bayhaq", T#r*kh-i Bayhaq*, quoted in Dehkhoda, Lughatn#meh, s.v. mu!tasib. 64 Juvayn", $Atabat al-kataba, 83. 65 Taq#r*r al-man#"*b, in Türkiye Selçukluları hakkında resmî vesikalar, ed. O. Turan (Ankara, 1958), 44 (Pers. text). 66 Rash"d al-D"n Mu!ammad b. Mu!ammad Wa*w%*, Majm%$at al-ras#(il, ed. M. Fahm" ([Cairo], 1939), 80-1. The !ud%d All#h could also refer, of course, simply to ‘God’s laws’, but the meaning of ‘statutory punishments’ is not entirely implausible. For the purpose of this essay, a certain continuity of administrative organisation from the Seljuqs to the Khwarazmshahs is assumed. Cf. C. Edmund Bosworth’s comment that ‘the Khw%razmsh%hs in eastern Iran and the network of Atabeg dynasties in western Iran and the Arab lands must be regarded as a continuation of [the] process [of] ethnic and tribal movements of Turks into the Middle East’. See idem, ‘Barbarian Incursions: The Coming of the Turks in the Islamic World’, in Islamic Civilisation 950-1150, ed. D. S. Richards (Oxford, 1973), 10. 60 the local prison.67 Another couple of decades later, in an appointment letter for the mu!tasib written by /iy%& al-D"n Ibn al-Ath"r (d. 637/1239), the mu!tasib is instructed to publicly execute heretics or punish them with the !add of flogging.68 While these latter examples are taken from post-Seljuq (Ayyubid) sources, it is from Seljuq times onwards that the boundary separating the prerogatives and duties of the police forces (shur+a) from that of the mu!tasib becomes blurred.69 Overall, !isba under the Seljuqs claimed increasingly wide repressive and punitive powers. This is also evinced by the chronicles of the Seljuq period, which give a plethora of examples of mu!tasibs, or their deputies, administering public punishments for a variety of offences, including ones unconnected to fraudulent behaviour in the marketplace or simple transgression against the norms of public decency.70 For example, in 547/1152, a helper (ghul#m) of the mu!tasib of caliph alMuqtaf" publicly exposed the deposed and disgraced director of the Ni'%miyya madrasa on a platform at the B%b al-N#b% and beat him five strokes with the dirra.71 One punishment, however, which really comes into focus in the Seljuq period as belonging to the mu!tasib is ignominious parading (tashh*r). Tashh*r processions led by the mu!tasib may have been an innovation that happened under the Seljuqs, at least as far as the lands of Iraq and Persia are concerned.72 Previously, the shur+a, whether acting on behalf of the judge or not, appears to have been primarily responsible for carrying out such shaming punishments.73 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 67 $Im%d al-D"n al-K%tib al-I)fah%n", al-Barq al-sh#m*, ed. F. (usayn (Amman, 1987), V, 137-8. 68 /iy%& al-D"n Ibn al-Ath"r, Tawa""ul al-mul%k, MS Oxford, Pococke 322, fol. 95a:12, 96a:5. 69 At times, shur+a even seems to have become subsumed under the mu!tasib’s authority. For example, al-Shayzar" states that the atabeg Tughtak"n (d. 552/1128), ruler of Damascus and founder of the Burid dynasty, appointed a mu!tasib, giving him power over shur+a. See Buckley, The Book of the Islamic Market Inspector, 31. The Crusaders, who borrowed !isba from the Arabs, called it the office of the ‘master sergeant’ or ‘chief of police’. See ibid., 32 n11. 70 Fatimid mu!tasibs in the 5th/11th century also had the power to implement harsh punishments, especially flogging and tashh*r, but seem to have been restricted to prosecution of offences bearing upon the grain trade, that is, specifically marketrelated offences. Cf. Lev, ‘The Suppression of Crime’, 84-7. For examples of severe floggings by mu!tasibs in al-Andalus in the 3rd/9th and 4th/10th centuries, see Ab# l-Wal"d $Abd All%h b. Mu!ammad Ibn al-Fara." (d. 403/1013), T#r*kh $ulam#( alAndalus (Madrid, [1890-92]), I, 98, 303. 71 Ibn al-Jawz", Munta)am, XVIII, 84. 72 Fatimid mu!tasibs of the 4th/10th and 5th/11th centuries are repeatedly reported to have paraded offenders. See Lev, ‘The Suppression of Crime’, 84-7. Fatimid mu!tasibs are also known to have administered floggings. See Ibn Taghr"birdi, alNuj%m al-)#hira (Cairo, n.d.), IV, 236; Dhahab", T#r*kh al-Isl#m, XXVIII, 97-8. 73 The Buyid Siyar al-mul%k mentions that the "#!ib al-shur+a must first flog and imprison the makers of musical instruments, male and female singers, and effeminate men, then shave their heads and parade them. See Sadan, ‘A New Source’, 369. Everett Rowson discusses a few cases of tashh*r in Umayyad times in his ‘Reveal and Conceal: Public Humiliation and Banishment as Punishment in Early Islamic Times’, in Public Violence in Islamic Societies, eds. Christian Lange and Maribel Fierro (Edinburgh, 2009), 119-21. However, no mu!tasib appears to have been The first mu!tasib who is reported to have carried out ignominious parades in Seljuq times is Mu!ammad b. al-Mub%rak al-Khiraq" (or al-Kharaq") (d. 494/1101), a Sh%fi$" judge and mu!tasib of Baghdad who served for over twenty years under the caliphs al-Muqtad" (r. 467/1075-487/1094) and al-Musta'hir (r. 487/1094512/1118).74 Al-Khiraq" can be regarded as the dominant mu!tasib in the history of Seljuq Baghdad. The vizier al-Rudhr%war" (r. 476-84/1083-91) instructed him to discipline (an yu(addiba) the cloth merchants and others who opened their shops on Fridays and instead closed them on Saturdays because, as the vizier reasoned, this would have strengthened the position of the Jews, who, as one infers, were a force to be reckoned with in Baghdad’s economic life at the time.75 Al-Khiraq" was also ordered to prevent women from going out at night for amusement.76 He is also remembered for telling off a (anaf" judge for holding court in a mosque, a practice which the Sh%fi$"s condemned.77 Al-Khiraq" threatened the owners of Baghdad’s bath-houses with ignominious parading should they neglect to see to that a loincloth (mi(zar) was always worn inside their establishments.78 Seljuq mu!tasibs paraded people in other instances as well. In 467/1074-5, prostitutes (mufsid#t) were shown around by the mu!tasib on donkeys and then banished to the Western shore of Baghdad.79 The secretary Ab# l-Dulaf b. Hibat All%h was paraded in Baghdad in 513/1119, while simultaneously being flogged by a ghul#m of the mu!tasib.80 Cheating merchants, thieves, grave-robbers, tricksters, drunkards, perjurers and blasphemers suffered tashh*r. A cannibal was paraded at Damghan in 494/1101, and Isma$ilis at Isfahan and elsewhere around the turn of the century.81 The interventionist nature of !isba under the Seljuqs Only in some of these instances of tashh*r are mu!tasibs explicitly mentioned as having organised and carried out the ignominious parade. However, that the muhtasib should have been entrusted with this particular punishment is only logical. Tashh*r, the act of ‘making notorious’, was a penalty aiming, inter alia, to destroy people’s privacy, viz., their right to be protected from the public gaze.82 As such, it !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! involved in these early historical examples of tashh*r. There is currently no study of the practice of tashh*r in 3rd/9th and 4th/10th-century Iraq and Persia, and it may still come to daylight that the mu!tasib was involved in tashh*r also in earlier centuries. 74 Ibn al-Jawz", Munta)am, XVII, 73. 75 Ibid., XVII, 24. 76 Ibid., XVII, 66. 77 See Shayzar", Nih#yat al-rutba, tr. Buckley, The Book of the Islamic Market Inspector, 131-2. Cf. Emile Tyan, Histoire de l’orgaisation judiciaire en pays d’Islam (Leiden, 1960), 641. 78 Ibn al-Jawz", Munta)am, XVII, 73. 79 Ibid., XVI, 166. 80 Ibid., XVII, 172. See also $Abb#d Sh%lj", Maws%$at al-$adh#b (Beirut, 1980), III, 246, quoting Ibn Khallik%n, Wafay#t al-a$y#n. 81 See the cases collected in my Justice, Punishment and the Medieval Muslim Imagination, 79-85. 82 Cf. Eli Alshech, ‘Out of Sight and Therefore Out of Mind: Early Sunn" Islamic Modesty Regulations and the Creation of Spheres of Privacy’, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 66 (2007), 268. had a natural affinity with the office of !isba as the Seljuq administration conceived it. As is suggested here, the Seljuq mu!tasib became increasingly occupied with probing, crossing and subverting the line that separated the private from the public sphere. This is the second significant change in the mu!tasib’s office in the Seljuq period. &isba became more interventionist, in the sense that Seljuq mu!tasibs acquired greater authority to transgress into the private sphere of Muslim households. This development coïncided with, and may have been informed by, the Seljuq preoccupation with a comprehensive system of surveillance, initiated by Ni'%m al-Mulk’s systematic attempts to ‘extend the penetrating gaze of the central authority’ by deploying espionage agents (j#s%s#n) to all the provinces of the realm.83 The mu!tasib became an important player in this network of reconnaissance. That the government should intrude into the privacy of ordinary Muslims’ lives had been a common fear among the subjects of political rule since the early centuries of Islam, in particular since the inquisition (mi!na) of the early 3rd/9th century, when the caliphal state had famously attempted to impose its own brand of orthodoxy on society.84 This had involved a great deal of prying into the private beliefs of Muslims.85 In the course of the mi!na, Ibn (anbal (d. 241/855), the leader of the traditionalist $ulam#(, was imprisoned and tortured for refusing to acknowledge the new caliphal doctrine, and his home was raided and searched.86 In memory of this traumatic event, theoreticians of !isba from the ranks of the $ulam#( took great care to stress that !isba is ‘the commanding of right when it is openly neglected (idh# )ahara tarkuhu) and the forbidding of wrong when the action is openly committed (idh# )ahara fi$luhu).’87 In other words, the characteristic realm of the mu!tasib, according to the normative literature produced by the $ulam#(, was the realm of the ‘apparent’ ()#hir).88 The mu!tasib must not, on the other hand, preoccupy himself with ‘that which is concealed’ (makt%m) or secret (sirr). As al-%!ib Ibn $Abb%d’s investiture diploma puts it, the mu!tasib must prevent the commoners (ra$iyya) from ‘expressing openly that which is prohibited’ (al-muj#hara bi-m# yu!zaru).89 However, some fifty years later, still in the Buyid period, the border of the mu!tasib’s sphere of influence appears to have shifted closer toward ‘that which is concealed’, regardless of what the $ulam#( held to be the correct position on the matter. Al-Waz"r al-Maghrib", writing at the Marwanid court in Mayafariqin in the first half of the 5th/11th century, points out that the jurisdiction of the chief of !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 83 Safi, Politics of Knowledge, 83-4. Cook, Commanding Right, 80-2, 99. 85 See Basim Musallam, ‘The Ordering of Muslim Societies’, in The Cambridge Illustrated History of the Islamic World, ed. F. Robinson (New York and Cambridge, 1996), 182, 184. For an interpretation of the mihna as a struggle between the caliphate and various camps of $ulam#( over the public sphere, see Nimrod Hurvitz, ‘The Mihna (Inquisition) and the Public Sphere’, in The Public Sphere in Muslim Societies, ed. M. Hoexter, S. Eisenstadt and N. Levtzion (Albany, 2002), 17-30. 86 Cook, Commanding Right, 112. 87 M%ward", al-A!k#m al-sul+#niyya, 240. 88 Ibid., 252. Cf. Cook, Commanding Right, 480; Klein, ‘Between Public and Private’, 445. 89 Ibn $Abb%d, Ras#(il, 40. 84 police extends only to conspicuous ()#hir) challenges to the order, such as sins that are publicly known (al-fisq al-muj#hir bihi). The mu!tasib’s concern, by contrast, is also with hidden (makt%m) offenses, which may cause greater harm than transgressions committed openly.90 There are no explicit statements in Seljuq !isba appointment deeds encouraging the mu!tasib to transgress into the privacy of houses. However, a number of insh#( documents from the period make room for exactly this kind of interventionist understanding of the office. The $Atabat al-kataba sets an example, even if the office in question is not !isba but ri(#sa (of Mazandaran). The ra(*s of the region, who throughout the diploma is entrusted with a number of duties very similar to those of the mu!tasib, is enjoined to respect the inviolability (!urma) of Muslim households and not intrude into them unless there is a ‘clear proof (bayyina)’ of a sin going on in the inside.91 In a similar vein, a shi!na in the Seljuq kingdom of Kirman, in another investiture letter, is warned ‘not to expose the privacy of Muslims to public ignominy on mere suspicion or based on acts of slander’ (bi-mujarrad-i tuhmat va sa$#yat rusv#yi-yi $awr#t-i musulm#n#n na-kunad).92 The implication is that if ‘clear proof’ in excess of ‘mere suspicion’ is at hand, the repressive state authorities are allowed to intrude into the private sphere. What counts as ‘clear proof’, however, is a grey area. With regard to the mu!tasib’s power to intrude into the privacy of homes, the most striking statement in 6th/12thcentury insh#( literature can be found in Wa*w%*’s appointment letter. Right at the beginning of the list of instructions to the mu!tasib Wa*w%* states that he must not climb up enclosures or walls in the pursuit of his office, or lift veils, or break into closed doors, or give unworthy people (awb#sh) power over the houses of the Muslims and the harems of the believers […] thereby making public what God has commanded to be kept veiled and secret, and forbidden to show openly and make known in public.93 The novelty of Wa*w%*’s letter is that it turns from prescriptions about the mu!tasib’s duties to explicit proscriptions against abusing the office, especially in terms of the mu!tasib’s violation of the sanctity of houses.94 This shift in emphasis is significant. What Wa*w%*’s formulation reveals is that by the end of the 6th/12th century, mu!tasibs had become extremely intrusive: they had become capable of climbing onto walls and roofs to spy on people, of breaking into houses even when doors were locked, or even of employing ruffians to carry out razzias into the living quarters of Muslim households. And such sweeping prerogatives appear to have !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 90 Ab# l-Q%sim al-(usayn b. $Al" al-Waz"r al-Maghrib", Kit#b f* l-siy#sa, ed. F. $A. A!mad (Alexandria, n.d.), 53. On al-Maghrib", cf. EI2, s.v. al-Maghrib", Ban#, V, 1210-2 (P. Smoor). 91 Juvayn", $Atabat al-kataba, 25. 92 Mu!ammad b. $Abd al-Kh%liq Mayhan" (fl. 575/1180), Dast%r-i dab*r*, ed. A. S. Erzi (Ankara, 1962), 114. 93 Wa*w%t, Ras#(il, 81. 94 This is also noted by Richard Wittmann, ‘The Mu!tasib in Seljuq Times: Insights from Four Chancery Manuals’, Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic Review 7 (2006), 121. Wittmann does not see this characteristic of Wa*w%*’s letter as part of a larger development in the office, but rather, as a ‘puzzling’ idiosyncrasy of !isba under the Khwarazmshahs. remained within the mu!tasib’s power also in later times.95 The proscription against spying and prying, coupled with the lipservice injunction to respect privacy unless ‘clear proofs’ are found, reappears in the Ayyubid investiture deed written by $Im%d al-D"n for the mu!tasib of Aleppo.96 Mu!tasibs intruded into people’s privacy not only in the territorial sense of entering into houses. When subjecting offenders to shaming punishments, such as ignominious parades, mu!tasibs also transgressed against the inviolability of peoples’ bodies, short of exposing their shame zones ($awr#t). Those paraded in tashh*r processions were dressed in rags which barely covered them; sometimes hair and beards were shaved as well.97 Even women were paraded, although the sources give little detail on how this was done.98 The punishment of tashh*r was a transgression against the right to remain private in the sense that personal dignity was destroyed. A key element of tashh*r was in fact loudly to announce the offenders’ crimes to the crowd (i$l#n, ta$r*f), thereby revealing their sins to the public.99 The Seljuq mu!tasib intruded into the private sphere in another nonterritorial sense, in as much as he was occupied with prying into peoples’ religious beliefs and allegiances. The religious policy of the Seljuqs, given the tensions between them and the Fatimids and Isma$ili N"z%r"s, brought this characteristic of !isba to the fore. In the 5th/11th and 6th/12th centuries, mu!tasibs in the Seljuq domain became increasingly involved in the surveillance and suppression of those considered heretics by the ruling authorities. Mention has already been made of tashh*r processions of Isma$ilis. Around 544/1150, a popular preacher in Baghdad by the name of Bad"$ was arrested and his house searched on suspicion of his Shi$i partisanship. Clay tablets into which the names of the twelve Im%ms were engraved were found. Bad"$ was publicly beaten and paraded at Baghdad’s B%b al-N#b%.100 In 559/1163–4, the mu!tasib of Baghdad ignominiously paraded a group of artisans who had shown their Shi$i sympathies by weaving the names of the twelve Imams into the mats they were making.101 Sweeping powers of investigation against non-orthodox groups were enjoyed by post-Seljuq mu!tasibs in Baghdad as well, particularly as the local (anbal"s underwent a gradual rapprochement with the caliphal government.102 Ibn al!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 95 In 6th/12th-century Baghdad, the police of morals entered into the houses to search for musical instruments and wine, and if they were found, the offenders were ignominiously paraded. See Ibn al-Jawz", Munta)am, XVIII, 9. 96 $Im%d al-D"n, al-Barq al-sh#m*, V, 137: ‘He [the mu!tasib] must not proceed against those whose situation is concealed (man iltabasa $alayhi amruhu), unless he has clear proofs (d%na )uh%r am#ratih# wa-wu,%! bayyin#tih# bi-fir#satih#).’ 97 Ibn al-Jawz", Munta)am, XVI, 37-8, XVIII, 9, 84. Al-M%ward" condemns the shaving of beards in tashh*r but allows the shaving of heads. See idem, al-A!k#m al-sul+#niyya, 239. 98 Ibn al-Jawz", Munta)am, XVI, 166, XVII, 323, XVIII, 160. 99 M%ward", al-A!k#m al-sul+#niyya, 239; Mu!ammad b. A!mad al-Sarakhs" (d. c. 483/1090), Mabs%+ (Cairo, 1324-31/[1906-13]), XVI, 145; Ab# Bakr b. Mas$#d al-K%s%n" (d. 587/1189), Bad#(i$ al-"an#(i$ (Cairo, 1910), VI, 289. 100 Ibn al-Jawz", Munta)am, XVIII, 84. 101 Ibid., XVIII, 159. 102 Cook, Commanding Right, 125 n85 refers to Ibn Rajab, al-Dhayl $al# +abaq#t al&an#bila, ed. Fiq" (Cairo, 1952-3), II, 121, 213, 258, 261, 262, for (anbalite mu!tasibs in Jawz"—who seems to have been appointed a mu!tasib himself, although the degree of his official affiliation with the office is difficult to determine—acted as a kind of inquisitor in Baghdad, especially under the caliph al-Musta."& (r. 566-75/1170-80). In 571/1176, Ibn al-Jawz" was given power to organise a crackdown on extreme Shi$ites (raw#fi,), including the right to imprison people and demolish their houses.103 In 588/1192, he aligned himself with the (anbal" vizier Ibn Y#nus (d. 593/1197) in the condemnation of the director of the J"liyya madrasa, a grandson of the famous (anbal" jurist and mystic $Abd al-Q%dir al-J"l" (d. 561/1166), accusing him ‘of harbouring in his madrasa suspect books of philosophy and of zandaqa, in particular the Ras#(il of the Ikhw%n al--af%&’.104 Although it cannot be proven, it is tempting to imagine that Ibn al-Jawz", to whom the J"liyya was given after its director’s dismissal, had searched the madrasa in his function as mu!tasib.105 It is difficult not to think that Ibn al-Jawz", whose despisal of speculative theology (kal#m) is wellknown, was also involved in the following incident: In 567/1171-2, the director of the Ni'%miyya madrasa had publicly lectured on an arcane topic in metaphysics, the question whether God can be described as an ‘existent’ (mawj%d). He was reported to the authorities, brought before and chided by the vizier, made to sit on a donkey and paraded around the city.106 Thus, one of the legacies of the e u s to other unni imes in the ear East was an understanding of the role of mu!tasib as an inquisitor, probing and prying into people’s beliefs, and censoring heretical teachings. In Syrian cities, when the Fatimids were chased out by the Zengid and Ayyubid heirs of the Seljuqs, mu!tasibs were in charge of making sure that no songs insulting the first three caliphs were sung in the streets.107 /iy%& al-D"n’s appointment letter for the office of !isba betrays an almost obsessive concern that state power be subverted by the covert preaching of heresy. The mu!tasib is exhorted to protect the ‘saved group’ (al-firqa al-n#ji(a) of orthodox Sunnism, that is the followers of the ‘righteous forefathers’ (al-salaf al-"#li!), by keeping a close eye on the preachers of heterodox persuasion. The letter goes on to state that those in whose houses heretical books are found—one presumes after a search by the mu!tasib—‘must be arrested and publicly denounced’ and that they must be ‘punished with ignominious parading to !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Baghdad in the last decades of the caliphate, who included Ibn al-Jawz"’s son and three of his grandsons. See also Angelika Hartmann, An-N#"ir li-D*n All#h (1180-1225): Politik, Religion, Kultur in der späten $Abb#sidenzeit (Berlin, 1975), 190-2, 290. There had been a tradition of (anbal" activism in Baghdad since the 4th/10th century, and (anbal"s increasingly aligned themselves with the caliphate in the last decades of its existence. See Cook, Commanding Right, 121-8. 103 Ibid., 127. On Ibn al-Jawz"’s career as ‘inquisitor’ of Baghdad, see also Angelika Hartmann, ‘Les ambivalences d’un sermonnaire !anbalite: Ibn al-0awz" (m. en 597/1201), sa carrière et son ouvrage autographe, le Kit#b al-.aw#t*m’, AI 22 (1986), 51-115. Hartmann speaks of ‘plusieurs autodafés et razzias’ that Ibn al-Jawz" and the vizier Ibn Y#nus would have staged. See ibid., 67. 104 Ibn Rajab, Dhayl, I, 425-6, quoted in EI2, s.v. Ibn al-Djawz" (H. Laoust). 105 See Hartmann, ‘Les ambivalences d’sermonnaire !anbalite’, 62-70, for a discussion of the unfolding of events in the conflict between the members of the alJawz" and al-J"l" families. 106 Ibn al-Jawz", Munta)am, XVIII, 196. 107 Dominique Sourdel and Janine Sourdel-Thomine, La civilisation de l’Islam classique (Paris, 1968), 253. serve as an example’.108 The Seljuq $ulam%& and changing conceptions of public and private in the Seljuq period By the end of the Seljuq period, the mu!tasib had assumed, in the words of Wa*w%*, the power to ‘make public what ought to be concealed’. The $ulam#(, ever suspicious of the government’s claims to authority over the lives of their subjects, were rightly worried, even if their attitude was often ambivalent. Take al-Ghaz%l" as an example. In the ethical chapters of I!y#( $ul%m al-d*n and in the Kimiy#-yi sa$#dat, one of al-Ghaz%l"’s main aims of moral instruction is to convey the idea that sins committed in private must not be divulged and dragged into the realm of ‘what is apparent’, that is, the arena of public knowledge. This concern is especially prominent in the chapter he devotes to the ‘sins of the tongue’, which is one long warning against the sin of slandering others on account of their sins, whether real or imagined.109 Al-Ghaz%l"’s stress on the duty to cover up (satr) could appear to border on paranoia, but one of the reasons behind his eagerness to keep sins secret might be his fear that open play o rivate matters would undermine the ht to privacy, which under a repressive régime such as the Seljuqs was in constant need of protection. On the other hand, al-Ghaz%l"’s position vis-à-vis the mu!tasib’s right to intrude into Muslim houses, though delineated with extreme caution, is relatively permissive. His Sh%fi$" predecessor al-M%ward" had prohibited mu!tasibs from entering into houses even if ‘sinful’ noises could be heard in the street. In such cases, the mu!tasib, according to al-M%ward", should merely remonstrate from the outside.110 Al-Ghaz%l", however, takes a different, more activist view, and in this he is followed by most other Sunni jurists after him, including Ibn al-Jawz".111 For him, the sound of music or the voices of drunkards, if they can be heard in the street, justify the mu!tasib’s intrusion into the house.112 Al-Ghaz%l"’s example illustrates the dilemma faced by the $ulam#( confronted with the Seljuqs’ expansionist policy of surveillance and control: The state’s increasingly intrusive attitude, as it translated into the behaviour of state-appointed mu!tasibs, upset the delicate balance the $ulam#( had devised to reconcile the right of every Muslim to remain concealed with the duty of each individual to carry out al-amr bi-l-ma$r%f wa-l-nahy $an al-munkar. A more activist interpretation of this duty was, generally speaking, in the interest of the Sunni $ulam#(, who under Seljuq patronage had seen their self-confidence renewed;113 but as !isba became one of the key repressive institutions of the Seljuq state, enthusiasm for the office waned among those who saw themselves in latent opposition to the raison d’état. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 108 Ibn al-Ath"r, Tawa""ul al-mul%k, fol. 95b:4-5. Ab# (%mid al-Ghaz%l", K*miy#-yi sa$#dat (Tehran, 1333/[1914 or 5]), 471-503. 110 M%ward", al-A!k#m al-sul+#niyya, 253. 111 Cook, Commanding Right, 139, 480. As Cook notes, however, Ibn al-Jawz" injects !isba with a more ‘state-friendly tendency’. 112 Ghaz%l", I!y#( $ul%m al-d*n, tr. Buckley, Book of the Islamic Market Inspector, 157. Cf. Klein, ‘Public and Private’, 48; Cook, Commanding Right, 481. 113 The opposite development appears to have taken place in Shi$i discussions of alamr bi-l-ma$r%f, where one sees moves toward a less activist interpretation from Buyid to ‘post-,#sian’ Seljuq times. See Robert Gleave’s contribution to this volume. 109 In conclusion, let us raise the question whether the mu!tasib’s new status is echoed in Seljuq-period fiqh beyond discussions specifically devoted to !isba. The changes in fiqh definitions of the inviolability of Muslim households have recently been made the object of study by Eli Alshech.114 Alshech has traced the development in Islamic law from a rigid occupancy-based conception to a broader and more flexible notion of privacy, defined as the inalienable right of the (free) Muslim individual to be free from intrusive monitoring by the state authorities. In the first two centuries of Islam, Alshech suggests, the right to domestic privacy was primarily conceived as a function of rightful ownership of a space. If, for example, a person built a house and discovered upon completion that his neighbours were able to peep into in his house from their roof or through a window, he could not legally force them to obstruct the window or stop using their roof, because his neighbours’ right of usage preceded his own. It was the builder’s responsibility to find ways to conceal himself and his family from any curious gazes from the outside.115 In later centuries, however, jurists increasingly tended to argue that with regard to privacy, the question of who possessed the older and therefore superior right of usage was irrelevant. According to this later view, privacy, the right to remain unseen, was to be protected under all circumstances. From now on, people were forbidden to walk on their roofs unless they installed a screen to block the view corridor onto lower roofs.116 The development in fiqh that Alshech traces spans a long period of six centuries. He points out that the early (anbal"s of the 4th/10th century, under the impression of both the mi!na (which had prompted their suspicion of intrusion of all sorts) and the rabble-rousing activism of the Baghdadi street preacher Barbah%r" ((anbal", d. 329/941), had developed the new, broader understanding of privacy. However, the evidence cited by Alshech seems to suggest that in fact the most significant changes, or at least the most eloquent elaborations on these early efforts, occurred in the 5th/11th and 6th/12th centuries.117 This is particularly the case with the (anaf"s, the school of law that most Seljuq rulers followed. The (anaf"s had traditionally shown themselves to be less concerned with privacy than the other schools.118 Ab# Y#suf (d. 182/798), for example, is said to have held the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 114 Eli Alshech, ‘“Do not Enter Houses Other than Your Own”: The Evolution of the Notion of a Private Domestic Sphere in Early Sunn" Islamic Thought’, Islamic Law and Society 11,3 (2004), 291-332. 115 Ibid., 303. Witnesses for this early position include Ibn M%jish#n (M%lik", d. 214/829) and Sa!n#n (M%lik", d. 240/853). Alshech admits, however, that the position of the early (anaf"s and Sh%fi$"s is less easy to reconstruct. See ibid., 298-9. 116 Ibid., , 313-4. 117 Alshech cites a number of witnesses for the ‘broad definition’. For the (anbal"s: Ab# Ya$l% b. al-Farr%& (d. 458/1066), Ibn Qud%ma (d. 620/1223); for the Sh%fi$"s: alShayzar" (d. 589/1193); and for the (anaf"s: $Abd All%h b. A!mad al-Nasaf" (d. 710/1310). M%ward", al-A!k#m al-sul+#niyya, 253, seems to hold a middle position. He states that while it is not necessary for the mu!tasib to force people to completely cover up their roofs he must make sure that they do not look onto their neighbours (l# yulzimu man $al# bin#(uhu an yastura sa+!ahu wa-innam# yulzimu an l# yushrifa $al# ghayrihi). 118 As Michael Cook points out, (anaf" fiqh did not develop much of a tradition of thinking about the nature, and the limits, of al-amr bi-l-ma$ruf wa-l-nahy $an al- view that a mu!tasib was allowed to enter into houses without seeking permission; his mere suspicion that a sin was being committed in the inside was enough.119 However, his fellow (anaf" Ibn M%za, also known as al--adr al-Shah"d (d. 536/1141), states that ‘the (anaf" scholars say that such a raid violates the Muslim’s right to be concealed (sitr al-Muslim) [...] and thus it should not be performed’.120 Ibn M%za, a judge in Bukhara hailing from Nishapur, was an influential figure in the second half of the Seljuq period.121 An advisor of Sanjar, killed fighting at the sultan’s side in the battle of Qatwan (whence his sobriquet ‘al-Shah"d’), he must have been acutely aware of the intrusiveness of the Seljuq state officials such as the mu!tasib.122 It appears then, that (anaf" jurists writing in the Seljuq period increasingly recognised the need to protect the privacy of houses from the reach of the state. Ibn M%za is also one of the first Muslim jurists to posit a general human desire for solitude. He states that a person ‘needs to be alone’ (ya!t#ju il# l-khalwa), even for common daily acts such as eating, drinking, or performing ritual ablutions, activities which could hardly claim to be especially sensitive in nature and therefore deserving of privacy.123 It is the Seljuq jurists, according to Alshech, who were the first to offer a substantial definition of the ‘right to concealment’ which did not only hinge on the concept of $awra, the ‘legal nakedness’ of the human body, but included every object regarded as worthy of protection by its owner. Al-Zamakhshar", who, as mentioned above, was wary of the mu!tasibs of his time, points out that entering into houses without permission is prohibited not only because the intruder might witness $awra, but because one has no right to see that which people wish to conceal.124 Overall, although the notion that privacy is an intrinsic right of the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! munkar. See Cook, Commanding Right, 309-10. The lines of development proposed here, therefore, must be regarded as merely tentative. 119 Ibid., 309 n14. However, as late an authority as al-K%s%n" (d. 587/1189) agreed with this interventionist interpretation of !isba. See ibid. 120 $Umar b. $Abd al-Az"z Ibn M%za al-Bukh%r" al--adr al-Shah"d, Shar! Adab al-q#,* li-lKha""#f (Baghdad, 1977), II, 341-2, quoted in Alshech, ‘Do Not Enter Houses’, 299 n21. 121 On the close personal relationship of the Seljuq sultans with the $ulam#(, see Deborah Tor’s contribution to this volume. 122 See $Umar Ri.% Ka!!%la, Mu$jam al-mu(allaf*n (Beirut, 1414/1993), II, 562. Ibn M%za is credited by Madelung with teaching a legal doctrine that sought to minimise differences between the Sh%fi$"s and (anaf"s, thus preserving the unity of the umma. See Wilferd Madelung, ‘The Spread of M%tur"dism and the Turks’, in Actas do IV Congresso des Estudos Árabes e Islâmicos, Coimbra-Lisboa 1968 (Leiden, 1971), 125 n39. This may also have facilitated his proximity to temporal power. Sanjar continued the early Seljuq sultans’ attachment to the (anaf" madhhab, which included taking (anaf" fuqah#( with him into battle. Alp Arsl%n, when giving battle to the Byzantines, was accompanied by the faq*h Ab# Na)r Mu!ammad b. $Abd al-Malik alBukh%r" al-(anaf". See Safi, Politics of Knowledge, 94. Under Maliksh%h, the (anaf" scholar Ab# l-Mu'affar al-Musha**ab b. Mu!ammad b. Us%ma (d. 486/1093) from Fargh%na used to accompany the army. See Madelung, ‘Spread of M%turidism and the Turks’, 143. 123 Ibn M%za, Shar! Adab al-q#d*, III, 69. This is echoed by al-Marghin%n", Hid#ya (Beirut, 1990), III, 280-1, who states that people must have a place in which they can seclude themselves (maw,i$ al-khalwa). Cf. Alshech, ‘Do Not Enter Houses’, 318. 124 Ibid., 306 n46. individual may not have been the prevalent one among the classical jurists,125 the fact that the idea appears on the horizon of fiqh in the Seljuq period is noteworthy. It makes sense to relate this shift in legal doctrine to changes in the socio-political order, that is, the increased militarisation of government under the Seljuqs,126 which ordinary Muslims faced particularly when they interacted with the agents of !isba, who were among the most prominent ‘go-betweens’ between state and society.127 This increased attention given by jurists of the Seljuq period to the issue of privacy may well reflect an increased awareness that the domestic sphere was under attack and therefore in need of protection. The Seljuqs were off to a bad start in this respect. In 448/1056, during Sultan ,ughril’s year-long stay in Baghdad, his troops were quartered in private houses, which resulted in much-resented transgressions against the Baghdadi residents, earning the sultan a stern rebuke from the caliph.128 Once the chaotic days of conquest had ended and the violence of the Seljuq state been institutionalized, officials such as the mu!tasib became the prime suspects of ‘tearing apart the veil of integrity spread over the Muslims’ (hatk al-sitr $al# $iffat al-Muslim*n), as al-Sarakhs"’s phrase has it.129 Had not the mu!tasib gained new punitive powers under the Seljuq government, had his office not become more interventionist, as has been suggested here, the described shifts in emphasis in legal doctrine might not have taken place; the ethos of keeping sins hidden, which one sees in such pronounced fashion in al-Ghaz%l"’s writings, might not have taken such deep roots, shaping Islamic attitudes towards the issue of privacy for centuries to come. In conclusion, !isba under the Seljuqs was not completely transformed; rather, a recasting of the office took place, giving the mu!tasib greater punitive powers (thus blurring the line separating !isba from shur+a) and making his office more interventionist. Seljuq rule brought into Islamic society a new way of conceiving the relationship between state and society, and a new configuration of the boundary between public and private, which now appeared more precarious than ever, and was therefore all the more avidly defended. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 125 Idem, ‘Out of Sight’, 268-9. According to Ann K. S. Lambton, this was brought about particularly through Ni'%m al-Mulk’s restructuring of iq+#$, merging military and administrative fiefs into one. See Lambton, ‘Reflections on the Iq+#$’, in Arabic and Islamic Studies in Honor of Hamilton A. R. Gibb, ed. G. Makdisi (Leiden, 1965), 369, 373. 127 On the concept of ‘go-betweens’, cf. Jürgen Paul, Herrscher, Gemeinwesen, Vermittler: Ostiran und Transoxanien in vormongolischer Zeit (Stuttgart, 1996), 4, 316. Paul mentions the office of ra(*s as a prime example of this and refers to the mu!tasib only in passing. A good instance of a mu!tasib fulfilling this function is found in the 22nd maq#ma of (am"d al-D"n Ab# Bakr $Umar b. Ma!m#d al-Balkh", Maq#m#t-i &am*d*, ed. $Al" Akbar Abarq#&" (Isfahan: Ta&"d, 1339/1960), 200, where the hero of the story, set in Balkh, is unjustly imprisoned in the ‘prison of the shi!na’; his friends among the local populace successfully intervene with the city’s mu!tasib in order to procure his release. 128 $Izz al-D"n Ibn al-Ath"r, al-K#mil f* l-t#r*kh, ed. Tornberg (Beirut 1968), s.a. 448. 129 Sarakhs", Mabs%+, IX, 85, XVI, 126. 126