Interlocked within two maritime and two terrestrial settings, Egypt’s geopolitical position has been important for its historical development. This chapter focuses on internal developments in Egypt which, although related to its geopolitical position, were mostly influenced by the evolution of the Muslim polity. The discussion attempts to highlight Egypt’s uniqueness as well as the province’s integration within the broader political structure of the caliphate. While the question of integration can be approached from many different angles, my preference has been to focus on some longue durée trends that reflect both Egypt’s geography and the changes related to the emergence of Islam and the consolidation of its power.

The Maẓālim Institution and its Functions

In the ancient Middle Eastern political tradition the monarch was perceived as a lawgiver and dispenser of justice, while petitioning the ruler for justice was a common practice. The monarch's legal functions also symbolised his legitimacy, and these traditions were very much alive in the medieval Middle East. The quest for direct access to the ruler/state in search of justice and personal and communal favours embodies the maẓālim institution. It was, however, a complex institution, with which modern scholars have grappled with some difficulty since it combined both judicial and administrative functions and escapes a neat definition of its true nature. The most extensive discussion of the maẓālim has been offered by Tyan and this, as pointed out by Tillier, relied on the literary sources that were available at the time he wrote. Furthermore, in the case of Egypt, some of the most important of Maqrīzī's writings were not available to Tyan.

Notwithstanding modern difficulties in defining the maẓālim institution, it was a typical medieval institution which reflects a hazy distinction between administrative and judicial spheres and overlapping institutional responsibilities. Furthermore, it was an institution that functioned in states characterised by disproportionately powerful regimes and weak societies dependent on their rulers politically and economically on both personal and communal levels. People and communities petitioned rulers for almost everything: justice, confirmation and maintenance of privileges and livelihood. They also brought their squabbles not only before judicial institutions but also to people of authority, trying to make sense of the intricate maze of power relations characterised by mighty political brokers and governmental institutions. The dependence of people on rulers played into their hands and enhanced their governability. It was in a ruler’s/state's interest to respond to people's complaints and requests and politically emasculate them. From the point view of the rulers, so important was this channel of communication that maintaining the maẓālim institution became an attribute of good governance. This complex web of relations is highlighted by both literary and non-literary sources and is well-documented for the Fatimid period.

The Enigma of the Shur†a

Although the term shurṭa is frequently referred to by Kindī, the nature of this body and its functions are never explained. The history of the institution in Fusṭāṭ goes back to the first and second governorship of ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ when the command of the shurṭa was in the hands of Khārija ibn Ḥudhāfa. Following the reference to Khārija ibn Óudhāfa, Kindī systematically lists the names of the people who were appointed to command the shurṭa. These appointments were made by the governors of Egypt, and one is left to conclude that it was sort of a military formation, a garrison or a police force.

The meaning of the shurṭa is better understood in the context of Kūfa and Baṣra, and scholars such as Donner, Lecker and Michael Ebstein have discussed many of its aspects. Lecker and Donner have drawn attention to shurṭat al-khamis, which, in the Kūfa of ʿAlī's time, constituted an elite military force.The military role of the shurṭa in the Umayyad period is well-attested, and in Baṣra it was responsible for maintaining order and fighting crime. In 665, for example, the governor of Baṣra with the help of the shurṭa took draconian measures to restore safety in the town. It has been suggested by Crone that the evolution of the shurṭa from military force to urban police took place in Baghdad, and the ṣāḥib al-shurṭa (the chief of the police) became involved in the administration of justice. In tenth-century Baghdad, the shurṭa was a sizeable force, 9,000-strong, that consisted of both cavalry and infantry.

The range of duties of the chief of the police is specified in an anonymous mid-tenth-century text (Siyāsat al-Mulūk) from Buyid Baghdad, and these included patrolling the city, maintaining order and the administration of criminal justice. According to the text, legal education was not a qualification required in order to become a chief of police.

Judicial Autonomy and the Jewish Communities

The pre-Fatimid history of Jews in Muslim Egypt is little-known and Arabic sources offer only a few bits of information. Jews and Christians, for example, alongside Muslims, participated in the prayers for the recovery of Aḥmad ibn ʺṬūlūn during his final illness. Jews lived in the former Byzantine fortified town (Qaṣr al-Shamʿ), which was engulfed by the expanding town of Fusṭāṭ. Immigration from Iran and Iraq (Hebrew Bavel [Babylonia]) that began in the second half of the ninth century was an important factor in the growth of Egyptian Jewry, and it shaped its spiritual orientation towards the Iraqi academies (yeshivot) of Sura and Pumbeditha and the Palestinian yeshiva in Jerusalem. In Fusṭāṭ there were two Jewish congregations and synagogues, Palestinian and Babylonian, which constituted the Rabbinite community, while the Karaites (Bible readers or Scripturalists, who disapproved of the teaching of the Talmud) were a separate community with complex relations with the Rabbinite Jews. The Palestinian and Babylonian synagogues were located along the Zuqāq al-Yahūd in Qaṣr al-Shamʿ. Although the Samaritans seceded from mainstream Judaism during the Second Temple, there was interaction between them and the Rabbinite community and, in the eyes of the Fatimid rulers, they were part of the subject Jewish population.

The size of the Jewish community in Fusṭāṭ and Cairo during the eleventh century has been estimated by Goitein at 4,000 (3,600 Rabbinites and 400 Karaites). The Jewish community of Cairo, however, is barely attested by the Geniza documents or the Arabic sources. It had apparently existed since the foundation of the town and was gravely affected by al-Ḥākim's persecutions, though it subsequently recovered. The second-biggest Jewish community was in Alexandria, but Jewish communities were also found in the Delta and Upper Egypt and individual Jews lived in many places all over the country.

The yeshivot were institutions of learning headed by the gaon and also had judicial functions and served as a court. The title av beth din (head of the court) was preserved for the president of the yeshiva court, who was also heir apparent to the post of gaon.

Ḥisba Manuals

There is a long Middle Eastern tradition of regulating and supervising commerce and market life embodied in the post of market supervisor known in Greek, Persian, Aramaic and Hebrew as agoranomos, vazarbad, rabb shūk and baʿal ha-shūk. One can argue that practice in Late Antiquity continued under the guise of Islam, and in the Egyptian context, one of the earliest references alluding to such continuity is from the eighth century. The jurist Ḥarmala ibn ʿImrān ibn Qurrād, known as Abū Ḥafṣ (699–776), was appointed in charge of sūq Miṣr, meaning a market supervisor in Fusṭāṭ. In ninth-century documentary sources the term ṣāḥib al-sūq appears. One document is a letter addressed to the ṣāḥib al-sūq, concerning the delivery of vinegar to a certain person and his six companions. In late literary sources the term muḥtasib is widely used, and Maqrīzī, for example, refers to the jurist Abū Muzāḥim (d. 818) as muḥtasib. What the range of the ṣāḥib al-sūq’s/muḥtasib's duties could have been is perhaps reflected by the responsibilities held by Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī ibn Mūsā al-ʿAddās (d. 935), who was in charge of ḥisba, daqīq (flour) and sūq Miṣr. The account should not be understood as indicating three different posts, since the term ḥisba subsumes supervision of the markets and the grain/bread trade.

The epigraphic evidence is essential for the early history of the ḥisba institution, since both terms, ṣāḥib al-sūq and muḥtasib, appear on glass weights and measures issued by officials in late Umayyad and early Abbasid Egypt. The earliest appearance of the title ṣāḥib al-sūq cannot be securely established, but the title muḥtasib is engraved on a stamp inscription of a wuqiyya weight from the time of the governorship of ʿAlī ibn Sulaymān (786–7). Alexander H. Morton has suggested a link between this epigraphic reference to a muḥtasib and the characterisation of ʿAlī ibn Sulaymān as a governor who followed the ‘commanding right and forbidding wrong’ doctrine, which eventually became the motto of the ḥisba institution. Other stamp inscriptions on glass weights which bear the names of governors and muḥtasibs are from the second half of the ninth century.

At the heart of the book lies the largely ignored question of to what extent Muslim law (sharīʿa) was applied in medieval Islamic states and whether its precepts indeed governed the life of individuals and the conduct of society. This book, however, is not about the formation of Islamic law, but rather about judicial institutions which preceded and paralleled the formation of the law and remained in place unaffected by that formation. The book is also about the political-administrative history that shaped the way justice was administrated, and what the spheres of competence were of the various bodies that made up the system.

Four judicial institutions were involved in the administration of justice in medieval Islam: the cadi, the chief of police (shurṭa/ṣāḥib al-shurṭa), the market inspector (ḥisba/mu ḥtasib) and the ruler (the maẓālim institution). There are ample sources and a considerable body of literature on the way the cadi operated and how justice was dispensed by the ruler. To what extent, however, the maẓālim court – not to say criminal justice dispensed by the chief of the police – adhered to and was congruent with the sharīʿa remains little-discussed. What is known about the chiefs of police in early Islam and the Fatimid period casts doubt as to whether sharīʿ law was applied in the cases adjudicated by them, and how the police gained a monopoly on the administration of criminal justice is another obscure question. The same set of questions is applicable to the ḥisba law and the post of market inspector; both became Islamised and perceived as the embodiment of the Koranic dictum of ‘commanding right and forbidding wrong’. Early ḥisba manuals, however, are texts with no religious connotations, and the core of the ḥisba regulations remained beyond the pale of the sharīʿa.

Modern literature on medieval Islam perceives the sharīʿa as an embodiment of Islam as a system of beliefs and civilisation.

Militancy and Pragmatism

Fatimid history in its North African and Egyptian–Syrian phases is relatively well-known, and references to cadis are quite frequent in the works of Heinz Halm, Ayman Fu’ād Sayyid and Michael Brett. As regards its two main components, the justice dispensed by the cadi and by other state officials such as the market supervisor, the system of administration of justice during the North African period, has been discussed by Farhat Dachraoui, who focused on the Mālikī legal background of North Africa and the complex relations of the Mālikī jurists with the Aghlabids and the Fatimids. Dachraoui has also discussed the Aghlabid administrative precedents, such as combining responsibilities for the markets with maẓālim.

The various institutions that made up the system of administration of justices are discussed by Sayyid in his book about the Fatimid state in Egypt. The cadi institution, however, is discussed separately from legal issues such as inheritances where there are no legal heirs and pious endowments, and the way the cadi dealt or failed to deal with them. The cadis of the Nuʿmān family played a crucial role in the development of the cadi institution in Fatimid Egypt, and Richard J. H. Gottheil, who wrote at the beginning of the twentieth century, was the first to translate and publish fragments concerning members of the family from Ibn Óajar's history of the Egyptian cadis.

This chapter treats the Fatimid period as a whole, and relies on extensive fragments of Fatimid documents preserved in the literary sources pertaining to the appointment of supreme cadis during the late tenth and early eleventh centuries. It also tries to present an integrative discussion of legal issues and their administrative ramifications. While relying on the existing literature and the larger range of sources currently available, my approach is primarily informed and influenced by the broader perspectives that study of law and medieval Islamic history have to offer to a student of Fatimid history. The first issue that must be addressed is the paradox that the administration of justice under the Fatimids in North Africa preceded, and in Egypt paralleled, the formation of Fatimid law.

Cadis at the Forefront of Political Life

The history of Egypt between 868 and 969 was marked by the rule of two short-lived semi-independent local dynasties, the Tulunids (868–905) and the Ikhshidids (935–69), and an intermit period of direct Abbasid control (905–35). During that period the cadi institution saw few long-serving cadis, as well as a rapid turnover in the post, increasing politicisation of the post, and growing dependence of the cadis on their political masters. When Aḥmad ibn ʺṬūlūn arrived in Egypt the cadi was Bakkār ibn Qutayba, a Ḥanafī jurist from Baṣra, where he studied the shurūṭ literature (formularies). In 860, he was appointed by the caliph al-Mutawakkil and received the exorbitant monthly salary of 168 dīnārs. He is described as a pious unmarried person and as a conscientious cadi, who made every effort to ensure the credibility of testimonies submitted at his court and kept a watchful eye on the trustees who handled various funds supervised by the cadi. He was also involved in the local world of learning and the transmission of prophetic traditions. It may be said that Bakkār ibn Qutayba was a professional cadi in a long tradition of scrupulous cadis who executed their duties properly, but his career was overshadowed by his complex relations with Aḥmad ibn ʺṬūlūn.

Aḥmad ibn ʺṬūlūn respected Bakkār ibn Qutayba, who was not a yes-man, but a stern cadi who applied the law appropriately. In one case, a tax farmer (or tax contractor, literally ‘one of the mutaqabbilūn’) who owed money to Aḥmad ibn ʺṬūlūn died and the chief tax-collector asked the emir to order the cadi to sell the debtor's house. Tax contracts were complex legal and financial transactions, and in this case the tax farmer/contractor himself guaranteed the deal and did not transfer the guarantee to a third party. In any case, Bakkār ibn Qutayba proceeded in an orderly way. He verified the existence of the debt, then the debtor's ownership of the house, and, finally, requested Aḥmad ibn ʺṬūlūn to swear that he was the creditor.

A View from Ottoman Cairo

The medieval Islamic system of the administration of justice had emerged and taken root during the seventh to ninth centuries, before and in parallel with the formation of Islamic law. Its basic structure persisted into the Ottoman period, and we can truly speak about longue durée trends. The scholarship of James E. Baldwin and his publications on the judicial institutions in Ottoman Cairo provide the natural comparative framework. Baldwin describes the judicial institutions in Ottoman Cairo as consisting of the cadi's sharʿī court, the governor's tribunal (dīwān al-ʿalī), and military officers who were involved in policing and regulating the markets, while some notables dispensed justice among their clients. The imperial council in Istanbul (dīvān-i hümāyūn) presided over by the Grand Vizier was also approached by litigants from Egypt and accepted petitions from all Ottoman territories. In addition, in Ottoman Cairo there were also Jewish and Christian courts, but the supremacy of the cadi and his court were taken for granted.

The way justice was administrated in Ottoman Cairo is largely a continuation of medieval realties. The system was made up of several bodies, or agencies, and the question can be asked, to what extent did the governor's tribunal, officers and notables dispense sharʿī justice? Untypical of the medieval administration of justice, the system described by Baldwin was marked by the involvement of powerful individuals, or the privatisation of justice. This seems to be a legacy of the Mamlūk period rather than a reflection of seventh-to twelfth-century realities. The history of the administration of justice during the Ayyubid and Mamlūk periods is yet to be written, and emphasising longue durée trends does not mean that systems were static. Nonetheless, the appointment of Ibn Khallikān as supreme cadi in Syria in 1261 (see Chapter 3) is significant and should be re-examined. As mentioned earlier, he was entrusted with responsibility for the management and maintenance of pious endowments and was appointed teacher of law in several law colleges.

Definitions and Perspectives

Customarily, the nature of the cadi's jurisdiction has been approached through etymological inquiry into the meaning of the root q.ḍ.y in the Koran. Schacht, for example, has pointed out that in the Koran the verb qaḍā signifies God’s, or the Prophet’s, decrees, while when referring to the Prophet's judicial activities the terminology is derived from the root ḥ.k.m. As Arzina B. Lalani has pointed out in an illuminating entry in the Encyclopaedia of the Qur’ān, the Koran also includes many ethical injunctions concerning how justice should be dispensed. Moving from the Koranic teachings to classical lexicography as studied by Tillier, we observe that the infinitive noun qaḍā’ signifies judgment, and the primary function of the cadi (qāḍī) was to pronounce authoritative decisions regarding disputes brought before him. Tillier concludes the discussion with a powerful, neatly formulated statement:

At the end of the discussion Tillier offers his readers the following explanation: ‘C’est pourquoi le mot ‘qāḍī’ sera exclusivement rendu par ‘cadi’ dans cet ouvrage [i.e. his book].’

Although approached from a different angle, similar conclusions have been reached by students of the Ottoman system of the administration of justice. Gyula Káldy Nagy, writing about the Ottoman cadi, has stated: ‘The authority of the ḳāḍī covered such a large area of responsibility that the full meaning of the title cannot be accurately rendered by the word “judge”.’ Case studies on the Ottoman judicial system have corroborated Nagy's statement and depict the Ottoman cadi as a provincial administrator who was also vested with judicial authority, a duality reflected by the Ottoman court records.