An old office that watched over markets and the weak

This lesson asks you to describe a range of careers related to equity and social justice and the education, training and skills they need. The museum offers one historical office, not a present-day career: the muhtasib, whose duties included protecting orphans, slaves and animals. Careers today, and what they require, come from your class. ¹

List what the person had to know, what they were allowed to do and what they were not, and who they answered to. Then ask which of these has a counterpart in a career you could choose.

Read the limits of the office, not only its duties. According to the record of the muhtasib, in the markets he may act against fraud and short measure, fix prices when sellers collude, and decide quick commercial disputes. He does not hear evidence or administer oaths, and he does not judge homicide or the fixed penalties. He may act without a complaint, which sets him apart from the judge, who hears only the cases brought to him ². He may impose discretionary penalties: reproof, prison, public exposure, beating, a ban from the trade and destruction of the tools of fraud. He uses the police and works alongside the judge and the head of grievances (nazir al-mazalim), and refers to the judge whatever falls outside his remit ². Ibn Khaldun says that the office serves that of the judge, because the muhtasib deals with general, simple matters that the judge is kept above ³.

Where did the office come from? The TDV encyclopedia, as the record of the hisba reports it, notes the view of some orientalists, among them Gaudefroy-Demombynes, von Grunebaum and Foster, that the master of the market was taken from the Greek agoranomos, the Roman aedile or the Byzantine city prefect. TDV finds no evidence for this, for three reasons: the office appeared in Medina, where there was no Byzantine influence; it was religious from the start; and the known Byzantine market ordinance dates from the tenth century, about three hundred years after the office appeared. TDV grants that the hisba manuals quote some Byzantine market rules ⁴. The record presents the link as a disputed claim, not an established origin.

The rule and the practice were not always the same. By the rule, a muhtasib was paid from the treasury, and he and his assistants were forbidden to take anything from the public while they were on salary ². The record also reports that the office was sometimes farmed out: the muhtasib paid a fixed sum to the state and collected a hisba levy from the guilds and merchants for himself, and in Baghdad that levy was abolished in 403 AH (1013 CE) ². In Seljuk Anatolia, it says, the muhtasib collected the levy from the trades by farming ².

Most of the record rests on one encyclopaedia entry, the TDV's "Hisbe", written by several authors ². The hisba manuals that the record of the hisba mentions were written by jurists for muhtasibs to work from ⁴; the records do not say how closely any muhtasib followed them. The one surviving object the hisba record names is a glass weight from Syria, and it says that no source states that a muhtasib issued it ⁵. The muhtasib record also lists what it has not covered, and says that the muhtasibs the entry names are not yet recorded as holders, because the museum has no person records for them.

The record describes an official who acts without waiting for a complaint ², who is paid a salary and barred from taking from the public ², and who refers to the judge whatever falls outside his remit ². It also reports that the office was sometimes farmed out ². Take a position: which of these features would you carry into a present-day job in this field, and what is the strongest objection to your choice?

• Muhtasib (market inspector): the powers, the qualifications, the pay and the levy, and how the office changed in Egypt, the Maghreb, Anatolia and the Ottoman state.
• Hisba: the manuals the office worked from, and the dispute over its origin.
• Qadi (judge): the office beside which the muhtasib's record sets his own.

Read Muhtasib (market inspector). Make a job description for the office: duties, what the holder had to know, and who paid him. Then add what a present-day job description in this field would include.