Draft: this lesson was written with AI help and has not yet been read by a human editor.
1 What your class asks
This lesson asks you to name services that a government or the community looks after, such as the market, and to say what people in the community must do for them. The museum offers one office that watched over markets and streets; your class adds garbage collection, snow clearing, and fire and police services. 1
Curriculum expectations, with their official codes
- B3.8 identify some of the services in the community for which the government and/or community is responsible […], and describe key responsibilities of people in the community in relation to those services […]
2 The lesson
Who is responsible?
For one service, ask who runs it, who may use it and what it is for.
What can people do to help?
Think about what people do so that a service works well, and what might go wrong if they did not.
Go deeper
Jurists wrote handbooks for market officers to work from, and Ibn al-Ukhuwwa's Ma'alim al-Qurba is one of them 2 3. In its chapter on streets and markets, the officer stops people sitting to sell in narrow streets, stops shops pushing their platforms out into the passage, and forbids tethering animals or throwing sweepings in the road 4. Ibn Khaldun writes that the officer of the hisba keeps the streets from being blocked, and acts without waiting for anyone to bring a complaint 5.
Think about it
Think of a street you walk along. If a shop pushed its platform out into the passage, who would be bothered, and why would it be fair or unfair to ask the shop to move it back?
Into the museum
- Hisba and the market inspector: the story of the office, from the market of Medina onwards.
- The muhtasib: what the job was and what the person who held it had to know.
- Ibn al-Ukhuwwa: the author of the handbook that describes the officer's work.
Try this
Read the card on the hisba. Make a chart with three columns: who ran it, who used it, and what it was for.
3 Check yourself
Nothing here is marked or sent anywhere. It is for you.
In your own words: what does Hisba and the market inspector have to do with this lesson?
Compare with the card
An office to watch the market. Ibn Khaldun writes in the Muqaddima that the hisba is an office in which the ruler appoints a capable person to watch over the markets and streets. This officer looks into fraud in measures, weights and foodstuffs, blocked streets and buildings about to fall, and acts without waiting for a complaint. Who looks after markets and streets in your community today?
I can now
Notes
- 1. The Ontario Curriculum: Social Studies, Grades 1 to 6; History and Geography, Grades 7 and 8 (2023)
- 2. HİSBE — TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (Cengiz Kallek, Ziya Kazıcı and others), §history
- 3. Maʿalim al-Qurba fi Ahkam al-Hisba, ed. Muhammad Mahmud Shaaban and Siddiq Ahmad Isa al-Mutiʿi (1976), p. 6
- 4. Maʿalim al-Qurba fi Ahkam al-Hisba, ed. Muhammad Mahmud Shaaban and Siddiq Ahmad Isa al-Mutiʿi (1976), p. 137
- 5. Muqaddimat Ibn Khaldun, p. 221