Muhtasib

[4] But whether muḥtasibs devoted themselves to hisbah frequently or vigorously in every region of the Muslim world, or focused instead on the orderly function of the marketplace, regulating weights, money, prices (though sometimes collecting bribes), is disputed.

[5] According to Sami Hamarneh, in "religious terminology", hisbah "denotes providing for ... for oneself, or seeking reward in life to come for a good deed."

It acquired another meaning sometime early in the 9th century" as "a religious position or bureau the aim of which was to carry out" enjoining good and forbidding evil.

[8] Al-Ghazali also used the term muhtasib, but to refer to "the one who performs hisba" -- a forbidder of wrong in general and not specifically a functionary overseeing marketplaces[12] -- leading to some confusion, according to historian Michael Cook.

[18] Some examples of how widespread Muhtasib was in Islamic history are that "in Persia, the function of the mutasib continued to operate in a fashion practically unchanged until the 16th century, and in Egypt it existed until the reign of Muhammad Ali, the founder of the Khedive dynasty.

[Note 1][5] Willem Floor writes that "we ... know that the market overseer existed" in [pre-Islamic] Parthian (247 BC – 224 AD) and Sassanian Iran (224–651 CE).

Unlike a qadi, he "had no jurisdiction to hear cases—only to settle disputes and breaches of the law where the facts were admitted or there was a confession of guilt".

[33] According to Ahmed Ezzat, there are "three common features shared by all ḥisba treatises, from Yahya ibn ‘Umar to Mamluk Egypt":[34] However, after 950 C.E.

[35] Based on the fact that the office holders would very likely want to recoup the large sum of money they were paying, and that the historical literature of this time indicated it was "clear" that "the muhtasib had a bad reputation in general", Floor speculates bribes were solicitated to "get back" their monthly payment.

An example being the Shi'ite poet Ibn al- Hajjaj, who was muhtasib of Bagdad, was at the same time one of the most notorious authors of sexually explicit poetry".

[35] Nizam al-Mulk, grand-vizir and de facto ruler of the Seljuk empire from 1064 to 1092, categorically stated: "the post [of muhtasib] always used to be given to one of the nobility or else to an eunuch or an old Turk.

According to Kristen Stilt, "muḥtasibs in Cairo markets had a stand (dikka) from which they observed and whipped those who cheated when weighing their goods".

In Tehran it lived on as the idara-yi ihtisa losing its "police and judicial functions and developed into a city cleaning department" that was "sold" each year to the highest bidder.

While city dust removal carried on, the "definitive end" of the ihtisab came with its abolition in 1926 following the fall of the Qajar dynasty.