Government statutes

Full title: Government statutes, or rules of public and administrative law

Author: Al Mawardi

Language : BIlingual (French / Arabic)

Editions : Al Qalam

The Ahkâm soultâniyya (Governmental statutes) research and expose the bases on which the supreme authority rests, the limits within which it moves, the organizations at its disposal and which emanate from it, the means to which it resorts. It therefore happens that we find things that appear in legal treaties, fiqh, since the depositaries of authority can or even must intervene to impose either the fulfillment of certain duties or respect for the rights of each person. The author bases, as a rule, his research on the four bases which served as supports for the edifice of Muslim law, Koran, traditions (sounna), consensus (ijmâ) and analogy or reasoning (qiyâs), but is thus led to provide much historical information and to mention the divergent solutions of the other Schools: he indeed strives to resort to the highest and oldest authorities to form a whole whose elements had until then remained scattered, as he says it himself. However, we can note omissions: important offices, such as that of Defender of the Border Places, or others which were less important, such as those of the ma'âwin and the houmât, are only mentioned and the attributions are not explained. are not defined; to extra-legal taxes there is little more than allusions, etc.

To fill these gaps and sometimes provide useful additions, it would have been desirable to research and study later works dealing with similar subjects, and in particular the manuals written for the use of the kâtib; but most of them are handwritten and scattered in various large collections, which would have required facilities and leisure to which I cannot claim.

The content of this book relates to government statutes, and legal functions, forming twenty chapters:

• From the imamate contract
• From the investiture of the vizirate
• Of the investiture of the provincial government
• Of the investiture of the functions of war chief
• On the inauguration of the functions of war leader in war of public utility
• Of the judicature
• Redressing abuses
• From the union of people of nobility
• From the direction of prayer
• From the direction of the pilgrimage
• On the administration of legal alms
• On the distribution of the fay' (booty without combat) and the spoils of war
• The establishment of the capitation and property tax
• Different rules to which the various regions are subject
• On the revitalization of dead lands and irrigation
• On storage and use
• Strongholds
• On the institution of official offices (diwân) and the rules concerning them
• Crimes and misdemeanors
• Maintaining good order Hisba