politically marginalized, despite being about 13
percent of the population, or about 130,000,000
people (the third-largest Muslim population in
the world after i
ndonesia
and p
akistan
).
See also a
yodhya
; b
Uddhism
and
i
slam
; m
Ughal
dynasty
; s
UFism
.
Anna Bigelow
Further reading: David Gilmartin and Bruce Lawrence,
eds., Beyond Turk and Hindu: Rethinking Religious Iden-
tities in Islamicate South Asia (Gainesville: University
Press of Florida, 2000); Peter Gottschalk, Beyond Hindu
and Muslim (New Delhi: Oxford University Press,
2001); Andre Wink, The Making of the Indo-Islamic
World. 2 vols. (New Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1999).
hisba
(Arabic: counting, reckoning,
regulating)
The hisba was both the state institution for
promoting good and forbidding evil and the per-
sonal responsibility of Muslims to do the same.
Though the word literally means counting, it
came to be accepted as shorthand for the injunc-
tion from the q
Uran
and the
sUnna
requiring
the promotion of good and the forbidding of
evil, which was the subject of extensive debate
in Islamic law. Although the Quran suggests
that every Muslim must engage in this practice
(Q 3:104), considerable difference of opinion
existed concerning whom, how, and under what
circumstances a person should actively pursue
forbidding wrong in particular. In most cases,
Traditional public fruit and vegetable market in Cairo, Egypt
(Juan E. Campo)
K 302
hisba
scholars wrote that the duty applied only within
the Islamic community; women and disabled
Muslim men were exempt, and individuals were
not obligated to place themselves in danger in
order to suppress any evils of which they were
aware. The same verse was also understood to
mean that promoting good and forbidding evil
was a communal responsibility, which came to be
more commonly interpreted as empowering the
state to enforce the injunction.
In the early Islamic period, persons appointed
to enforce the hisba in the community were
responsible for ensuring that prayers were per-
formed properly,
mosqUe
s were maintained, and
market dealings were kept honest. The
hisba was
institutionalized during the reign of the Abbasid
caliph Abu Jaafar al-Mansur in 773 through the
establishment of the office of muhtasib, or market
controller, in the religious hierarchy of the state.
From this period, the muhtasib role in maintaining
public morality was largely confined to ensuring
proper conduct in the markets. Duties included
guaranteeing uniform weights and measures and
occasionally currency, keeping a record of prices
and preventing hoarding in times of famine, and
maintaining safe and clear roads through the
city. Though the office declined in prestige after
the Middle Ages, in many Muslim lands, these
remained the duties of the muhtasib until the
governmental reforms of the 19th and early 20th
centuries.
Where the rise of political Islam has led to the
establishment of an Islamic state or the introduc-
tion of a law code based on the
sharia
, the reintro-
duction of the state institution of the
hisba has also
often occurred. s
aUdi
a
rabia
has a government
department called the General Presidency of the
Promotion of Virtues and the Prevention of Vices,
the most public face of which is the mutawain, or
religious police, charged with upholding moral-
ity in the kingdom. The state established by the
t
aliban
in a
Fghanistan
also maintained a similar
department and police force. The governors of
states in northern Nigeria that adopted laws based
on the sharia in the 1990s have established sharia
implementation committees or sharia monitoring
police, both of which are known as hisba, in order
to assist the government in encouraging the popu-
lation to conform to the new legal code.
See also
bazaar
;
ethics
and
morality
; i
bn
t
aymiyya
, t
aqi
al
-d
in
a
hmad
.
Shauna Huffaker
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