Encyclopedia of Islam

Hinduism and Islam

  

301  J

---

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