Hisba

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The Hisba (حسبة, DMG ḥisba ) is a religious institution in Islam under the authority of the state for the maintenance of the Sharia order . The one who does Hisba is called the Muhtasib . The Hisba as an office refers to the control of the public space and the supervision of the markets.

Hisba as a collective duty of Muslims

Hisba is the duty of every Muslim to command what is right and to prohibit what is reprehensible (Command what is right and forbid what is reprehensible ). This duty is traced back to the Koran, in which it is said of the ummah (community of faith):

“And you shall become a community which invites to what is good and commands what is right and forbids what is wrong; and these are the successful ones. "

- Sura 3 : 104

“You are the best church that came into being for the people. You command what is right and you forbid what is wrong and you believe in Allah. And if the people of the scriptures had believed, verily, it would have been good for them! Among them are believers, but the majority of them are wicked "

- Sura 3: 110

Further passages from the Koran in which this norm is mentioned are sura 7 , 157; Sura 9 , 71 and 112; Sura 22 , 41.

In Islamic legal theory, al-Ghazālī described this moral obligation of the Muslim towards his fellow man for the first time in detail and with reference to the above-mentioned Koranic norm. Ibn Taimiya followed him with his own Hisba tract. In determining what is right and what is reprehensible, it is of course a matter of the interpretation of Sharia law .

The Hisba as an office

In most of the Islamic states of the Middle Ages and the early modern period, the Hisba was organized in the form of a public office. The person who held the Hisba office was called Muhtasib and was mostly subordinate to the Qādī . He ensured that sales transactions were in accordance with the principles of Islamic law and checked that transactions were carried out properly. The Agoranomos (ἀγορανόμος) fulfilled similar tasks in the Hellenistic and early Byzantine times . The Muhtasib also ensures that the times of prayer , dress codes, the headscarf requirement and the prohibition of rallies are observed and that men and women maintain “ morals and decency ” in their dealings with one another .

The legal scholar al-Māwardī (972-1058) describes in his book al-Aḥkām al-sulṭānīya the Hisba as an office in the middle between the rules of the Qādī office and the rules of the office of legal complaints ( maẓālim ). According to al-Māwardī, Hisba has two things in common with the Qādī office, two points in which the Hisba is more restricted than the Qādī office, and two points in which the Hisba goes beyond the Qādī office.

  • The two things they have in common are: 1. Both offices can request assistance and legal action in the event of a violation of the law; 2. The owners of the two have the right to force the defendant to do what is his duty.
  • The two points on which the Hisba is more limited than the Qādī office are: 1. The Hisba is only competent for claims relating to obvious misconduct, but not for claims relating to contracts or transactions; 2. Hisba is only responsible for recognized legal claims.
  • The two points on which the Hisba goes beyond the Qādī office are: 1. The person who is responsible for the Hisba may independently conduct investigations into the commandments and prohibitions he is monitoring, in contrast to the Qādī, who only investigate then may if a plaintiff turns to him; 2. The person who is responsible for the Hisba has the coercive power of the state with regard to offenses and can rely on law enforcement officers, whereas the Qādīs do not.

Al-Māwardī sees a similarity and a difference in the relationship between Hisba and the Legal Complaints Office. They have two aspects in common, namely the awe associated with state violence and the permissibility of intervening in the event of attacks. The difference is also divided into two aspects. On the one hand, the Complaints Office is responsible for those things that the Qādī is incapable of, while the Hisba is responsible for those things that the Qādī is exempt from. This results in the second aspect, namely that the office of legal complaints is above the Qādī office, but the Hisba is below it.

During the Middle Ages, several Muslim scholars wrote Hisba manuals describing the duties of the muhtasib. The best known work of this kind is the book Nihāyat ar-rutba fī talab al-hisba ("The highest degree in the study of Hisba"), as the author of which a certain ʿAbd ar-Rahmān ibn Nasr asch-Shaizarī is now accepted. He probably lived in Syria in the 12th century . On the basis of al-Shaizarīs work, the Egyptian scholar Ibn al-Uchūwa (d. 1329), himself a long-time Muhtasib, later created a new, particularly comprehensive Hisba manual with the title Maʿālim al-qurba fī aḥkām al-baisba ("Sign the closeness to God through the rules of Hisba "). It contains seventy chapters and describes in great detail the supervisory tasks that the Muhtasib had to perform towards the various groups of craftsmen.

The Hisba-Office will in the Muqaddima of Ibn Khaldun described.

Hisba lawsuits

If the other person sins, anyone can bring a Hisba lawsuit , as was the case in Egypt in the 1990s from a formal legal point of view .

  • Amina Lawal was sentenced to stoning by a Nigerian court in 2002 because she was divorced and expecting a child.

Hisba in Nigeria

See also: Hisba groups in Nigeria and Sharia conflict in Nigeria

After the election of the Christian Olusegun Obasanjo as President of Nigeria, the following states have been accepting the Sharia as their legal system since 2000 , thus becoming Islamic states of God and using the Hisba institution accordingly:

See also

literature

  • Muhammad Abdel-Wahhab Khallaf: Documentos sobre las ordenanzas del zoco en la España musulmana. Extraidos del manuscrito de "al-ahkam al-kubra" del Cadi Abu-l-Asbag Isa ibn Sahl. Cairo 1985 (in Arabic).
  • Kilian Bälz: The popular lawsuit of the "rights of God": Hisba in today's Egypt . In: Constitution and law overseas (VRÜ) . Volume 31, 1998, pp. 60-69.
  • Michael Cook: Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought , Cambridge UP, 2000 ISBN 0-521-66174-9
  • The Encyclopaedia of Islam . New Edition. Brill, Leiden 1965-1971, Volume 3, pp. 485ff
  • Évariste Lévi-Provençal : Trois traités hispaniques l'hisba. Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale, Cairo 1955 (Publications de l'Institut français d'archéologie orientale du Caire. Textes et traductions d'auteurs orientaux, 2).
  • Jörn Thielmann: Nasr Hamid Abu Zaid and the recovered Hisba. Sharia and Qanun in modern day Egypt. Ergon-Verlag, Würzburg 2003, ISBN 3-89913-290-4

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. al-Māwardī: al-Aḥkām as-sulṭānīya. Ed. Aḥmad Mubārak al-Baġdādī. Dār Ibn Qutaiba, Kuwait, 1989. pp. 316-318. Digitized - Engl. Transl. Wafaa H. Wahba under the title "The Ordinances of Government". Garnet, Reading, 1996. pp. 261-263.
  2. ↑ Nigeriafirst : Ethnic militia groups of Nigerian societies. (No longer available online.) April 9, 2003, archived from the original on August 24, 2009 ; Retrieved January 5, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.nigeriafirst.org