On viziers and qadis of the Caliphate
A gentle approach to historical Islamic rule of law and governance
Jafar. The moustachioed, gaunt, flamboyant man clad in black and red robes holding a snake-headed golden staff whom Disney immortalized in the Alladin feature film is the popular image of the vizier archetype. His character was based on the real-life Persian Ja'far ibn Yahya (767–803), the Abbasid vizier of the caliph Harun al-Rashid. The Disney Jafar is a menacing schemer who uses magic to control the city of Agrabah. Incidentally, the real Ja'far ibn Yahya was executed on the orders of Harun al-Rashid but that is a story for another time.
Vizier or Wazir comes from the Pahlavi (Middle Persian) word root of vičir which meant mandate or command. Under the Abbasid caliphate, viziers rose as high-ranking ministers or advisors. Adept in Sharia, the religious law that forms a part of Islamic tradition, they were the bridge between sovereigns and subjects. Today, the word wazir is used for government ministers in many countries.
Within the same Sharia law, the qadis were judges in charge of the court. Often independent in their legal proceedings, the qadis were responsible for evaluating evidence, solving cases, and upholding Islamic jurisprudence. However, during the Ottoman Empire, the kadi (from the Turkish kadı) became a more powerful authority in the Sultan’s administration. They were juggling secular laws, local customs, and Sharia to govern the cosmopolitan Ottoman Empire. Even non-Muslims and foreigners held considerable weightage in the kadi’s court.
The diversity, intricacy, and progressiveness of the historical Islamic jurists and administration are depicted in this month’s bookish connections. I do not bring a romanticization of obsolete social and religious architecture but the complexity of a distant past.
Ali Cogia, The Merchant of Baghdad. Bedtime stories were my Baba’s forte. While my grandmother told us stories of pishachas and petnis, ghosts in Bengali culture on hot summer afternoons, Baba stuck to his travels. So, one winter night, I told him a story I read in my English book. I was five and had recently discovered Arabian Nights. The tables had turned and Baba thought it was one of the most magical stories about justice and ethics.
Ali Cogia hid a thousand gold pieces inside a jar of olives and left for the Haj. When he returned, the gold had vanished. He complained to Harun al-Rashid to resolve the matter. What happens next is for you to find out here and delight in the pleasures of long-lost storytelling. P.S. Baba and I love olives!
The Bellini Card by Jason Goodwin brings my favorite Ottoman detective, Yashim in search of a vanished painting of Mehmet the Conquerer that turned up in Venice in 1840. The books featuring the polymathic eunuch detective who speaks eight languages and cooks stuffed lemony artichokes, kirmizi biber, and moussaka are not only historically detailed and culturally immersive but also showcase intriguing viziers and kadis. The young vizier in The Bellini Card studied French and engineering at the palace school and was sent on missions to Paris and Vienna. Yashim’s close relationship with the Ottoman ministers makes for a shrewd and intelligent study of the expansive politics of the 19th-century Middle East.
Samarkand by Amin Maalouf is a historical fiction about the life and travels of Omar Khayyám. The French-Lebanese author brings life to 11th-century Persia under the Seljuk Empire. When Omar comes to Samarkand for the first time, he meets Abu Taher, the chief qadi of Samarkand. The older and wiser qadi warns Omar of the dangers of outspokenness in Samarkand. He gives Omar a book with empty pages and tells him to write verses that come to his mind but keep the book hidden. This is how the Rubaiyyat came to life. The book also features Omar’s interactions with the real-life Seljuk Vizir Nizam ul-Mulk and Hassan Sabbah of Qom, better known as the founder of the intelligence organization known as the Assassins. Here’s a conversation between Omar and Hassan that shows the beauty of these vibrant characters,
‘I have told you my name, but it means nothing to you. I am Hassan Sabbah of Qom. I can boast of nothing save having managed, by the age of seventeen, to read everything there is on science and religion, philosophy, history and the stars.’
‘One can never read everything, there is so much new knowledge to acquire every day.’
‘Put me to the test.’
As a jest, Omar started to ask him some questions on Plato, Euclid, Porphyry, Ptolomy, on the medicine of Disocorides, Galen, Razi and Avicenna and then on interpretations of Quranic law. His companion’s responses were always precise, thorough and flawless. When dawn arose neither of them had slept or felt the speedy passage of time. Hassan felt a real joy.
I received a book a few weeks ago. It is a first-person retelling and re-imagination of Shaherazade and the One Thousand and One Nights. Every Rising Sun by Jamila Ahmed, a scholar of medieval Islamic history, brings a much-needed feminist take on the tales of Arabian Nights. She and her father, Vizier Muhammad, persuade the bride-murdering Shahryar to leave Persia to join Saladin’s fight against the Crusaders in Palestine. The tale brings a radical lens to conceive the life of historical “khatuns and queens and sultanas and wives, who have endless patience to rightly guide their men, to save them from themselves, and who do it unseen”. Justice in a male-dominated society driven by the machinations of wazirs and qadis was not on their side. I am still reading this book but it is a remarkable achievement in dismantling the shackles of the original text.
Until next time, ma'a salama!