The Mazalim in Historiography Page 1 of 18 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). (c) Oxford University Press, 2015. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy ). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 20 October 2015 Subject: Law, History of Law, Legal System Online Publication Date: Oct 2015 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199679010.013.10 The Mazalim in Historiography Mathieu Tillier The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Law (Forthcoming) Edited by Anver M. Emon and Rumee Ahmed Oxford Handbooks Online Abstract and Keywords This article traces the origins of mazalim, a term that refers to a specific institution, also called wilayat al-mazalim or al-nazar fi al-mazalim, which was expected to adjudicate complaints regarding “injustices.” The mazalim are usually regarded as the expression of the sovereign’s direct justice in Medieval Islam. The concept of the mazalim institution does not fall into any modern legal category, and has no equivalent in Occidental languages. This article begins by discussing problems of terminology and definition associated with mazalim, with particular emphasis on whether it is a judicial court and the extent to which the mazalim, when regarded as a judicial institution, can be compared to an appellate court. It then examines mazalim in theory and practice, along with its nature according to modern classifications. Finally, it considers the symbolic and political uses of mazalim and how it is related to ordinary justice dispensed by the qadis. Keywords: mazalim, wilayat al-mazalim, al-nazar fi l-mazalim, justice, Islam, judicial court, appellate court, qadis The word mazalim is the plural form of mazlima, meaning “exaction” or a “thing wrongfully taken,” and derives from zulm, a “wrongdoing” or an “injustice.” In a terminological sense, it refers to a specific institution, also called wilayat al-mazalim or al-nazar fi al-mazalim, which was expected to adjudicate complaints regarding “injustices.” The mazalim are usually regarded as the expression of the sovereign’s direct justice in Medieval Islam. Mazalim first attracted the attention of scholars in the early twentieth century, with the publication of legal and historiographical texts such as al-Ahkam al-sultaniyya by al-Mawardi (d. 450/1058) and the Book of the Governors and the Judges by al-Kindi. Following A.F. Amedroz, who published in 1910 an analytical commentary of al- Mawardi’s chapter on mazalim, a significant number of scholars tried to understand this institution and its historical development. The most important step was taken by Émile Tyan, who devoted a 150-page chapter to mazalim in the second volume of his Histoire de l’organisation judiciaire en pays d’Islam, during the 1940s. As Amedroz, Tyan only relied on literary sources (fiqh, chronicles, biographical dictionaries, and adab). Samuel Stern’s studies of petitions in the 1960s marked a turning point in the approach of the institution by way of providing documentary evidence of the historical functioning of the mazalim. It was not until the 1980s, however, that this approach began to be systematically combined with literary data, as in Jørgen Nielsen’s monograph on the mazalim under the Mamluks. Since the mid-1990s, and especially in the late 2000s, a number of studies have renewed the historical understanding of the institution, either by relying on documentary evidence (Marina Rustow, Maaike van Berkel) or by shedding new light on the information provided by literary sources (Nasser Rabbat, Albrecht Fuess, Fumihiko Hasebe, Mathieu Tillier, Christian Müller). One major problem in understanding the mazalim institution is that its concept does not fall into any modern legal category, and does not have any equivalent in Occidental languages. In more than a century of research, the first challenge was therefore to define the institution, to understand its origins, and to determine its nature according to modern classifications. The second issue raised by several generations of scholars relates to the historical 1