Works on market supervision and shar'iyah governance (al-hisbah wa al-siyasah al-shar'iyah) by the sixteenth century scholars

摘要

In Islamic tradition two sets of works – al-hisbah and al-siyasah al-shar‛iyah – appeared that proved to be a rich source of economic thought of past Muslim thinkers. Works related to al-hisbah generally discussed socio-economic control, moral and market supervision, prevention of monopolies, check on cheating and fraud and such other corrupting practices, standardization of products, facilitation of the supply of necessities, etc. As far works pertaining to al-siyasah al-shar'iyah are concerned, they generally dealt with the rules of governance, economic role of the state, sources of public revenue, public expenditure (in addition to works exclusively devoted to public finances), maintenance of law and order, internal and external defense, etc. The present paper aims to discuss the state of these two institutions in the sixteenth century and writings on the subject by the scholars of the period.