al-Hisba fi al-Islam

Al-Hisba fi al-Islam is a treatise by Shaykh al-Islam Taqi al-Din Ahmad ibn Abd al-Halim ibn Taymiyya, printed under the title al-Hisba fi al-Islam aw Wazifat al-Hukuma al-Islamiyya ("Hisba in Islam, or the Function of Islamic Government"). ¹ Its author calls it at the outset "a rule on hisba", and grounds it on the principle that the purpose of every office in Islam is that religion be wholly for God and that God's word be uppermost. ² The edition's note on the author says he was born in Harran, taken by his father to Damascus, summoned to Egypt over a fatwa and imprisoned for a time, returned to Damascus in 712 AH, was detained there in 720 AH, detained again and died a prisoner in the citadel of Damascus, living from 661 to 728 AH. ³

Ibn Taymiyya begins by saying that human welfare in this world and the next is achieved only through association, cooperation and mutual support - hence the saying that man is political by nature; people must have someone who commands and forbids, and it is better for a person to enter into obedience to God and His Messenger. ⁴ From the command to appoint one of three travellers as leader he argues that authority is required all the more for larger groups, and counts holding office, for one who takes it as a means of drawing near to God, among the best of deeds. ⁵ He then states that the sum of religion and of all offices is commanding and forbidding; that commanding right and forbidding wrong is a duty on every Muslim able to do it, a communal obligation that becomes individual for the capable person when no one else performs it; and that capacity is power and office, so those in power bear a duty others do not. ⁶ All offices - police, judgeship, finance and hisba - have this as their purpose. ⁶

He divides office-holders into those who stand as trusted witnesses, of whom truthfulness is required - witnesses, the registry clerk, the headman and the monitor - and those who stand as obeyed trustees, of whom justice is required - the commander, the judge and the muhtasib. ^{6 7} A ruler must employ people of truth and justice, and if that is not possible, the best available, since the duty is what one can do. ⁷

Ibn Taymiyya holds that the scope of offices is learned from wording, circumstance and custom and has no fixed limit in the law: in Syria and Egypt in his day the office of war dealt with fixed penalties involving destruction of limb or life, judgeship with matters attested by documents and witnesses, while in the Maghrib the governor of war had no judicial role and merely executed the judge's orders. ^{8 9} The muhtasib commands right and forbids wrong in what is not the special preserve of governors, judges and the registry: he orders the public to pray the five prayers at their times and punishes those who do not pray with beating and prison, while killing is for others; and he oversees imams and muezzins. ⁹ He enjoins Friday and congregational prayer, truthful speech and honesty in trusts, and forbids lying, treachery, short measure and weight, and fraud in trades, sales and religion. ¹⁰ The muhtasib may not kill or amputate, according to the edition's index. ¹¹

Ibn Taymiyya places fraud in sales (hiding defects, disguising goods) and in crafts such as preparing food and clothing; among the fraudsters he names "the alchemists" who counterfeit coins, gems and perfume, imitating God's creation, and says that this is what alchemy really is. ^{12 13} He counts among the wrongs usurious and gambling contracts, sales of uncertainty, bidding up a price without intent to buy, leaving an animal unmilked to deceive, two- and three-party usurious dealings, and meeting goods before they reach the market. ^{13 14} He forbids selling to the unwary buyer who does not bargain above the going rate, and hoarding, defining the hoarder as one who buys up the food people need and withholds it to raise its price. ¹⁵

Among the best-known passages is his division of price-fixing into an injustice that is forbidden and a justice that is allowed and even required: if people sell in the customary way and prices rise because goods are scarce or people many, forcing a particular price on them is coercion without right - the sense of the hadith of Anas in which the Prophet ﷺ declined to fix prices; but if sellers refuse to sell what people urgently need except above the known value, they must sell at the fair value. ¹⁶ He holds price-fixing required "without dispute" where the sale of a commodity has been restricted to particular people. ^{16 17} He returns to the matter, noting that al-Shafi'i is the imam furthest from imposing and fixing exchange, that his followers have two views on price-fixing in need, and quoting Abu Hanifa's followers that the ruler should not fix prices unless public harm is at stake and sellers exceed the value grossly, when he fixes them in consultation with people of judgement. ^{18 19}

He holds that work which is a communal duty, such as farming, weaving and building, becomes binding on those able to do it when people need it and no one else does it, and the ruler may compel them at the fair wage. ²⁰ He digresses to sharecropping, holding it lawful in the sounder of the scholars' two views, the practice of Muslims under the Prophet and the Rightly Guided Caliphs, and the view of the hadith jurists such as Ahmad, Ishaq, Dawud, al-Bukhari, Ibn Khuzayma and Ibn al-Mundhir, and of al-Layth, Ibn Abi Layla, Abu Yusuf and Muhammad ibn al-Hasan; he reports those who forbade it by analogy with hire for an unknown wage. ^{20 21}

Ibn Taymiyya devotes a section to the claim that discretionary punishment by financial penalties is lawful in specific cases in the well-known view of Malik, in Ahmad's school, and in one view of al-Shafi'i; he lists precedents from the sunna and the caliphs and rejects the claim that they are abrogated. ^{22 23} He divides the duties owed to God into worship, penalties and expiations, each bodily, financial or mixed, and divides financial penalties that remove a wrong into destruction, alteration and transfer to another. ²⁴ See: May a discretionary penalty take or destroy property?

In this edition the treatise ends with a section on recompense being of the same kind as the deed, then the words "the book al-Hisba fi al-Islam by Shaykh al-Islam Taqi al-Din Ahmad ibn Taymiyya is complete". ^{25 26}

The Dar al-Kutub al-Ilmiyya printing, Beirut, 64 pages, with sub-headings in square brackets and notes referencing the hadith; the pages read name no annotator and no year. ^{1 27}

The sections on fraud in religion (pp. 43-47), with their discussion of sects and innovations, and on fixed and discretionary penalties (pp. 47-49) are not detailed here.