Siyāsat al-Mulūk

The Siyāsat al-Mulūk is a mirror for princes written by an anonymous author sometime in the mid-fourth-tenth century. The author was likely a late Abbasid official in the financial administration who became a high official during the early Buyid era and wrote this treatise for the new rulers. In a chapter on the shurṭa, the text offers the most detailed administration of Islamic criminal justice in the Abbasid and Buyid periods. The author gives recommendations and instructions for the ṣāḥib al-shurṭa (chief criminal magistrate and police chief) based on how he should manage his various subordinates, inspect prisons, and patrol the city along with procedures not mentioned in other texts, such as the use of informants. Scans of the chapter on the shurṭa in this manuscript from Süleymaniye Library in Istanbul have been made available.

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