ABSTRACT
The variety of officials and official bodies responsible for the settling of conflicts and the keeping of law and order in the premodern Muslim world differed from state to state and from period to period. Both arbitration and social pressure played a large extrajudicial role, but the most prominent officials in conflict resolution, professional jurists both, were the Sharia court judge (qāḍī) and the mufti, who are the focus of this chapter. For other state legal actors, such as the police (shurṭa), the market inspector and censor of morals (muḥtasib), and the state grievance tribunals (maẓālim), see Chapters 7 and 12, below.
