Legal and Cultural Aspects of Ignominious Parading (Tashhir) in Islam

Abstract

Ignominious parading (tashhÊr) was a crucial element of Islamic punitive practice well into the 19th century CE. In the context of a cultural-legal tradition for which the distinction between private and public was allimportant, a punishment consisting, literally, in "making someone public" had a fundamental role to play. However, tashhÊr has gone largely unnoticed by historians of Islamic law, despite the fact that it features prominently in legal discussions as the penalty for perjury (shah §dat al-zår). This essay, based for the most part on sources from the late-classical period (5th/11th and 6th/12th centuries), not only analyzes the place of tashhÊr in fiqh, but it also takes into account instances of tashhÊr in Islamic historiography and in the eschatological literature, thus uncovering the symbolic structure that underlies the tashhÊr ritual.

Crime and Punishment in Islamic History (Early to Middle Period): A Framework for Analysis

“…The involvement of qadis in the administration of punishment, however, varied from place to place and time to time, and as the Ottoman example illustrates, it would be hasty to claim, as Tyan (1960) did, that the repressive jurisdiction, from an early time, lay exclusively in the hands of the institutions of siyasa government. Instead, it makes more sense to speak of networks of overlapping jurisdictions of the qadi, the so-called courts of grievances (mazalim) of the ruler-that-be, and of the ad hoc jurisdictions of the urban police (shurta, shihna), and censor of public morals (muhtasib) (Lange 2006).…”

“…In measure with the puritanical or permissive mood of his time and place, the muhtasib's punitive reach varied. The chronicles of the Abbasid, Mamluk, and Ottoman periods show the muhtasib publicly disciplining offenders, such as fraudulent merchants, prostitutes, drunks, and perjurers (Lange 2007). Hisba, the muhtasib's office, is of paramount interest to social historians of Islam.…”

“…The muhtasib has been called 'the guardian of the public sphere' as he was instrumental in drawing the socio-cultural line that divided public from private matters in pre-modern Islamic societies. Recent years have seen a renewed interest in hisba (Klein 2006;Lange 2006Lange , 2008Mottahedeh & Stilt 2003), although much work remains to be carried out, not least in regard to the muhtasib's power to prosecute and punish crime.…”

“…Offenders were led through the city, their faces blackened with smut or embers, sitting backwards, while their crimes were called out to the public. In the legal literature, the tashhir punishment is restricted to the offense of perjury (shahadat al-zur) in the qadi's court, but chronicles from the Abbasid to the Ottoman period show that also other transgressions against common norms of decency (such as public consumption of alcoholic beverages, prostitution and other sexually deviant practices, or blasphemy) were punished with public parading (Lange 2007). Other forms of shame punishments included the privation of the right to act as witness, a coveted position of honor.…”