scholars wrote that the duty applied only within
the Islamic community; women and disabled
Muslim men were exempt, and individuals were
not obligated to place themselves in danger in
order to suppress any evils of which they were
aware. The same verse was also understood to
mean that promoting good and forbidding evil
was a communal responsibility, which came to be
more commonly interpreted as empowering the
state to enforce the injunction.
In the early Islamic period, persons appointed
to enforce the hisba in the community were
responsible for ensuring that prayers were per-
formed properly, mosqUes were maintained, and
market dealings were kept honest. The hisba was
institutionalized during the reign of the Abbasid
caliph Abu Jaafar al-Mansur in 773 through the
establishment of the office of muhtasib, or market
controller, in the religious hierarchy of the state.
From this period, the muhtasib role in maintaining
public morality was largely confined to ensuring
proper conduct in the markets. Duties included
guaranteeing uniform weights and measures and
occasionally currency, keeping a record of prices
and preventing hoarding in times of famine, and
maintaining safe and clear roads through the
city. Though the office declined in prestige after
the Middle Ages, in many Muslim lands, these
remained the duties of the muhtasib until the
governmental reforms of the 19th and early 20th
centuries.
Where the rise of political Islam has led to the
establishment of an Islamic state or the introduc-
tion of a law code based on the sharia, the reintro-
duction of the state institution of the hisba has also
often occurred. saUdi arabia has a government
department called the General Presidency of the
Promotion of Virtues and the Prevention of Vices,
the most public face of which is the mutawain, or
religious police, charged with upholding moral-
ity in the kingdom. The state established by the
taliban in aFghanistan also maintained a similar
department and police force. The governors of
states in northern Nigeria that adopted laws based
on the sharia in the 1990s have established sharia
implementation committees or sharia monitoring
police, both of which are known as hisba, in order
to assist the government in encouraging the popu-
lation to conform to the new legal code.
See also bazaar; ethics and morality; ibn
taymiyya, taqi al-din ahmad.
Shauna HuffakerFurther reading: Ahmad ibn Abd al-Halim ibn Taymiyah,
Public Duties in Islam: The Institution of the Hisbah, Al-
Hisba fi al-Islam. Translated by Muhtar Holland (Leicester,
U.K.: Islamic Foundation, 1982). Michael Cook, Com-
manding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).Hizb al-Daawa al-Islamiyya See daawa
party of iraq.Hizb al-Tahrir al-Islami (Arabic, also
spelled Hizb ut-Tahrir; Islamic Liberation
Party)
Hizb al-Tahrir is a revolutionary Sunni Islamist
party, an early offshoot of the mUslim brother-
hood. It was founded in Jerusalem in 1952 by
Taqi al-Din al-Nabhani (1909–77), a Palestinian
teacher and judge who had graduated from al-
azhar University. In the first years of its existence,
Hizb al-Tahrir opened branches in a number of
Arab countries, including Jordan, syria, lebanon,
iraq, palestine, and Kuwait. During the 1970s,
its belief that Arab governments were un-Islamic
led it to engage in subversive activities, includ-
ing coup attempts against nationalist regimes in
Iraq, egypt, and Syria. Guided by its unbending
authoritarian religious ideology, Hizb al-Tahrir has
organized itself into networks of small, secretive
cells that have recruited followers in many parts of
the world. It looks for new members in mosqUes,
religious gatherings, and university campuses.
Its close-knit organization helps foster solidarity
among its members and insulates it against out-Hizb al-Tahrir al-Islami 303 J