Sharia Court

Timeline

1. c. 650–750Medina · Saudi ArabiaDuring the era of the Rashidun caliphs, qadis were appointed to preside over litigation locally, adjudicating according to the Quran and hadith; qadis were required to possess religious learning and upright character, and their rulings covered marriage, inheritance, contracts, and criminal cases, establishing the basic form of sharia adjudication.
2. c. 750–1000Baghdad · IraqThe Abbasid dynasty incorporated the qadi into the imperial administrative system, and the doctrines of the four major legal schools matured; qadi courts applied school-based jurisprudential rulings, dividing labor with the caliph's central judiciary and local administration, accumulating rich judicial documents and legal scholarship.
3. c. 1030–1200Isfahan · IranSeljuk vizier Nizam al-Mulk founded madrasas (religious academies) to train religious scholars, from among whom most qadis were drawn; during the imperial expansion of the 1030s, sharia courts were widely established in conquered regions, running parallel to the sultan's secular judiciary, forming a religious-secular dual-layer judicial structure.
4. c. 1453–1850Istanbul · TurkeyThe Ottoman Empire established a hierarchical qadi system, with qadis set up in each administrative district required to report to the supreme Islamic judge appointed by the sultan; court records (sicil) systematically preserved large numbers of judicial documents, becoming important historical sources for studying Islamic social history.