The Administration of Sanjar's Empire as Illustrated in the ‘Atabat Al-Kataba

Abstract

The study of Muslim institutions in Persia is made difficult by a lack of documents, nor is this lack due wholly to the destruction of those that once existed. Many of the legal contracts and procedures, especially those relating to customary as opposed to shar‘ī law, were unwritten. Moreover so far as local matters were concerned the process of recording was a laborious one in Persia as elsewhere; and it must have seemed unnecessary to record what every village elder knew. Another difficulty which faces us in the study of Muslim institutions in Persia is the fact that the sources often use terms imprecisely. Some are used in both a general and a technical sense. The same term may be used to denote a number of different institutions and the meaning of any term may vary according to both time and place.