The muhtasib was the appointed inspector of the Islamic city, charged with the hisba, the duty of enjoining good and forbidding wrong in public life. Emerging as a distinct office in the early Abbasid period, around the caliphate of al-Ma'mun from 813, the muhtasib policed the bazaar to enforce honest weights, fair prices and sound goods, and punished fraud and adulteration on the spot. His remit reached well beyond trade into the regulation of urban space, overseeing street cleanliness, drainage, building encroachments, animals and public order. Detailed hisba manuals codified his powers, making him a recognised figure of municipal governance across the Muslim world.
The muhtasib functioned as an early municipal authority combining trading-standards enforcement with urban regulation of streets, building and sanitation. The office gave the Islamic city a standing instrument of day-to-day public administration centuries before comparable municipal bodies in Europe.
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