19世紀後半のテヘランのシャリーア法廷台帳

Abstract

Shari'a court documents have come to be viewed as important source materials for the study of Iranian society in the 19th century, and several important studies, including those of the author, have appeared in the last ten years. However, the documents that have been employed are individual deeds and hokm, and it was been difficult to grasp the overall operations of the courts. The lack of court registers such as those from the Ottoman Empire has hampered research. In this article, I comprehensively analyze Tehran Shari'a court registers from the latter half of the 19th century that have been discovered successively in recent years with the aim of elucidating the entire function of the courts. Those analyzed are specifically the registers of Sayyed Mohammad Sadeq Tabataba'i Sangelaji (1812-1883) from the years 1867-1869, another of the same mojtahed from 1875-79, and one of Sheykh Fazl-ollah Nuri (1843-1909), covering 1886-89. They contain 992, 4, 319, and 1, 524 items respectively. These mojtaheds resided in the Sangelaj district of Tehran, but the courts did not belong to the local region but were attached to individual mojtaheds, and the registers were produced by each mojtahed. These registers are records of the legal operations of the courts as well as registered documents such as deeds and hokms. Particularly important is the fact that the motjaheds certified the hokms and deeds. Unlike the impression given by the word 'court', the number of documents related to trials were limited, and a major function was to certify transactions such as sales, rents, and debts. Moreover, the contents of the registers reflect the position and geographic roots of the motjaheds. These registers were produced in a form that conformed to the court system of the time in Iran.