From the vantage-point of the modern world, we tend to see the states of pre-modern times as shallow and flimsy constructions with little impact on the societies they purported to rule. Perhaps at some level this is an accurate picture of what the states of those times were actually like. But it is not at all how the scholars saw them. In their eyes, rulers and their associates loomed very large indeed. They wielded disproportionate power, and they used this power with some abandon for both better and worse.

In the context of forbidding wrong, this gross power of the ruler cast him in two sharply antithetical roles. On the one hand, he was better placed than anyone else to forbid wrong; but on the other, he had far more opportunity to commit it. I shall take each of these contrasting roles in turn, the first in this chapter and the second in the next.

The claims of the state to forbid wrong

It is no surprise that rulers liked to describe themselves, or be described, as forbidding wrong. We find examples of this here and there in the Sunnī fold. We are told that the activity was part of the daily routine of the ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Manṣūr (r. 754–75). Likewise the caliph al-Muhtadī (r. 869–70) built a dome under which he would sit rendering justice to all; he commanded right and forbade wrong, forbidding liquor and singing-girls.