Structure: A Complete System of Islamic Public Law

Al-Ahkam as-Sultaniyyah (The Ordinances of Government) is systematically organized to cover the full range of public legal institutions in classical Islamic governance. Al-Mawardi proceeds from the highest institution — the caliphate — downward through the various offices and functions of Islamic governance, providing for each a systematic account of its legal basis, conditions, powers, and limitations. This comprehensive scope gives the work its character as the most systematic treatment of Islamic public law produced in the classical period.

The work opens with the imamate (caliphate) — the supreme institution of Islamic political order. Al-Mawardi discusses the religious obligation to establish the imamate, the qualifications required in an imam (caliph), the procedures for selection and appointment, the powers and duties of the office, and the conditions under which an imam may be removed. The chapter on the imamate is the most famous and most discussed part of the work, containing al-Mawardi's controversial discussion of the validity of coerced appointment and the legitimacy of delegating authority to powerful ministers.

Subsequent chapters address the ministry (wizara, divided into full delegation and limited delegation), the command of frontier territories and provinces, the administration of justice (qada'), the office of the complaint inspector (wilayat al-mazalim) who handles grievances against powerful officials, the administration of religious taxes (zakah and land taxes), and the rules governing war, spoils, and treaty-making with non-Muslim states. The final sections address the police (shurta), the market inspector (muhtasib), and the management of pilgrimage and of public endowments (awqaf).

The organizational logic is that of institutional completeness: al-Mawardi aims to cover every major function of Islamic governance and to derive from the Quran, Sunnah, and established scholarly precedent the principles governing each function. The result is something closer to a constitutional and administrative code than to a simple legal manual — an attempt to give the entire structure of Islamic governance a principled legal foundation and a coherent systematic description.