3-071-006 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Crisis in Egypt: Court of the Cadi, Cairo, 1881. 'The administration of justice among the Mussulman population of Egypt, in ordinary cases, is intrusted to the Cadi, whose authority is of an ecclesiastical origin, and who is a Doctor of the Law of Islam deduced from the text of the Koran by scholastic commentators of many past ages. Our Illustration represents the Court of the Cadi in the city of Cairo; and, though great reproach has lately been cast, not undeservedly, upon Egyptian administration and treatment of its native subjects, it is probable that this tribunal of religious authority may in some degree act as an indirect check upon the corruption of the upper classes, without being able to correct abuses of the offices of civil government...it is by no means certain that the substitution of a foreign code, applied by French or English police magistrates, would be more efficacious for good. There are, however, established since 1876, special courts formed of European and native Judges sitting together, for the trial of "mixed cases," that is to say, cases in dispute between natives and foreigners; for which purpose a code has been drawn up, based on a combination of the principles of Mohammedan law with the Code Napoleon'. From "Illustrated London News", 1881.