ABSTRACT
Much of the secondary literature has described the Qajar judicial system as a combination of two different judicatures. One is the shari‘a court, which was presided over by the ‘ulama and was concerned with civil matters, and the other was the “secular” or ‘orf court, which was administered by government officials and dealt with criminal matters such as riots, embezzlement, theft, and inebriation. Criminal cases are rarely mentioned in the narrative sources. However, the official gazette that was first issued in 1851 provides some information on criminal cases in Tehran. Most of them were cases of murder, theft, inebriation, and assault. The official gazette mentions two functions of the divankhane. First, the divankhane was the court where one person accused another. The other function was to remove injustice and oppression by central and local officials. The official gazette clearly describes the divankhane both as a judicial court and as a petitioning institution.
