Shurṭa (Arabic:شرطة) is the commonArabic term forpolice. Its literal meaning is that of a "picked" or elite force. Theshurṭa or police force were established in the early days of theCaliphate, perhaps as early as the caliphate ofUthman (644–656). In theUmayyad and theAbbasid Caliphates, theshurṭa had considerable power, and its head, theṣāḥib al-shurṭa (Arabic:صاحب الشرطة), was an important official, whether at the provincial level or in the central government.
The duties of theshurṭa varied with time and place: it was primarily a police or the secret police andinternal security force and also had judicial functions, but it could also be entrusted with suppressing brigandage, enforcing theḥisbah, customs and tax duties, rubbish collection, acting as a bodyguard for governors, etc.
In the Abbasid East, the chief of police also supervised the prison system.Shurṭa is one of thesecret police agencies and officials of theAbbasid caliphs which was headquartered in Baghdad in the 8th and 9th centuries.[1]
From the 10th century, the importance of theshurṭa declined, along with the power of the central government: the army, now dominated by foreign military castes (ghilmān ormamālīk), assumed the internal security role, and the cities regained a measure of self-government and appropriated the more local tasks of theshurṭa such as that of thenight watch.