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could represent the foreign ruler and the indigenous subjects to each other. By the eleventh century, the social backgrounds of the legists had become varied, representing all segments of society. They hailed as much from the lowest strata of tradesmen and farmers as from affluent merchant families and the politically influential secretarial classes. Their socio-economic connections – deeply embedded in their own societies but also in relative proximity to the ruling classes – thus allowed them to fulfill a variety of functions in mediating the relationship between the government and the subject population.
    These madrasa s were effectively used to recruit the loyalties of the major jurists in the larger cities. Probably the first to exploit so skillfully the minutiae of the law of waqf for political gains, the Saljuq vizierNizam al-Mulk personally took charge of appointing, with handsome pay, well-known jurists and law professors. He retained exclusive powers over appointment and dismissal, for this guaranteed his leverage to bestow personal favors and thus acquire the loyalty of the legal profession. As political loyalty was not institutional, Nizam al-Mulk’spersonal involvement was indispensable. With the partial exception of the later Ottomans, this personal involvement was invariably the rule. It was the sultan, emir, vizier or (often) influential female members of the ruling elite whofounded madrasa s, named them after themselves, and took a personal interest in how they were run and who taught in them. It was in this way that the foreign rulers and military commanders, who characterized the political scene in the Muslim world for centuries, could insert themselves into social networks, thereby fitting their political strategies into the populations they ruled.
    By the end of the eleventh century, a substantial segment of the legal elite was in the pay of government. With the incorporation of theprofessors into the madrasa system, the political domain encroached further into the terrain of the law, subordinating a considerable segment – even the elite – of the professorial profession and contributing to the increasing diminution of the “moral community” of the legists. Some of the best professors were now in the company of viziers and sultans. This was why many jurists refused to accept teaching posts, just as many others had refused judgeships. The money that paid thejudges’salaries came from the same coffer as that which built the towering madrasa s and which hired the most accomplished professor-jurists. But the coffer was generally regarded as suspect, having been filled through dubious means. No wonder then that, like the honorable jurists who refused judgeships, professors who did likewise were lauded and praised.
    Yet, the legal elite ultimately succumbed to moral compromise, and increasingly so. By the seventeenth century, most legists were in the employ of the government, and the professors andauthor-jurists who held out had to function within a diminishing “moral community” created by the financial and material dependence of their less independent peers on the ruling powers. The madrasa , now widespread, quickly became a means of recruiting the Sharia specialists into government service.
    On the whole, an equilibrium did exist between the men of the sword and those of the law: the ruling elite received the cooperation of the scholars and their promotion of its legitimacy, while the scholars received a salary, protection, and the full right to apply the law as they saw fit. The office of thejudge was, and continued to be, the prototype of what was becoming an increasingly complex and interdependent relationship: the government appointed, dismissed and paid the judge, but the judge applied the religious law as the author-jurists and mufti s required. If there was one constant in this relationship between rulers and legists, it was that the religious law and its application to the population