Qāḍī

Islamic judge — the role Ibn Battuta held in several of the lands he visited, including Delhi, the Maldives, and parts of sub-Saharan Africa. His training in Maliki fiqh from Morocco gave him professional standing in courts from West Africa to Southeast Asia, reflecting the remarkable universality of the Islamic legal tradition: a judge trained in one corner of the Muslim world could practise across its entire extent. Being a qadi gave Ibn Battuta not just income and status but a position of genuine social power — he could settle disputes, perform marriages, and enforce contracts — making him both observer of the societies he visited and participant in their governance, often with memorable results.

As understood in the classical tradition of Ibn Battuta and the scholars of his school.