Prison life under the Abbasids

In this article, we investigate the conditions of life in jail under the Abbasids. A comparative study of chronicles, biographical dictionaries, adab and legal literature allows a reconstruction of the main features of prison life. We argue that prisoners were supplied with the bare necessities by the prison institution and highly depended on their relatives or on public charity. The degree of promiscuity, hunger and dirtiness was quite similar in the politico-military prisons and in those of qadis; in the first type of jail it played a major role in the criminals' punishment, in the second one it was part of the pressure put on debtors.