They are the ones ordered to take care of the rights of...

They are the ones ordered to take care of the rights of their people and to be just between them, and to rule by what Allah has revealed.

A part of the letter of the Commander of the Faithful to al-Ash’ath ibn Qays, his appointee at Azerbaijan reads: “your work is not a source of sustenance for you, rather, it is a trust around your neck” [^15] There is no doubt that guardianship is one of the greatest examples of a trust, and perhaps the fact that it is coupled with ruling by justice in the ayah is evidence that it is the example of trust intended here.

This is because ruling by justice is one of the affairs of guardianship and one of its branches, and one of the examples of fulfilling the trust to its owners. B. Evidence from the Narrations The narrations that affirm the guardianship of the jurist in general are very many in number. Al-Naraqi has mentioned nineteen…