(a.), active participle from the form IV verb as̲h̲rafa , literally “overseer, supervisor, controller”, the title of an official who appears at various times and with various duties in the history of the ʿAbbāsid caliphate and its successor states, from the Mag̲h̲rib to the eastern Islamic lands.
1. In the Arab and Persian lands.
¶The office of is̲h̲rāf seems basically to have been a financial one. The supervision of financial operations was in the first century or so of the ʿAbbāsid caliphate usually entrusted to the dīwān al-zimām/al-azimma [see dīwān. i. The caliphate]; in the reign…