What it means
قاضی (qâzi) means “judge.” The word comes from Arabic ق-ض-ی (q-d-y), “to decree, to settle,” and is the standard term for a judge across courts in Iran. It applies to civil, criminal, family-court, and revolutionary-court judges. The plural form قضات (qozât) is the Arabic broken plural; in everyday speech قاضیها (qâzihâ) is also used.
How to use it
- قاضی پرونده (qâzi-ye parvande) “the judge of the case”
- قاضی حکم داد (qâzi hokm dâd) “the judge issued a verdict”
- جلوی قاضی (jelo-ye qâzi) “in front of the judge”
- قاضی دادگاه خانواده (qâzi-ye dâdgâh-e khânevâde) “family-court judge”
- قاضی دادگاه انقلاب (qâzi-ye dâdgâh-e enqelâb) “revolutionary-court judge”
- به قاضی شکایت کرد (be qâzi shekâyat kard) “He filed a complaint with the judge”
The Iranian judiciary
In post-1979 Iran the judiciary is integrated with the clerical system. A significant share of qâzis are Shia clerics trained at the hozeh-ye elmiye (the seminary system, with major centers in Qom and Mashhad), and the judicial branch is headed by an appointee of the Supreme Leader. Civil-court judges may come from secular law-faculty backgrounds, but criminal courts and the revolutionary courts (dâdgâh-e enqelâb) typically have clerical judges. The senior judiciary almost entirely overlaps with the senior Shia clergy. This is a fact of the institutional structure rather than a feature of the language itself.
The historical sense is older and broader than any one country. In classical Islamic civilization the qâzi was a religious-legal scholar who applied sharia to disputes. The role appears across the Arab world, in Ottoman Turkey (kadı), in Mughal India, and in Central Asia. It long predates the modern Iranian state. The word arrived in Persian centuries before the current judicial system existed, and the modern Iranian usage inherits the term but operates inside the post-revolution legal framework.
Iranians distinguish قاضی (qâzi, the official judge) from داور (dâvar, an arbitrator or referee in informal disputes and in sports). The two words are related in meaning but not interchangeable: a qâzi sits in court, a dâvar mediates.
Related
دادگاه (dâdgâh) court. حکم (hokm) verdict, ruling. vakil lawyer. متهم (mottaham) the accused. شاکی (shâki) the plaintiff. دادستان (dâdsetân) prosecutor. قضاوت (qezâvat) judgment, the act of judging.
References
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