Re: Hazrat Ali's reforms: The Finance Department
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- Maintenance of army. [ii] Construction and maintenance of Forts [iii] Construction and maintenance of Roads and Bridges [iv] Well sinking [v] Construction of Sarais (Rest houses)
coz it doesn't make sense kay if there's no jaziya no money for these things :)
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maintainence of a standing army is generally not encouraged in Islam.
most of them are raised through conscription ...the idea being to arouse the spirit of holy war amongst muslims not create a breed of mercenary soldiers for whom fighting is just another job.[interesting most early muslim warriors were not fulltime soldiers but had other proffessions as well]
....thus we see that in conquest of Iran under umar[ra] and the great war of siffin in Ali[as] time the muslims fought based on their tribal affiliations [although some mixed units did exist esp. amongst the medinians] they were paid largely from the spoils of war and the land they conquered.Even the military establishment of kufa which was designed specifically to base the warriors of conquest hardly had a uniform military organization.But was mostly a ad hoc collection of different warrior tribes which accounted a great deal for their ficklemindedness].
The maintainence of large standing armies personally paid by the caliph was a later development starting with ummayyads, which is a neccessary measure for all despots.It was possible for them to buy their loyalty as they had the bayt ul mal at their disposal.
Leaders like Ali[as] and umar[ra] who never took a penny above their allowance from bayt ul mal did not have that luxury