affirmed by Dominique Sourdel, the foremost authority on the Abbasid vizierate, who confirms that both the title and the institution are strictly rooted in the Semitic root W-Z-R (to bear a burden) and were not borrowed from Sasanian models.

Historical ministerial titles

The office of vizier arose under the first Abbasid caliphs, and spread across the Muslim world.

The vizier stood between sovereign and subjects, representing the former in all matters touching the latter. The 11th-century legal theorist al-Mawardi

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