Definition
A Mohammedan (Muslim) judge or magistrate historically operating in the East Indies. The kazy was originally appointed by the court at Delhi to administer justice according to Islamic written law. Following the consolidation of British colonial authority in the region, the kazy's judicial functions were formally curtailed; the role was thereafter limited to civil and religious administration, including the preparation and attestation of legal instruments, and the superintendence and legalization of marriage and other ceremonies within Muslim communities.
The term belongs to a family of cognate words — including qadi, cadi, and kadi — all deriving from the Arabic office of Islamic judicial authority. These variants appear across different transliteration conventions and different periods of legal writing.
Common Confusion
KAZY / CADI / QADI / KADI: These terms refer to the same underlying Islamic judicial office and appear interchangeably across historical legal sources depending on transliteration convention, national origin of the author, and period. Black's uses "kazy" as the primary entry; older English colonial records and French-influenced sources tend toward "cadi"; modern scholarly and comparative law sources use "qadi" as the standard transliteration. A researcher encountering any of these forms in historical materials should treat them as equivalent unless context signals a regional distinction.
Why It Matters in Research
The primary research relevance of this term is historical and jurisdictional in the narrowest sense: it appears in colonial-era legal materials, Anglo-Indian administrative records, and treatises on Islamic law as encountered through British imperial governance. Researchers working in those bodies of material should be alert to several navigational issues.
First, the spelling is unstable across the corpus. Legal dictionaries, colonial statutes, administrative reports, and private treatises from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries use kazy, cadi, kadi, qadi, and further variants without consistency. A keyword search on any single spelling will miss material indexed under the others.
Second, the definition in Black's reflects a specific historical moment — the post-Mughal, British-administered subcontinent — and should not be generalized. The kazy as described by Black's is already a diminished office, shorn of judicial power. Materials predating British consolidation will describe a far more expansive judicial role. The same title in Ottoman legal records, North African sources, or Andalusian historical texts carries a different institutional meaning than the Anglo-Indian administrative figure Black's describes.
Third, the Wharton citation in both editions points to Francis Wharton's law lexicon, which was a leading reference for terms encountered in colonial and international legal practice. Researchers who need more than Black's two-sentence treatment should consult Wharton directly for the fuller colonial-law context.
Fourth, the term has no modern domestic legal relevance in U.S. or U.K. law as a term of art. It surfaces in contemporary comparative law and Islamic law scholarship under the qadi transliteration, with a substantially richer analytical literature. Researchers interested in the functional modern equivalent should follow that thread, not the Black's entry.
Historical Dictionary Support
Both editions of Black's Law Dictionary (first and second) carry identical text, drawn directly from Wharton. Neither edition elaborates beyond Wharton's formulation. This is a characteristic pattern for colonial-administrative terms in Black's: the entry is present for completeness in case the reader encounters the word in a legal document, not because the term had any domestic application for the dictionary's primary American audience.
What the historical dictionaries do not address: the internal Islamic legal theory of the qadi office, the distinction between different grades of Islamic judicial authority (qadi al-qudat, or chief judge, versus local magistrates), or the variation in the office's scope across different Muslim jurisdictions. They also do not address the transition provisions in Anglo-Indian law that formally redefined the kazy's duties under British administration, which are documented in nineteenth-century Indian legislative acts rather than in general law dictionaries.
Jurisdictional Note
The term has no operative meaning in contemporary U.S., U.K., or Commonwealth domestic law. It appears in historical Anglo-Indian legal records, colonial-era treatises, and comparative Islamic law scholarship. Researchers working with modern Islamic legal systems should use qadi as the current standard term and consult comparative law sources rather than common law dictionaries.