This is my second of three questions about sheriffs. In Islamic countries, there is a title, “sherif” (or “sharif”.) It’s not completely clear to me what this title is supposed to convey and whether its meaning doesn’t vary in time and place, and obviously, the similarity of the English word “sheriff” (from “shire reeve”), and the Arab “sherif” is coincidental. But still, could a “sherif” in an Islamic country ever have held an office in any way comparable to that of a sheriff in an English-speaking country?
There are one or two sources that in the past have suggested such a thing to me. As a minimum this one - and the one where I was first acquainted with the concept of a “sherif”: the epic movie “Lawrence of Arabia”, which I saw at the age of 9 during its 1989 re-release. In a fairly early (and very tense) scene, T. E. Lawrence has arrived to Arabia, and is being led through the desert by a guide. The guide leads him to a well to get some water. Suddenly, a figure on horseback appears in the distance. The distressed guide goes for his revolver, but to no avail: the horseman shoots him dead. He rides up to Lawrence: a well-dressed man brandishing a rifle, who introduces himself as “Sherif Ali” (in fact, the actor who played him was called Omar Sharif), and explains to Lawrence that he shot his guide because he wasn’t allowed to drink at the well, which belongs to Ali’s tribe. Then he becomes Lawrence’s sidekick. The parallels in his portrayal with a gunslinging Wild West sheriff are, I think, obvious. Now, I realize that this is Hollywood, and Sherif Ali was a fictional composite character. Did the creators of the film deliberately do a play on his title, perhaps?
What, then, would being a “sherif” / “sharif” actually entail in the Islamic world?