Firman

A firman (Persian: فرمان, romanized: farmân; Turkish: ferman), at the constitutional level, was a royal mandate or decree issued by a sovereign in an Islamic state. During various periods such firmans were collected and applied as traditional bodies of law. The English word "firman" comes from the Persian فرمان meaning "decree" or "order".

On a more everyday level, a firman was, and may still be, any written permission granted by the appropriate Islamic official at any level of government. Westerners are perhaps most familiar with the permission to travel in a country, which typically could be purchased beforehand, or with the permission to conduct scholarly investigation - such as archaeological excavation - in the country. Firmans may or may not be combined with various sorts of passports.