Islamic Civilization

The Islamic Fundamentals of Trade :

 Basing himself on a diversity of sources, Cahen writes:

`Let us first rid ourselves of an idea that Pirenne  himself seem to have had, namely, that Arabs  and Islam are marked by a kind of native impotence in economics and trade.[1] No matter what modern developments have been, the Arabs, as far as back as pre-Islamic times, organised trade caravans which were at least inter-regional, reaching as far as Syria .[2] Through the Yemen , they were in contact with the Indian Ocean's traffic. Islam was born in a mercantile milieu. Muhammad was a merchant and was not troubled by it. Several of his companions were merchants, and if evidently certain practices of the surrounding states were unknown to them, the reverse was perhaps also true.[3] In any case there was no question of a basic Muslim incapacity to trade.’[4]

If any historical fact confirms the great capacity of Muslims to trade, it is the fact that anywhere Muslims set foot they fostered trade. Garaudy observes how agrarian communities based on the Savannah or forest evolved in the 8^th century into great empires, a consequence of large scale trade in the geographical area where Islam was present, from Cadiz to China .[5] In Africa, indeed, it was Islam, which legated the concept of special consideration to traders and trading; and even more importantly, created a trading class.[6] It imposed contractual laws, hence stimulating institutional as well as legal foundations, not just for trade, but for the whole of society. And, of course, it forbade the practice of usury.[7]Elsewhere, Muslim shipping was prominent throughout the Indian Ocean, and as early as 750, merchants from the Persian Gulf made the long voyage to China. After 1100, Indian cotton goods and Chinese  porcelain were reaching very remote Indonesian islands (whose main exports were spices) and distant African ports (whence came ivory and gold.)[8]Then, only the Muslim Arabs  and Muslim South Asians who led the trade with China had such a background and their efforts enabled them to extend their enterprises into the Malay Archipelago.[9]Their reach was remarkable when one considers the shipping and navigational conditions of the time.[10]Eventually, the Muslims stimulated Chinese merchants themselves to develop better ocean-going shipping to trade in the region as well.[11]Such achievements testify to the way commercial vigour could fashion and enhance civilisation when trade flourished freely and attracted the active participation of local elites.[12]Which, Abu Lughod notes, contradicts the views that Eastern cultures provided an `inhospitable environment for merchant-accumulators and industrial developers.’[13]

And rather than destroying trading lines between the East and the Christian West , as Pirenne  and his hordes of followers hold, `The Arabs ,’ Lopez writes, `masters of an empire extending from the Gulf of Gascony to beyond the Indus, involved in commercial enterprises reaching into Africa and Baltic Europe, brought East and West together, as never before.’[14]Indeed, Muslims had trading posts in Sind and Gujarat, near Bombay, and by the end of the 11^th century, and Muslim merchants are known to have set up permanent establishments in Hungary, all facts testifying to `the zeal and ability with which Muslim society could call upon in commercial matters.’[15] A zeal, which finds greater illustration with the huge Muslim coin finds in and around Scandinavia, the result of a trade dating from about the year 800 in which the Viking carried skins, swords, amber, honey, walrus ivory (elephant ivory was scarce then), flacons and slaves across Russian lands as far as Byzantium , or crossing the territory of the Khazars, on towards the Caspian and to Baghdad .[16] It was during periods when this trade slackened-as a result of the crisis in the Caliphate-that the Vikings devoted themselves to looting and piracy.[17]

Islam did not just revive and stimulate trade, it also set and built the very fundamentals and mechanisms of modern trade, eventually inherited by the West, and we have today, and in every single respect, as is explained in the following.

Udovitch  insists on the fundamental point that it is Islamic law and the customary practice in the Muslim world, which provided merchants and traders with the commercial techniques to structure and facilitate trade and exchange.[18] Long before the West, Udovitch adds, Muslim merchants had at their disposal accepted legal mechanisms for extending credit and for transferring and exchanging currencies over long distances.[19] The `Hawala’ (in Arabic), suftaja (in Persian), or letter of credit, allowed a merchant to advance or transfer a sum of money to a business associate at some distant place with `the full confidence that the transfer would be expeditiously accomplished.’[20] The letter of credit was regularly used to avoid carriage of large amount of capital over large stretches of land.[21] Chance, Braudel holds, has preserved letters of Jewish  traders of Cairo  from the times of the first Crusade (1090s), which show that all methods of, and instruments of credit, and all forms of trade associations were known already, and were not invented subsequently in Europe as was asserted by many.[22] Some such letters of credit were for the huge sum of 40,000 dinars in the Saharan oasis of Sijilmasa, and many examples of such letters found at Cairo Genizah,[23]confirm that these instruments of credit were always scrupulously and strictly honoured;[24]just as regulated by the Islamic religious text.[25]

Derived from this form of transactions is the cheque. Cheque, in Arabic Saqq, is as Udovitch  highlights, `functionally and etymologically the origin of our modern checks.’[26]The use of saqq was borne out of the need to avoid having to transport coin as legal tender due to the dangers and difficulties this represented; the bankers took to the use of bills of exchange, letters of credit, and promissory notes, often drawn up as to be, in effect, cheques.[27] At the city of Basra, in Iraq, by the mid-11<sup>th</sup> century, anybody could deposit their assets with a changer or banker who handed over a receipt. Any subsequent purchase was then made by means of a draft on the banker, who honoured it when presented by the vendor. `Such drafts on bankers were the merchants' exclusive currency.’[28] In promoting the concept of the bill of exchange-sakk, or cheque-the Muslims, thus made the financing of commerce, especially inter-continental trade, feasible.

The development of modern banking has its early origins in the Abbasid court, under Harun al-Rashid (9^th century), where under a highly developed system, a Muslim businessman could cash a cheque in Canton on his bank account in Baghdad .[29] The main role was played by Jewish  bankers who, in the entourage of both Caliph and ministers in Baghdad, were entrusted with the keeping of both the jewels of the crown and prisoners of the state.[30] The title of Court bankers  (Jahabidhat al-Hadra) was granted by the state chancellery under Caliph Muqtadir to two or three Jewish bankers in Baghdad.[31]In fact the development of international banking,[32] Massignon explains, has origins with that Jewish element serving the Abbasid Caliphate in the 9^th century.[33]That was about five centuries before a banking system of worth appeared in Western Christendom .[34]

Islamic banking impacted directly on the West via the commercial transactions between the East and the Christian world.[35]The Jewish  communities took their practice from the Muslim milieus into that of their communities in the Christian West,  especially as Jewish bankers associated themselves with others from their own community[36] to form groups of investors willing to support large ventures that included regular caravan journeys and maritime expeditions to Africa, India and China .[37]

Paper  money was first adopted in north China  by the end of the 11^th century and in the Chin and Southern Sung territories it was in regular use by the 12^th century, although it still coexisted with metal coins.[38] Some paper money was printed in Chinese  and Arabic in 1294 at Tabriz via block-printing, a method also of Chinese origin.[39] We have a contemporary account of it by a Persian historian who lived in Tabriz.[40]As with paper, it was the Muslims, who traded directly with the West, who both generalised the use of, and spread of this Chinese invention.

There is an Islamic powerful form of influence with regard to weights and measures, too. The smallest weight Muslims used in trade was the grain of barley, four of which were equal to one sweet pea, called in Arabic carat; which is still in use as a unit of weight, and of precious metals as being so many carats fine.[41] Most of the common Arabic units found their way into one or all of the Iberian romance languages.[42] As early as 989, the qaf’iz (a measure of weight) appeared in Catalonia as the kaficio, and later the qadah (a large measure for grain) became alcadafe in Castilian, alcadafe in Portuguese, and cadaf or cadufa in Catalan.[43]

 Muslim coinage, as in Spain, was reputed for its purity and design.[44] Spanish  currency consisted of the Dinar (of gold), which was equal to two dollars (early 20^th century value); the dirhem (of silver), equal to twelve cents; and various small pieces of copper that fluctuated in value.[45] Whatever the means of transfer, numismatic data shows that coins moved between al-Andalus and Europe during the 8^th, 9^th 10^th and early 11^th centuries.[46] Bates also notes how the Normans of Sicily  struck Arabic gold quarter dinars (called taris by the Italians ) for nearly a century after their conquest of the island, whilst Christian France, just as Spain and Italy, also used and imitated the gold coins of the Almoravids (called maravedis).[47]

Thus have been made clear aspects of how Islam pioneered and impacted on fundamental elements of modern trade. The current Western historical interpretation, though, is that it was not from Islam that modern trade derives but from Western Christian genius, more precisely, Italian genius.

 Setting aside the fact that the developments just looked at come centuries prior to similar ones made by the Italians , this issue of pioneering and impact is now looked at from another set of angles so as to refute this generalised Western historical interpretation.