Medieval Islamic Economic Thought: Filling the Great Gap in European Economics

by S.M. Ghazanfar

This book is a collection of papers on the origins of economic thought discovered in the writings of some prominent Islamic scholars, during the five centuries prior to the Latin Scholastics, who include St. Thomas Aquinas. This period of time was labelled by Joseph Schumpeter as representing the 'great gap' in economic history. Unfortunately, this 'gap' is well embedded in most relevant literature. However, during this period the Islamic civilization was one of the most fertile grounds for intellectual developments in various disciplines, including economics, and this book attempts to fill that blind-spot in the history of economic thought.

Genres: Economics

300 pages, Hardcover

First published June 25, 2003

Reviews

[Muhammad al-Khwarizmi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good but repetitive, as there is substantial overlap among the papers in the volume. Some of the prose is even the same, here and there.

I read this title to find things to troll teafags with. I have always associated the Islamic sphere with a variety of "conservative" customs, not just socially, which is obvious, but also economically. Until now, I wasn't sure why. Now I know. Medieval Islamic philosophers tended to support a lot of proto-free market ideas, often explicitly opposing major wealth redistribution on the grounds that God, though He could have done otherwise, chose some people to be rich and others to be poor. That could have come straight out of the land of AM talk radio. So why do teafags and Muslims fail to find common ground?