Debt: The First 5000 Years - autonomous learning

436 NOTES
that the main effect of mass converswn
was to make the ostensible justification of
government, as protector and expander of
the faith, seem increasingly hollow. Mass
popular support for caliphs and political
leaders only reemerged in periods, like
the Crusades or during the reconquista in
Spain, when Islam itself seemed under attack;
as of course, for similar reasons, it
has in much of the Islamic world today.
6r. "Most of the time the lower circles
paia their taxes through their heads, and
looked after themselves. Similarly the government
received the taxes and provided
some sort of security, and apart from this,
occupied itself with matters of concern to
itself: external war, patronage of learning
and the arts, a life of luxmious ostentation"
(Pearson 1982:54).
62. The proverb appears, attributed
to the Prophet himself, in al-Ghazali's
Ihya', kitab al-'Ilm, 284, followed by a
long list of similar statements: "Sa'id Bin
Musaiyab said, 'When you see a religious
scholar visiting a prince, avoid him, for he
is a thief.' Al-Auza'i said, 'There is nothing
more detestable to Allah than a religious
scholar who visits an official' . . ."
etc. This attitude has by no means disappeared.
A strong majority of Iranian ayatollahs,
for example, oppose the idea of an
Islamic state, on the grounds that it would
necessarily corrupt religion.
63. Lombard 1947, Grierson 1960. This
is often represented as a wise policy of refusal
to "debase" the coinage, but it might
equally be read as meaning that the caliph's
signature added no additional value.
An experiment with Chinese-style paper
money in Basra in 1294 failed, as no one
was willing to accept money backed only
by state trust (Ash tor 1976:257).
64. MacDonald 2003:64. Gradually
this became unsupportable and Muslim
empires adopted the more typically Medieval
iqta' system, whereby soldiers were
granted the tax revenues from specific
territories.
65. Neither have slaves been employed
as soldiers since, except in temporary
and anomalous circumstance (e.g., by the
Manchus, or in Barbados).
66. It seems significant that (1) the "inquisition"
of 832, the failed Abbasid attempt
to take control of the ulema; (2) the
most important mass conversion of the
Caliphate's subjects to Islam, peaking
around 825-85o; and (3) the definitive ascent
of Turkish slave soldiers in Abbasid
armies, often dated to 838, all roughly
corresponded in time.
67. Elwahed I9JI:III-35· As he puts
it (ibid:127), "the inalienability of liberty
is one of the fundamental and uncontested
principles of Islam." Fathers do
not have the right to sell their children,
and individuals do not have the right to
sell themselves-or at least, if they do, no
courts will recognize any resultant ownership
claims. I note that this is the diametrical
opposite of the "natural law" approach
that later developed in Europe.
68. There is a certain controversy here:
some scholars, including some contemporary
Muslim scholars opposed to the
Islamic economics movement, insist that
riba, which is unequivocally condemned
in the Koran, did not originally refer to
"interest" in general, but to a pre-Islamic
Arabian practice of fining late payment by
doubling the money owed, and that the
blanket condemnation of interest is a misinterpretation
(e.g., Rahman 1964, Kuran
1995). I am in no position to weigh in but,
if true, this would suggest that the ban on
usury really emerged in Iraq itself as part
of the process of the creation of grassroots
Islam, which would actually reinforce my
general argument.
69. The best records we have are actually
from a community of Jewish merchants
in Geniza, in twelfth-century Egypt,
who observed the ban on interest even in
dealings with one another. The one area
where we regularly hear of interest being
charged is the one area where coercion
was also regularly employed: that is, in
dealings with kings, viziers, and officials,
who often borrowed large sums of money
at interest-especially, but not exclusively,