Debt: The First 5000 Years - autonomous learning

NOTES 437
from Jewish or Christian bankers-to pay
their troops. Obliging a request for such
an illegal loan was a dangerous business,
but refusing even more so (for Abbasid
examples, see Ray 1997=6S-7o, mainly
drawing from Fischel 1937).
70. There were also a whole host of
legal subterfuges (called hiyal) that one
might undertake if one were absolutely
determined to charge interest: for instance,
buying one's debtor's house for
the amount of the loan, charging them
rent for it, and then allowing them to buy
it back for the same sum; having one's
debtor agree to buy a certain product
monthly and sell it to one at a discount,
and so forth. Some schools of Islamic law
banned these outright; others merely disapproved.
It used to be assumed that these
methods were widely employed, since
most economic historians assumed interest
to be a necessary element of credit,
but recent research provides no evidence
that they were especially common (for the
older view: Khan 1929, for the new: Ray
1997:5S-59).
71. Mez 1922:44S, quoted in Labib
1969:S9. Note that Basra, the city where
everyone in the market paid by check, was
also the city where, a century later, Mongol
attempts to introduce governmentissue
paper money were so doggedly resisted.
The word sakk is incidentally the
origin of the English "check." The ultimate
origins of sakk are contested: Ashtor
(1972:555) suggests they were Byzantine;
Chosky (19SS), Persian.
72. Goitein (1966, 1967, 1973) provides
a detailed summary of financial practices
among Jewish merchants in twelfthcentury
Egypt. Almost every transaction
involved credit to some degree. Checks,
remarkably similar even in appearance
to the kind used today, were in common
usage--though sealed bags of metal coins
were even more common in everyday
transactions.
73· Though apparently governments
sometimes paid wages by check (Tag El­
Din 2007=69.) I am no doubt underplaying
the government role in all this: there were,
for instance, attempts to set up central
government banks, and certainly usually
a commitment in principle that the government
should enforce commercial standards
and regulations. It seems, however,
that this rarely came to much in practice.
74· Udovitch 1970:71-74·
75· Sarakhsi in Udovitch 1975:n, who
has a good discussion of the issues involved.
Likewise Ray 1997=59"--60.
76. This should surely also be of interest
to students of Pierre Bourdieu, who
made a famous argument, based on his
study of Kabyle society in Algeria, that a
man's honor in such a society is a form of
"symbolic capital," analogous to but more
important than economic capital, since it
is possible to turn honor into money but
not the other way around (Bourdieu 1977,
1990). True, the text above does not quite
say this, but one does wonder how much
this is Bourdieu's own insight, and how
much simply reflects the common sense of
his informants.
77· Following K.N. Chaudhuri
(19S5:197). The expansion of Islam was
spearheaded by both Sufi brotherhoods
and legal scholars; many merchants doubled
as either or both. The scholarly literature
here is unusually rich. See, for instance:
Chaudhuri 19S5, 1990; Risso 1995;
Subrahmanyam 1996; Barendtse 2002;
Beaujard 2005.
7S. In Goody 1996:91.
79· M. Lombard 2003:177-79·
So. Burton's translation; 1934 IV:2013.
Sr. And what's more, officials employed
their own person bankers, and
themselves made extensive use of credit
instruments such as suftaja both for transfer
of tax payments, and the secreting
away of ill-gotten gains (Hodgson 1974
I:3o1, Udovitch 1975:S, Ray 1994=69-71.)
S2. "For Mohammed this natural regulation
of the market corresponds to a cosmic
regulation. Prices rise and fall as night
follows day, as low tides follow high, and
price imposition is not only an injustice